five things Friday: summer reading edition

Happy long weekend! Normally I prefer to spend my summer holidays at the cottage with my family and a good book, but dr. husband will be working his second Saturday in a row, and since we just made the Michigan drive a couple weeks ago, we're sticking around Cincinnati. It's supposed to be in the mid 90s here all weekend though, so I'm really going to be missing the beach... I guess instead I'll crank up the air conditioning while Peter's off at the hospital and just get a start on my summer reading indoors.

Here are 5 books I'm looking forward to reading this summer:

1. State of Wonder - I added this to my to read list some time ago because the elements sounded fascinating: a woman's Amazon jungle quest at the behest of a pharmaceutical company to locate a missing researcher (and mysteriously dead former lab partner) working on development of a potential miracle fertility drug. And then one of my book clubs switched to it for June (darn Paris Wife refuses to come out in paperback), so it moved to the top of my list.

2. Drop Dead Healthy - we love A.J. Jacobs (especially his Year of Living Biblically), so when I saw he had a new book out, I had to get it for Peter as a little week off treat. He laughed a lot while he was reading it and spouted a bunch of information about healthy-living related theories that A.J. tried out in the course of the book - so now I'm looking forward to this one.

3. Bring Up the Bodies - though I was pretty much the only one at my book club who did, I really liked Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. It was a little dense to get into with lots of Henry VIII-related history and lots of guys named Thomas to keep straight, but I found the characters so engaging and compelling, surprisingly so (to me) for historical fiction - so I was pleased to hear she was coming out with this sequel. From reviews, it sounds like it will be a little intense in the Tudor-era violence but well written.

4. The Flight of Gemma Hardy - summer travel and beach going always require some true pleasure reading, and I think this modern take on Jane Eyre will do it! 

5. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter - while we're on the subject of pleasure reading, I love a good, smart mystery novel. Someone at my book club recommended this one, and then I saw that Nancy Pearl also liked it (the Book Lust lady rarely steers me wrong), so it's on my fun list...

p.s. you can see the rest of my to read list (and my list of recent reads) on Goodreads.