Summer Reading List to Fall

Where did the summer go? It seems like only yesterday we were celebrating the Saints’ Super Bowl win — and now they’re starting up again this Thursday.  I started several new projects earlier this summer, but time whizzed by before I could finish any of them. In May I mapped out a training regimen for a half-marathon I’m scheduled to run in November, yet somehow I’m still at 2 miles. What really tops the list, though, is my neglected summer reading list. I started the season hoping to finish at least 20 titles, but all 20 remain on the list — plus 50 more.

As much as I’d like to, I can’t blame my unproductive summer on the weather or aging or vacations or, heck, quantum physics. I had a clear goal to read several historical fiction books on New Orleans and a few novels tied to the area, but for some reason I only read a handful.

Perhaps if I share my list here and “out” myself, I’ll have a greater sense of accountability and the determination to catch up. Seems fair enough.

For the record, in the past year I’ve read some fantastic books with New Orleans as a central theme: Bliss Broyard’s One Drop: My Father’s Hidden Life- A Story of Race and Family Secrets; the collection of essays My New Orleans: Ballads to the Big Easy by Her Sons, Daughters and Lovers; Ned Sublette’s The World That Made New Orleans; Tom Piazza’s Why New Orleans Matters; Kent Germany’s New Orleans After the Promises; and finally, after months of intermittent readings, Confederacy of Dunces. These books are must-reads, and at a later date I’ll try to explain why.

In the meantime I’ve listed below a sampling of books that are currently either gathering dust on my nightstand or using up memory on my Kindle.
·     Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende
·    Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum
·     Gumbo Ya-Ya: Folk Tales of Louisiana  by Robert Tallant and Lyle Saxon
·    The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
·    Path of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms
·    Native Bound and Beyond Katrina  by Natasha Tretheway
·    Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
·    Southern Vampire Series by Charlaine Harris
·    Messiah: A Novel by Andrei Codesci 
·    The Last Madam:  A Life in New Orleans Underworld  by Chris Wiltz
·    Hungry Town: A Culinary History of New Orleans, the City Where Food is Almost Everything by Tom Fitzmorris
·    683 Things About New Orleans by Monica M. Dalide
·    Last Car to Elysian Fields by James Lee Burke
·    New Orleans Sketches by William Faulkner
·    Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization
·    Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana’s Cajun Coast

I’ve stumbled upon many of these books since moving here, and others come highly recommended by friends, particularly Allende’s latest and James Lee Burke’s mystery novels. And while I’d otherwise have no desire to read anything of vampire persuasion, as you can see, I’d like to read as least one in Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series. Not sure why. “Blame it on the True Blood.”

What are you reading these days?  Pray tell.

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