Summertime Reading
The month of June marks the official start of summer. To honor the season, @UI&U decided to ask Kevin Jones, faculty member and advisor at UI&U’s Sacramento Center, for his Top Five Summer Reading Picks.
Kevin has some great suggestions, but we bet these choices would be perfect any time of the year. Happy reading!
Kevin Jones’s Summer Reading Picks
CANNERY ROW by John Steinbeck
I’m a shameless literary tourist. If there’s a place nearby where an author lived, wrote about, had a beer or lunch, I’ll probably check it out, buy the t-shirt, write home on the postcards. This summer, I’m planning a trip to the Monterey Bay, California, Aquarium, located on Cannery Row. So I’ll be rereading this classic romp, featuring Doc and the other colorful denizens of the row.
SELECTED PLAYS by George Bernard Shaw
I once killed a very nice community theatre company with my portrayal of the irascible Irish playwright: dull play; only negative reviews the company got in 25 years; stagnant ticket sales. Bottom line, the company lost its theatre, and it became a Goodwill store. As a sort of penance, I read Shaw whenever I find a copy of his plays.
THE HOLMES SERIES by Laurie L. King
A big Sherlock fan, you might have seen me in the front row in the multiplex last Christmas day for the opening of Guy Ritchie’s post modern version of the great detective. And now I’m anxious to begin Laurie King’s novels about Sherlock in retirement, with wife Mary Russell, and a quiet life of beekeeping. From what I’ve heard, I’m not counting on the quiet part. The game’s afoot, Mrs. Holmes.
DON QUIXOTE by Miguel de Cervantes
One of my guilty pleasures is musical theatre. And at my age, I figure I can count on 26 or 35 possible viewings of Man of La Mancha in summer stock before I die.
I’d enjoy it more, I know, if I’d read the novel, but I never have. And neither, probably, have you. Or anyone we know. But Ecco Press has recently published a translation that looks like it’s readable, even something someone would like to read. It’s not an impossible dream. Check back with me, say, Labor Day, Sancho.
THE ISAAC BELL SERIES by Clive Cussler
The prolific Cussler churns out about three action novels every day before lunch, usually about some sort of super high-tech swashbuckling set on the high seas of, well, this afternoon. In the Isaac Bell series, he turns high tech detective circa the 1900s solving crimes of state, dealing with ships, runaway locomotives, and other objects of big iron and heavy metal. The perfect steampunk beach-reading.