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Sunday, June 29, 2014

Hot Summer Reading

We are officially one week into summer, even though in some parts of the nation, here in Sacramento, California included, the season’s sizzling weather had already begun weeks ago. And like those ancient societies that centered their actions around the seasons and made festivals to please their deities, summer, as with the other seasons, is a time to make plans and goals. One of these for me is in the form of a reading list. Summer provides most of us extra time to catch up on those books that we said we would read, passionately wanted to read but didn’t because we didn’t get around to it. It’s also a time of new book releases, which are equivalent to the flickers’ summer movie releases. This is the time to plan a list of what we would like to read on the pool deck, on a long trip or at the local AC’d café or library on those dragon breath weather days when we just don’t want to go out yet don’t want to pile up on the energy bill running the air conditioner in our houses. Here’s my summer sci fi/fantasy reading list below (not necessarily in any particular order)!


Across the Universe,   Beth Revis (currently reading): a YA space opera-mystery involving an unseen killer on board a generation ship.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman: This involves a pond in which one of the characters imagines to be an ocean. Wherever there’s an ocean there’s a beach. Therefore this book is perfect for summer reading!

Jack Glass, Adam Roberts: another science fiction mystery tale involving a murderer but with a more atom punk touch in that it uses elements of golden age sci fi.

The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood: The critically acclaimed novel about women in the near future whose rights have been taken away.

The Manitou, Graham Masterton: This novel about the evil spirit of a medicine man was made into a movie only three years after its 1975 publication. I’ve seen the movie which was made really good as underrated as it was. Now I would like to see how much more is in the book bearing in mind that most movie adaptations of novels don’t include all scenes or even all characters from the original stories. 

Batman comics: This includes both Batman and Detective Comics, particularly from the ‘70s. For me summer has always been Batman season because that’s when I got to know Batman most when I was a kid around six or seven years old. This was particularly through reruns of the campy ‘60s TV series, and even though today I feel like it never did the Dark Knight Detective justice with its rainbow/Technicolor sets and daylight dominant settings it’s what started me on Batman. Today, I’m trying to catch up with the true Dark Knight by reading the comics from just about every era except the ‘50s and ‘60s when Batman became more of a cut and dry trusted hero of the people, like Superman, rather than that questionable more-or-less anti-hero. Lately, I’ve been trying to collect and read the ‘70s comics, since they’re more in my current budget and also because that’s the decade Batman was returned to his true dark hero role.

1001 Arabian Nights (Author anonymous): This is a thick book that’s pages can add up to almost the number in the title. Being a slow reader, I know I couldn’t read it in one summer but since it consists of several tales the ones I would like to read before the summer’s out are “Aladdin” and one or two of the Sinbad tales. “Aladdin” has influenced Hollywood films since the 1940s at least, including a Disney animated feature in the ‘90s, and Sinbad has been adapted to a series of movies whose special effects were done by one of my long time sci fi/fantasy Hollywood special effects heroes, the late Ray Harryhausen. Now it’s time to read the original stories, and if I read Arabic I would read the story in its original language but, unfortunately, I don’t.

Galactic Energies,Luca Rossi:   A short story collection, and again not that I’ll read them all during the summer, but I’d like to get started on a few.

A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs: The first of Burroughs’s Mars series of novels. I read a couple of his Tarzan books, one each of the past two summers. Now this summer I’d like to give his Mars series a chance.

That’s my summer reading list, at least for sci fi fantasy reading. What’s your reading list for the summer? Need help getting started? Let me suggest yours truly’s short story collection, The Fool’s Illusion. In fact, there’s a great story in there that may just be perfect for the pool deck, or for reading at the beach or lake. It’s about the search for a legendary sea monster (not the Loch Ness monster, this one’s in the Mediterranean). If you like simulating your surroundings to a great horror-sci fi story, then this is the one to read in one of the above settings I just mentioned. Better yet, you may even want to read it on the water! That is, if you’re not faint of heart or prone to fear-based accidents.

You can purchase Fool’s Illusion at Amazon, and if you do so between now and Tuesday July 1st you can take advantage of the special Kindle Matchbox deal! And you don’t even need a Kindle device to read the Kindle version! Just go to The Fool’s Illusion’s Amazon page and click the “free app” link underneath the Kindle price. What is the Kindle Matchbox deal? It’s a special where if you buy a print copy of my book you can have a Kindle copy of it for free! If you don’t like reading print or can’t think of anybody who does who you can give the print version to as a gift, then you can purchase the Kindle copy alone for only 99 cents! Again, you don’t need a Kindle device to read the Kindle copy; you can read it on any Windows, Apple or Android device. Just visit the Kindle free app store!

Until next time . . .







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