Summer Reading Plan for 2015

It’s Memorial Day weekend and that puts me in the mind of
summer being right around the corner.  It’s been a splendid spring
of color–great year for the daffodils, azaleas–but the rhododendrons
were pretty hard hit by winter this year.   Don’t ask about the
Dutchman’s Pipe vine!

But let’s talk about books—and the summer reading plan.

If you would like a good one for yourself– to get your list going,
I would suggest The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka, written
in 1962.  In 2013 it was the book selected for “One Book, One
Philadelphia” reading program—for the whole city to read as
a community activity.

It is short–only 129 pages and has powerful appraisals for its
writing: winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction; the
National Book Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist;
and a New York Times Notable Book.

The book is about Japanese “picture brides”–a similar idea to
mail order brides–and is termed “exceptional”, “spare, incisive,”
“a beautiful little book” from the blurbs on the back jacket.

It is our selection for June in our book club.  Why not read it, too,
and join us on the third Tuesday evening of June to discuss it?

Here’s my tentative–well, here’s my planned reading list:   (It’s
kind of jumpy, margin-wise, but I have a robin knocking on my
window and he/she won’t give up—so I’m frazzled.)

Summer Reading List 2015  starred * are read as the summer progresses:

* —The Hare with Amber Eyes                    by Edmund de Waal

* —We Took to the Woods                           Louise Dickinson Rich

Short Stories                                                   William Humphrey
*–The Ordways                                                   William Humphrey

drama:  (some of these are rereading . . .)

*–A Raisin in the Sun                                        Lorraine Hansberry
*–The Glass Menagerie                                    Tennessee Williams
*–The Little Foxes                                              Lillian Hellman
A Moon for the Misbegotten                             Eugene O’Neill
*–Fences                                                               August Wilson
*–Pygmalion                                                       George Bernard Shaw
*–The Seagull                                                      Anton Chekhov
*–Uncle Vanya                                                    Anton Chekhov
*–Three Sisters                                                    Anton Chekhov
* –The Cherry Orchard                                      Anton Chekhov

*–The Buddha in the Attic                                 Julie Otsuko—–     bookclub June

*–Doctor Zhivago                                                 Boris Pasternak  —-bookclub July

*–Faces of the Gone                                              Brad Park             — bookclub Aug

The Confessions of St. Augustine                        (St. A)                          bookclub Sept

from U Cal at Berkeley list for incoming freshmen:

Love and Longing in Bombay                       Vikram Chandra  (not available)***
French Lessons                                                Alice Kaplan         (not available)
*–The Story of Stuff                                        Annie Leonard

*** not available in library or library loan system, so will skip

Look them all up on the internet and decide if you’d like to read any
of these, too.  Would love to hear about your own list planned . . .