Summertime Reading

I'll admit that during the school year I rarely, if ever, crack open a novel. By the time I've finished my research for the day, marked first year labs, and tried to do the homework from my own classes, my brain can barely process the content of my US Weekly. But the summertime is different. After the monotony of being in the lab all day, its great to come home and escape to a world where the main character isn't looking for a leak in her nitrogen line all day or resoldering her signal leads back to her photomultiplier tube.

Here are a few of my favourite reads so far this summer!



This book follows Sean as he travels North America for a year, taking one week job contracts in the hopes that he can find a job he wants to make a career out of. I brought this on vacation with me and it ended up being a nice and quick poolside read. The chapters were only a few pages at most and I appreciated being able to pick it up and put it down easily. Some parts of the book are a bit cheesy (when Sean realizes that his project was part of a bigger picture and he feels like he is a role model for youth everywhere) and whiny (we get it, travelling around every week is tiring), but overall the interesting premise kept the pages turning.



I love love LOVED The Time Travellor's Wife. So when I heard that Niffenegger had written a new book, I put it on my must-read list. It got some mixed reviews, but I'll say after reading it that it gets two thumbs up from me. It has the same romantic central theme as TTW, but with a paranormal twist. The first third made me cry, in the middle third I was hanging on to every word, and the ending was very disturbing. But any book that can make me feel that range of emotions must be very well crafted.



This is cheating a bit since I tried to start this book in the winter, but most of it was read after exams finished. This book follows Pete as he travels Ireland, stopping in at the bars that bare his name. I couldn't read this book in public because I laughed out loud too often. Also, a quick google search while I was reading the book showed that the author died only a couple of years after the book was published, so it added an extra dimension of appreciating the small moments in life while you still can.

Next up on my reading list is The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. Hopefully it will measure up to the other books I've read this summer!