Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer

Taking an idea from Carlos (my boyfriend), here is my summer reading list. As I read these, I'll come back here with comments.

The Film Club - David Gilmore
From the cover: "The true story of a father who let his son drop out of school - if he watched three movies a week."
I finished it last night. Decent, but not great. Easy reading though. It was almost 200 pages and I read it in two sittings.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference - Malcolm Gladwell
I borrowed this one from my dad a couple of years ago and read it then. The title phrase has worked its way into our common vernacular so I thought I'd read it again.

Pictures At A Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood - Mark Harris
From the dust jacket: "Pictures at a Revolution tracks five movies - the milestones Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, the popular hits Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night, and the big-budget disaster Doctor Dolittle - on their five-year journey to Oscar night in the spring of 1968."

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - Jared Diamond
NPR interviewed the author a month or so ago. The book sounded interesting.

The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World - A.J. Jacobs
From the dust jacket: "Part memoir and part education (or lack thereof), The Know-It-All chronicles NPR contributor A.J. Jacobs' hilarious, enlightening, and seemingly impossible quest to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z."
I actually started my summer reading with this one, but put it down at the end of chapter D. I'll try again later this summer.

The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America - David Hajdu
I have hundreds (thousands?) of comic books, collected in my youth, gathering dust and money in my closet. I've always like the E.C. Comics from the 1950's best. The company is reissuing many of them. Damn. More ways to spend my money. ("Beans. Magic Beans." as Carlos would say.)

Perfect from Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life - John Sellers

A recommendation from Vincent from a few months back.