Time for another Big Book Summer Reading Challenge hosted by Suzan at Book by Book! Alas, I still have too many unread books. Let's see if I can shrink the pile just a little this summer. Here is my stack of hopeful reads:
- They Were Counted by Miklos Banffy (624 pp)
- The Deepening Stream by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (616 pp)
- Night Falls on the City by Sarah Gainham (632 pp)
- Long Live Great Bardfield by Tirzah Garwood (495 pp)
- My American by Stella Gibbons (480 pp)
- A London Family by Molly Hughes (600 pp)
- The Feast by Margaret Kennedy (448 pp)
- Renoir, My Father by Jean Renoir (456 pp)
- The Gods Arrive by Edith Wharton (454 pp)
- The Most of P. G. Wodehouse (701 pp)
Nearly all of them count for other challenges -- Back to the Classics, the TBR Pile Challenge, and the European Reading Challenge. I'm cheating a little this year by choosing mostly fiction which are normally much quicker than nonfiction. I do love a great big fat biography but since I'm so far behind this year I'm going for more novels instead; only three of this list are nonfiction and one volume is (mostly) short stories. I'm hoping that most of them are fast reads. I know I won't finish them all but we can dream, right?
Which one should I read first -- and are there any I should just donate to my Little Free Library? Please let me know in the comments! And what's on your list for the Big Book Summer Reading Challenge?
I'm not officially taking part in this, but I do have The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel on my TBR for the summer which will definitely qualify as a big book! Of the books on your list, I really enjoyed The Feast but haven't read any of the others.
ReplyDeleteOoh I've never read Hilary Mantel! I should really try her someday, I hear so many great things about her books. I'm really looking forward to the Feast so I'm glad you liked it.
DeleteGood haul and nice geraniums! I'm wondering about the Stella Gibbons? Is anything else she wrote as good as Cold Comfort Farm?
ReplyDeleteThanks! I've read several books by Stella Gibbons and liked most of them, there are quite a few reprints available from Dean Street Press/Furrowed Middlebrow; also Vintage Classics has reprinted a bunch of them though some are harder to find. I really liked Nightingale Wood and The Swiss Summer, and The Woods in Winter is also very good. The only one I didn't much like so far was Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm.
DeleteI would pick the Renoir one, but I am into painters currently! They all look splendid, though. Happy big book reading!
ReplyDeleteI really want to finish that one this summer, I've had it forever! I've also really been into art the past couple of years and did a lot of online art history classes via Zoom. I don't know that much about Renoir but I absolutely want to read it this summer, probably July.
DeleteOh gosh they are fat books aren't they! I'm taking a break from the big books after reading Anthony Trollope who is certainly not known for his brevity
ReplyDelete