2009 – The Summer of Magical Reading (Well, at Least for Me)

Summer is coming to a close – at least it feels that way here in Boston, where yesterday’s temperatures dipped into the low seventies. While I’ve always known about global warming, I’m now convinced it’s the real deal. The entire month of June was rainy and cold. July was a scattershot of weird weather: day after day of thundershowers; days when there wouldn’t be a cloud in the sky and then, boom, a violent thunderstorm. The most memorable day came on a Saturday afternoon in July. Eating and drinking with friends when, suddenly, we heard what sounded like thousands of light bulbs exploding in the street. We opened the front door and for the next twenty minutes I watched my first hailstorm. It didn’t get hot enough to go swimming until the first week in August and now the summer is coming to an abrupt stop. But I’ll always look back at this summer as the season of great books.

By nature, I’m not a fast reader (I read about as fast as one speaks). I always have a book going, and I read mostly at night these days, and to be completely honest, most of what I read is just okay. Fairly enjoyable but nothing that keeps me up past my bedtime. That changed at the end of May when, on a whim, I decided to pick up a copy of Charlaine Harris’s first Sookie Stackhouse novel, Dead Until Dark. I’d heard people gushing about HBO’s True Blood series, so I decided to pick up a copy even though I’m not a huge fan of vampires (unless it's a book written by Stephen King).

I’m glad I took a risk. That book marked the start of a summer of great reading. I’d blow off working out, TV shows, movies, meeting with friends. Any spare moment I had was spent reading a fantastic book, and I gobbled up each one in a matter of days. It’s an eclectic mix - vampires, serial killers, a love story. Some are written better than others, some more enjoyable, but they all share one common trait: I couldn’t put the damn book down. I wanted to pass along these recommendations to you, hoping you’ll enjoy them as much as I did. Here they are, in the order I read them:

• Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
• Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris
• Club Dead by Charlaine Harris
• Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris
• Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris
• Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris
• All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris
• From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris
• Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris
• The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly
• The Lovers by John Connolly
• Trust No One by Gregg Hurwitz
• The Gate House by Nelson DeMille
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
• No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay
• The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
• Vanished by Joseph Finder

Happy reading, and thanks to all the fans out there who helped make the new Darby McCormick book, The Dead Room, a UK bestseller.

Talk to you all soon.

Chris