Reading List #1

I devour books, or at least I used to. Back when I was in high school, I was the sort of person who’d go through 2-3 books a week on top of whatever I was reading for my English lit class. Things started to change once I went to college though. My reading load—even for a speed reader like me—didn’t give me much time to read for fun. I was an English and history double major, so I was going through hundreds of pages of reading a week for each of my major classes. When I started working in publishing, my leisure reading lagged again because of the manuscripts I needed to read for work. After spending all day talking about books (and reading them), it can take a lot of energy to pick up a book just because.

I’m hoping to change that by creating a reading list for myself in hopes that I'll get back into the swing of reading for fun again. Not only do I enjoy books in general, being well-read is a necessity in publishing. Plus, I read so many sub-par manuscripts for work that it’s good to remind myself that there are good books out there!

On Immunity by Eula Biss – I picked this advanced reader copy up as a freebie last year when I went to BookExpo America (BEA). With BEA 2015 going on next month, I thought it was high time I finally got to this book. It’s received a lot of hype since being released and was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and a New York Times Best Seller. When I picked it up at BEA last year, I never knew it’d blow up the way it did—I just liked the cover. I’ll be interested to read Biss’s take on what immunity means to society.

The 40s by The New Yorker – I got this book from my parents this past Christmas after some serious hinting on my end. It’s a collection of New Yorker essays written in the, you guessed it, 1940s by people like E.B. White, Langston Hughes, and Vladimir Nabokov. I’m a hugely interested in the 1940s (any classic movie lovers out there?), so I’m looking forward to seeing the 1940s through the eyes of the writers who lived through it.

Hard Choices by Hillary Rodham Clinton – Hillary for President! Hillary Clinton is sort of the woman of the hour (if not the year) after formally announcing her 2016 presidential bid on April 12th. We’d all been speculating for years about whether she’d run, and I was happy to see that the rumor mill had gotten something right. I’m looking forward to reading more about who I’m hoping will become the next president. Since this is an autographed copy though (and the book is huge), this is something I will not be stuffing in my bag to read on the train.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt – I already wrote about The Secret History in a book haul post, so I won’t bore you by repeating myself. However, I’m definitely looking forward to finally sinking my teeth into this novel.

What are you planning on reading next?