…or, my five-ish best reads of the summer!

For me, this was truly the Summer of Reading (Thank you, Mary for organizing another amazing Summer Book Bingo!)

This summer hearkened back to the days of my childhood and the joy and excitement that was summer reading. Growing up as a child, we had little money and we did not take vacations, so for me a good book would take me far away!

And, that was how I spent this summer – miles and miles away inside the pages of the books I read. It was a wonderful summer with 50 books and 2 Bingo Cover All’s! But, not all books are equal, and I thought a great way to wrap up the summer would be to highlight 5 books that I don’t think you should miss! And, if you have not read them – these are books that I would urge you to read and soon!

Number one on my list is Warlight by Michael Ondaatje in post-WWII London. I truly loved this story and I loved how Ondaatje told it. His way with words is masterful and his characters are so memorable! I truly hope that this book will win the Man Booker Prize this year. It is most worthy, in my opinion!

My second favorite book of the summer was The House at the Edge of Night by Catherine Banner. This book drew me in from the first page with a line from Derek Walcot’s poem Islands: But, islands can only exist. If we have loved in them. And, so I spent a good number of days on the island Castellamare falling in love with it and the Esposito family. I truly did not want this book to end!

Coming in third was The Magicians Trilogy by Lev Grossman. And, yes, I read all three books this summer because spending time in Brakebills and Fillory was so exciting! And, while I thought book two was not quite as good as books one and three, this series has stayed with me and the final book was just amazing and how Grossman wrapped up this series was spectacular and I highly recommend it! (After note… did you know there is a SYFY series about these books?? Yeah, I did not either and you can find seasons 1 and 2 on Netflix)

I was fortunate to be able to fit a good number of Louise Penny’s books with Armand Gamache in Three Pines on my cards (three this summer) and I am going to lump them (The Nature of the Beast, A Great Reckoning, and Glass Houses) together in fourth place. You can never go wrong with Armand!

Finally, I am at the truly hard choice of picking a final book to bring this summer to a close, and I have thought about this long and hard as to which book I will put on this Best of Summer list. It was not an easy choice because I read so many amazing books this summer. But, in the end Paris in the Present Tense by Mark Helprin gets the final spot. And, really… spending time in Paris this summer was not painful at all! This book was so much more than I expected and it made me laugh, it made me cry, and I fell in love with Jules Lacour! This book easily gets 5 stars!!

You can see my entire list of summer reads here. 

Happy Labor Day everyone!

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