Photo by Serge Melki

As July slowly but surely starts to brown around the edges, it’s time to catch up with you, my fellow book lovers, and find out what’s been on your reading tables 0f late. As we all know, the most highly anticipated and controversial book this summer is Fudgin’s Doesn’t Not Play Nice, by P.I.X. Gwantonomous. But there’s been so much press and social chatter about it already, I won’t drag us down that rabbit hole.

But how about the second most highly anticipated and controversial book released this summer? Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman. Have you read it? Are you going to? I’ve read a few reviews and despite the lukewarm response it still piques my interest. But I’m a little queasy about buying a book that it’s dementia-addled author may have been coerced into publishing. Do I want to finance her exploitation? Am I being too precious about this? You tell me.

Anyway, in the past month I’ve read Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline, and The World According to Garp, by John Irving. Both books are great reads and rather topical; Ready Player One because 1980’s pop culture will never, ever, ever die, and Garp because it includes a zany but honest and humane exploration of a transgender celebrity.

At the moment and in anticipation of my attending the annual SCBWI Summer Conference, I’ve currently got my nose in The Diviners, by Libba Bray. To my knowledge, Ms. Bray isn’t scheduled to be at the conference, but her agent Barry Goldblatt is and I’d really like to talk with him. On the horizon there’s some intriguing nonfiction for me to get to, like Raising Hell: Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils, and H Is For Hawk, by Helen Macdonald.

So that’s my book business, what are you reading these days?