The Summer (Vacation) Stack!

I know most people doesn't have as long vacations for summer as we have in Sweden but for me summer means a row of weeks off from work, or if not - at least a slower pace.
This summer we go off to stay at the cabin for four consecutive weeks so I'll need to bring the Summer Stack :)

At the moment it consists of the following books -

Crime and punishment. Been promising husband to read this for perhaps a decade or more. This summer I'll at least have a try at it!
Embassytown, by China Miéville. Well, I think I'll start that one before we go, actually ;-)
Keeping it real, by Justina Robson. Meant to try this series for a loong time.
Lord of light, by Roger Zelazny, which I have been intending to read for a loong time but never really got around to.
Smile or die, by Barbara Ehrenreich. I thought I'd do it as a fast read but it got buried in the stacks.
Cyberabad days, by Ian McDonald.

It seems my plan is to polish off some longstanding parts of Mount TBR. I'll be happy if I finish off half of them - I also have to scrape and paint a lot of walls, not to mention a door and a couple of window frames, and let's not forget doing fun stuff with son ;-)

Do you have a Summer Read Stack?

I don't, but tell me if you like Keeping it Real! It's on my wishlist...

I will! It's been on the TBR stack ever since I was persuaded to get it - some people whose taste in books I normally share like the series so I thought I'd give it a go. Then it just... you know... kind of sat there, as other reads came jumping at me, at light speed ;-)

Hopefully I'll get through it during summer :)

Good luck with Crime and Punishment; I've never been able to finish that book. I simply don't like it. Yes, I know that makes me an ignorant heathen!

I've always enjoyed Roger Zelazny books. I hope you do too.

It sounds like you've got a great summer's reading planned.

I would like to finish A Clash of Kings. Right now I am reading Couples by John Updike. I am also interested in Pleasure Bound a book on Victorian sexuality.

#4 - Husband is not an avid reader but he loves Dostoevsky (not to mention Russian /and Italian/ film and literature in general) and I finally caved. Hopefully it's worth reading - if not I'm bringing other books ;-)

I've only read some short stories by Zelazny but liked them enough.

#6 -- I like other Russian writers, but NOT Dostoevsky.

I always have a stack, and as I'm not really going any where for any length of time, it will probably stay right here; however, during a short trip up to Victoria B.C. this weekend I will take with me my Nook so I can finish A Feast for Crows (the fourth book in the George R.R. Martin Ice and Fire series). And, if I do finish it, I'll probably read The Claymorgans: One Family's History of Race in America by Julie Winch.

But, just in case, the Nook also holds some freebies, oldies but goodies: Dracula, Little Women, Pride and Prejudice and one of B&N free Fridays books: God's War by Kameron Hurley.

It also holds a number of toddler friendly books and since we are going with the kids, I'll imagine I'll be listening to them, too.

One weekend! And I hope to see a librarything friend while I am there too. Little time left for swimming and lollygagging around the pool.

In all honesty I have some Project Gutenberg items loaded on my phone, for when desperation rears it's head :)

Also, I'll not be going away in another 2,5 weeks but I'm over my ears in work and will not be able to read that much... which is why I look forward even more to be off from work for four weeks!

I'm contemplating to add The Blade Itself and Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a hatred of slavery shaped Darwin's views on human evolution to the stack but I just KNOW I won't be able to read all of them, so... we'll see!

I love Dostoevsky. When I was a pastor I put aside time each day to read him. I got through The Idiot, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov and most of The Possessed. In the late 1990s and early 2000s I traveled to Russian extensively, and realized Dostoevsky was writing what he saw!

The Idiot also sits on a shelf, courtesy of husband, but I decided to start with Crime and Punishment because that's the one he's nagging me about.

In all honesty I would probably not had read The Master and Margarita if it hadn't been for husband, either, so I think he is good at recommending readable stuff. It's just that I cut my teeth on Maxim Gorkij and that's just too bleak - much like the Swedish classics, in fact, which mainly are about pain, poverty and unavenged injustice. IMHO.

I had to read Crime and Punishment in high school and I actually quite liked it, although that was not what I expected to happen. However I'll never bother reading it again and it did not inspire me to read anything else by Dostoyevsky or any other Russian writer.

I think The Brothers Karamazov is one of literature's Perfect Novels. (Not sure what the others would be, though.)

I enjoyed The Blade Itself very much. Quite GRRMish.

I am jealous. Really. Though I do think I will have a little more time to read once my son is done with school. My husband will start work later so we can sleep in a bit, which means a little more reading in bed with a headlamp for me. I still feel like an 8 year old hiding under the covers with a flashlight night most nights. :oD

I'll have to come back with a short list of what I'd like to get through this Summer.

#8: Oh. Oh. That would be me! Looking forward to visiting this weekend, maggie :o)

Your four week holiday sounds lovely, Busifer. I've been meaning to try some China Miéville, but that would mean ignoring the many books I've already promised I'd read. Darwin's Sacred Cause also sounds interesting.

This summer I plan on rereading some Laurie R. King (A Letter of Mary and The Moor and maybe read:
Spindle's End by Robin McKinley
The Fresco by Sheri S Tepper
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
something on Mt TBR by Ursula Le Guin
something on Mt TBR by Patricia McKillip
something on Mt TBR by Janny Wurts

But who knows if I'll actually follow the plan.

Ooooh! ALL the touchstones worked first try!

I work, if anything, harder in the summer than at other times (children's librarian + Summer Reading Program = insanity), but I still have a massive stack of books to read over the next month or so:

Blameless by Gail Carriger
Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters by Lesley Blume
The False Princess by Ellis O'Neal
Fever Crumb and A Web of Air by Philip Reeve
Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride
The House of Dead Maids by Clare B. Dunkle
Kat, Incorrigible by Stephanie Burgis
The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees
No and Me by Delphine De Vigan
Okay for Now by Gary Schmidt
The Order of Odd-Fish by James Kennedy
Red Glove by Holly Black
A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz
Mine is the Night by Liz Curtis Higgs
and the audiobook of My Bonny Light Horseman by L.A. Meyer, to listen to on car trips.

That's just what I actually have in my possession right now -- there are a few more I have holds on at the library, so they could come in at any time. Most of those are library books; any that are not, I have an obligation to review for one reason or another.

I'm going to finish The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne Valente tonight, so I didn't put it on the list. And there may be more that I'm not thinking of. . . .

I seem to do more reading when I'm not on holiday than vice versa. Probably explained by my holidays being outdoorsy doing things breaks. So I don't have a particular stack I'm expecting to read over summer - though I've bought quite a few books recently and will be making my way through them.

I haven't decieded on the blade itself I see it every time I go into a bookshop, and it looks like the sort of book I'd probably like, but skimming it has yet to be surficiently persuasive to buy it.

I have my 11 in 11 challenge book list that I'm trying to work off of. The top ones I hope to get to over the next couple months are:

The Princess Bride
Master and Commander
and
Orphan's Quest

I also need to get through my current read, Dragon Soul so I can move on to my ER book Steelhands, both of which I hope to have done within the next couple weeks. I'm also currently reading City of the Fallen Angels that I have out from the library and Magic Slays which is waiting for me at the library that I need to get through.

If I get through all those this summer I'll be very pleased.

I find the lists and stacks to be interesting. I just read as I go, choosing what I feel like and not feeling obligated. The idea to assign myself books like homework never occurred to me. It would feel too much like work and take all the fun out of it. Different approaches to the same thing, but I can't imagine changing my reading patterns because of a season or a list or whatever.

I have a great stack of unread books waiting:

The Soul Mirror by Carol Berg - hopefully will get a sense of where she's taking this series. Her work is so known for delightful reverses, one can NEVER tell with a first installment.

Seer of Sevenwaters - I've read all but one other of Marillier's works, so this one is catch up.

The Steerswoman's Road by Rosemary Kirsten - a sadly little known work that has been highly recommended to me by people who know me well. I expect a very interesting read, here.

I've just finished Ricardo Pinto's The Chosen - which ended on an infuriating cliffhanger - however - the book was so rich with originality/so astonishing in lavish detail - (it reads like I'd imagine a trip through an opium dream) - while hard edged and cutthroat politics - it had enough heart at the core, I will likely track down the sequels.

After that, I have catch up on some Charles de Lint works, and a new title by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller releasing in August.

At which point, it will become a grab bag - the pile that accrued while I was up to my neck busy has gotten ENORMOUS.

#20

D I T T O !

I admire those folks who can organize their reading in all these various ways. I am simply not wired that way. I wish I were. It would make my life so much easier.

20, 22 - me too. I have a big TBR pile of things I've bought, plus a pile of library books and a long list of requests at the public library that come in at irregular intervals depending on the waiting list. Not to mention the odd new book by a favourite author that I have to buy and read right away. My priorities change with my mood and other activities (more likely to grab a paperback for reading on the bus, for example).

I guess I could list my whole TBR pile but last time I counted it was over 60 items and that seems like too much work :)

Glad I'm not the only one. I find the challenge threads to be equally mystifying in the sense that just thinking of a rigid plan for something so great as reading just sucks all the oxygen out of the room for me. I have no problem trying out new things (like now I'm reading my very first Murakami (The Wind-up Bird Chronicles) which is a stretch for me), but to put books into some kind of forced and arbitrary (?) schedule is just not in my make up.

I don't have a rigid plan - titles butt in front of each other all the time/library books jump in, too. But I've listed my 'probables' stack - likeliest to be read soonest.

Crap! I've just remembered a whole bunch of Edward Rutherford books are still in the B&N sack in my closet. I haven't touched any of them, yet. I'll pull them out and add them to the many piles of reading options.

I put them there so I wouldn't misplace them, while I was unpacking my boxes of books. Well, they didn't get misplaced, just forgotten!

I have an opposite bag going, books getting added to the Kicked to the Curb collection. Stuff I've read, didn't really like and have decided they have to go.

On the topic of "planned reading" - I'm not much for that either, under normal circumstances. The only book consciously put off until vacation is due is Crime and punishment. Going away for slightly over four weeks, to a place lacking decent bookshops (I think the closest option would be about 3 hours away, by car) and with the local library up there closed for summer I need to plan because I just can't pack the whole mountain or we'll end up not being able to bring other kinds of stuff we need to bring for vacation.

Being 13 hours (by car) away from the shelf for a month kind of necessitates a pragmatic approach ;-)
I'm not the kind of person who just goes off hoping the reading urge will be absent for that long a period!

My challenges aren't rigid at all. I read what I feel like reading and if that book happens to fill a hole in a challenge list, it's a bonus. I can go months without reading a book that counts towards the Dewey Decimal Challenge, but now I'm reading Biting the Wax Tadpole which is a 400 Language book I just happen to need. Yay!

I wouldn't say I've put myself on a schedule for my book reading. It's more like an awareness, a reminder to myself, that these books I'd been meaning to read have been sitting on my shelf for awhile. I think I will read certain books this summer, but I've also been known to pick a book to start the next day and find the next day that I'm actually in the mood for something else.

If I was going away for several weeks I would probably plan my book reading more stringently (like saving certain books to take with me rather than starting them right away, and planning a variety of genres/authors to bring so I'm more likely to settle into a book given the small selection I've brought.)

Busifer, promise me you won't kill your husband by the time you get to the end of C & P. ;)

"mainly are about pain, poverty and unavenged injustice"

Nailed it in one. But that's just my opinion. Obviously it's a different strokes for different folks thing as seen from the above posts. Let us know which side you fall on when you return. :)

Have a wonderful time, no matter what!

Also about adults completely controlled by their emotions who can't do anything without talking about it for days or agonizing for weeks over it. Then once they do it, they agonize and bitch all over again. I hated C&P, sorry.

#32 - Hmn, sounds like Tolstoy. Anyway, I'll give it a try. Worst thing that can happen is that I want to throw it against the wall, eh? ;-)

So long as it's not one of those walls you just scraped and painted. You might hurt the wall. ;)

Right ;-)

I don't really have a summer reading stack, but the books I have lined up by my chair to read next are:
Pride's Castle by Frank Yerby - from my TBR shelf
In the Company of Others by Jan Karon - borrowed from a friend
Curry Cuisine by Corinne Trang - 'cause I'm really wanting to read it
Also, I have a good idea that it won't be long before I dip into another Jim Butcher/Dresden files ebook - because I must

I am so envious of this 4 weeks off in a row. And curious - how many holidays off do Swedes get? 4 weeks would be equivalent to 70% of my time allowed off - there would be very little time off for the rest of the year. And I actually get quite generous hols for the UK.

#37 - 25 days are stipulated by Swedish labour law; my contract gives me 5 more, so a total of 30 days. This is not unusually much - rather if you're 40+ like me many have 30-35 days and more. I'm with a consultancy firm and because they have the revenue models they have they're not overly generous with vacation time, as a rule.
Then we have quite a few public holidays/bank holidays as well. Recently we had Ascension Day off, for example, which afforded me and most others a 6 day mini-vacation.
These holidays doesn't "eat" on the vacation days.

In this case I only plan to use about 8 of my "vacation" days for the four (and a half)-week stint off. The rest is parental leave - I have a handful of days (about 30) left which must be used by November or they're forfeited. For some of them I get only nominal compensation, though, which is why I mix vacation and parental leave days (vacation days equals full pay).

I plan to use the rest of the parental leave days in October, for Fall break. That'll still leave some, but at least not the high value ones ;-)

Now I just need to fill in the forms... The backside of this!

Did that answer the question?

I'm going out of town for a few days now that my mother is doing a little better. I am so excited! I am taking Discovery of Witches, Ishi, and The Wasp Factory. I'll also listen to Voyager on the drive.

I'll be in Charleston, SC. There will be lots of sightseeing, so I'm not sure how much reading I will do.

Oh, I'd want to know what you think of The Wasp Factory! I have decided I really like his SF books and am thinking I that perhaps I should try his non-sf novels as well...!

Have a great time, GD! You, too, Busifer! Vacations are the best! I'm finished with mine, for now.

Busifer - that does indeed answer the question. I was thinking of moving to Sweden on your message!! ;) but you don't actually get that many more holiday days off in comparison.
Have a good time anyway and enjoy the books.

Just an update on what really got read -

Of the Summer Stack I read Smile or Die and Embassytown, and I did get started on Crime and Punishment but only reached page 8 before I felt "ookaay - one of those books" ;-) so I'm undecided if I should continue or not... Not least because I have to read Subject to change for a job-related book club read.

In summary I don't get to read much during vacations, apparently ;D