Oh those lazy, hazy days of summer!

Ah, it's August.  Such a sticky, sweltering, suffocating summertime month.  Here you see some beach goers soaking up the sun.  Some people here think the beach is THE place to be when it's hot and muggy.  Sure, if you don't mind all that beach traffic as you're on your way to your destination, made worse if you don't happen to have air conditioning in your vehicle.  And then there's the problem of all those bodies splayed out on every inch of sand from here to eternity.

No, that's okay, I'll pass.  Give me a nice, cold, air-conditioned room!  Ah yes!  Give me a nice, lengthy book to prop up in front of me as my legs are stretched out in front of me, feet resting on a little stool, my back pressed against a comfortable chair, and I'm happy as a clam.  (While others are out in the hot sun digging for clams.)

Sure, I live in the Ocean State.  That's what we're famous for.  The ocean, tall ships, beaches, quahogs, seafood--all that stuff.  And all of that stuff is great.  But I find hot, sticky weather very uncomfortable.  It's hard to breathe, hard to think, hard to concentrate.  I want to be able to write something coherent and read passages from an intriguing novel just once, instead of over and over again.

So, speaking of summertime reading, I'll tell you what I'm reading. First I read Kim Richardson's autobiographical book, The Unbreakable Child. Also read a fellow writer's unpublished novella tentatively titled Reaper Tales. Now I'm reading My Quirks and My Compass by H. Charles Dilmore.  After that, I'm planning to read Summer Sisters by Judy Blume.  If there's any summer left by then it's on to Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner.

So how about you?  What books are on your beach blanket reading list?  Or, if you're hiding from the sun, your living room coffee table?