Uncategorized | August 03, 2016
Summer Reading: The Never-ending List
By Libby Peterson
As with every summer, I have a long reading list waiting which I will never even make a dent in. It is full of unread classics like Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and Garcia-Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, as well as science fiction must-reads like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I know I’ll read less than half of them before the summer is done, but I pile up my list just the same, adding more and more novels as I visit bookstores and hear titles from friends throughout the summer.
Currently, I am reading a book that wasn’t even on my list originally—The Passage by Justin Cronin. It is a science fiction story of Stephen-King proportions recommended to me by my father, who has already devoured both sequels. With vampires who share a lot in common with zombies, a corrupt government manipulating the monsters, and a six-year-old girl caught up in it all, the novel is a thrilling read.
I have also started reading Alexander Chee’s novel Queen of the Night, about an opera singer with a complicated past. I was lucky enough to attend Chee’s master class at Northwestern University, where he discussed writing techniques and his first (and wonderful) novel Edinburgh.
After these, I plan to pick up another of my father’s recommendations, Tony Hillerman’s The Blessing Way, the first in a long series of detective novels. These take place in the American Southwest and explore the culture of the area, something I am immensely fascinated by.
Libby Peterson interned at the Missouri Review this summer and is a student at Northwestern University majoring in Anthropology. She also plans to apply for the Creative Writing major.
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