Joining 20 Books of Summer ’22

I know it’s not good to start a blog post with an apology, but… we’re already 6 days into June and I am only now announcing my plans to join 746 Books’ yearly summer challenge. It’s true that I hesitate a lot before joining any kind of reading challenge. It’s true that I have a lot on my mind these days and the last thing I need is any extra pressure, especially on leisure activities. But at my normal pace, I should be able to read at least 20 books without too much pressure, right? And I will use as much as I need the option to drop and switch…

So here are my tentative plans… which I prepared from my bed, having promptly caught a nasty but short-lived virus… You will therefore understand that my plans are a bit foggy:

1- Finish what I’ve started. Yes, I’m shamelessly including books that I started in May or earlier. Does it count as cheating? I hope not, because I’m such a multiple-books woman that if I was to start afresh, it would soon be the end of June (that was what stressed me out last year…)

• 1- Fair Warning by Michael Connelly
• 2- A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie
• 3- The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
• 4- Red snow in December by Simone van der Vlugt
• 5- Ghost Music by An Yu
• 6- Work: A Story of Experience by Louisa May Alcott

2- Read from our shelves (mine, physical or virtual, or my husband’s). Some titles have been gathering dust, some were already in the Summer challenge last year (ah-hum), some I want to give a last try before culling… (but I won’t tell you which 😉)

• 7- The Journey Home and Other Stories by Malachi Whitaker
• 8- A short story collection by Ruth Rendell
• 9- 1 novel by Elizabeth Taylor, I know my husband had one…
• 10- Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
• 11- Harbour Street (Vera Stanhope) by Ann Cleeves
• 12- Death Is Now My Neighbor (Inspector Morse) by Colin Dexter
• 13- One pick among those: Less than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis / A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals #1) by Madeleine L’Engle / something by Pierre Bayard

3- Read from the library, not completely random, but preferably by my authors of choice… (it seems easy but it isn’t, I’m getting lured by shiny new books all the time! 🤷‍♀️)

• 14 and 15- 2 books by Modiano
• 16- The Secret History by Donna Tartt (my current obsession, linked with Less Than Zero in the above category… all this due to the podcast Once upon a time at Bennington college)
• 17 and 18- 2 books by Du Maurier
• 19 Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood
• 20- 1 book by Emily St. John Mandel

Expect this list to change quite a lot during summer, especially as not many of them are in my Kindle and I will need to take the minimum for my vacation away from home.