If you're currently living in Western Washington, like me, you might also be feeling like Summer came on a bit quickly: we had about two weeks straight of nothing but grey skies and the occasional deluge of rain, and highs in the mid-60s throughout the first couple of weeks of June. Then, bam! It's been nothing but sunny since then. It's supposed to be 97 degrees sometime over the weekend. And it's STILL only June.
Nothing like Mother Nature to keep you on your toes.
In all honesty, I didn't even realize that the "official" start of Summer had passed, until this past Monday morning. (I use "official" with the quotation marks, because everyone knows that Summer's true designated beginning is the second your youngest sibling makes it out of the building on the last day of school... and yes, this rule still holds true when your youngest is the only one left IN school, and is a college sophomore in standing.) It had just jumped up on me, I guess!
Now, there's nothing ahead of me but sunny skies, homemade Fudgesicles, and not one, but two new seasons of Bachelor franchise content. Will all passengers please turn off your brain and stow it away safely in the upright position; if you don't make it into July without at least one unfortunate tan and a new favorite alcoholic beverage under your belt, then you've been too slow on the entrance. You're going to have to gain at least four more gloat-y Instagram captions and a strange situationship with the only other age-appropriate option regularly attending your neighborhood pool to make up for that kind of lag.
Thankfully, my four-years-old-and-falling-apart Birkenstocks have already managed to singe their presence into the tops of my feet, and I've discovered that vodka sodas are only more delicious when you pour pineapple juice and a double of homemade jalapeno-infused Absolut into them, so I've got my floaties on and am ready to dive in, feet first.
Which means that it's time for yet another Seattle Public Library Summer Book Bingo!
Here are just a few selections on the list I'm excited to get into, as well as a few more that I'm happy to shove in by whatever means necessary:
It was on the list!!
Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking, Toni Tipton-Martin (BIPOC Food Writing)
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, Jia Tolentino (Asian American or Pacific Islander Author)
Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America, Essays, R. Eric Thomas (Black Joy)
I Miss You When I Blink: Essays, Mary Laura Philpott (Collection of Essays or Poetry)
Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World #1), Rebecca Roanhorse (QTBIPOC)
The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1), S. A. Chakraborty (Speculative Fiction)
Proud: My Fight for an Unlikely American Dream, Ibtihaj Muhammad (Sports)
Emperor Mage and The Realms of the Gods (The Immortals #3 and #4, respectively), Tamora Pierce (Two Books in a Series)
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce #1), Alan Bradley (Mystery or Crime)
I'll do what I want
There are plenty of ambiguous categories listed on this year's bingo sheet, too... ones I can exploit to fit whatever my mood reader-based whims compel me to pursue.
For instance, "On Your Shelf" only requires the idea of having owned or been interested in a book beforehand - and let's be real, I've got plenty of those - while "Beach Read" involves the vague connotation of having at some point been consumed waterside. "Made You Laugh" is also cheerfully ambivalent to circumstance, while dual categories of "Recommended by Library Staff" and "Recommended by a Friend" are completely innocuous: to be clear, I think library staff would delighted at me reading regardless, no matter what I picked up, while shouldn't our friends, at their core, want us to be happy? Therefore, I feel like either of those categories carry with them few limitations.
Oh, wait, and I forgot "Recommended by a Local Bookseller." But being that I buy so many books based on their excellent recommendations already, who's to say which of my past purchases was done at their behest?
Regardless, here are a myriad and miscellaneous collection of books that aren't necessarily strictly tied to one category in particular, but which I am looking forward to shoving in haphazardly at my own heart's desire.
At LEAST three or four more novels from my Big Box o' Paranormal Romance
The Ghost Bride, Yangsze Choo
The Nest: A Novel, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, Stuart Turton
Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel
Whiskey When We're Dry, John Larson
An Agatha Christie / Aaron Elkin / etc. or two... you know, vacation mysteries!
And, of course, I'm sure that there are plenty of whims that are going to strike me broadside at various points throughout the summer. The only requirement for those is a degree of flexibility and willingness to pursue the unexpected!
That all being said, there are a few spaces beyond those already attached to specific titles and those who could be easily filled in by a myriad of answers, so if anyone has any recent reads they're dying to recommend in these categories, lemme at 'em!
I still have to pick out some titles for:
- Small Press
- Activism or Social Justice (though I do have holds on both Mikki Kendall's Hood Feminism and Alice Wong's Disability Visibility at the local library!)
- Cli-fi or Environmental Nonfiction (and same for Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife or Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower!)
- SAL Speaker (though leaning towards Ursula K. LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness, Luvvie Ajayi Jones' Professional Troublemaker, or Circe, by Madeline Miller!)
- Olympic Host City
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