It is a scant 4 weeks away from the summer vacation I’m taking this year. It’s just for 4 days, but that’s still a miracle considering I started this job less than 6 months ago and I really thought I wasn’t going to get to go anywhere this year. Everything was approved this week at work, though. I really CAN go!
Vacation means vacation reads, which I’m already thinking about. I’ll be gone for about 5 days, which means 5 books with a couple to spare maybe, if things get interesting. I like to have themes for vacation, because I find that it makes books inseparable from the landscape. I’ll never forget reading Tolkien in Yosemite, or Always Coming Home while road-tripping up the California coast, Jonathan Livingston Seagull at my aunt’s beach house, or Jane Austen in my other aunt’s house on the river.
I’ve decided I’m going for gothic fantasy on this one. There’s a lot of that genre I want to read, by authors I love, and I hate to read books that consume me when I’m not able to devote time to them. Vacation is the perfect time for that. I’m going to Massachusetts with a visit to Plimoth Plantation planned. You might think I should go straight to Phillbrick’s stuff and get all the pilgrim I can out of the vacation. But Massachusetts is also the home of Salem… Gothic horror is totally legit, I think.
What am I planning to read? Here goes:
- Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray: 2nd of the Diviner books, in which Evie O’Neil is now a famous seer, but can she and her friends stop the crazy sleeping sickness that’s plaguing the slums of New York?
- The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black: I have no idea what this is about save that there’s some sort of beast in the forest that the main character was told to stay away from. And it’s Holly Black. That’s all I really need to know.
- The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater: A girl named Blue hooks up with 3 boys from a local prep school who are looking for a dead Welch king. Tumblr can’t get enough of it, so I’m taking their advice.
- The Cure for Dreaming by Cat Winters: Victorian mesmerist gives the main character supernatural powers. I saw this at my local indie shop and have been wondering about it ever since.
- Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell: An old lady opposes the building of a big box store on the town border because it will literally unleash hell if the town’s borders are breached. It’s a novel, so…
- A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness: Descendant of first witch to ever be murdered in Salem accidentally comes across a book in a library that makes her run to a vampire for help. Sounds like just the kind of smut I love.
The Back Ups:
- The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater
- Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater
- The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater
- Valiant by Holly Black
- Of Sorrow and Such by Angela Slatter
That will more than do me for the trip. I sort of consider all of the Maggie Stiefvater books of the same thing since they’re all the same series. Whether I move on to Holly and Angela or not depends on how infatuated I am with Maggie’s stuff. Tumblr loves those Raven Boys, but Tumblr is sometimes wrong (I know, I said it).
I’ll report back in a few weeks on the stuff I ACTUALLY read. Much thanks to TOR for their recommendations, and also to The Book Seer (and my sister, for sending the link to me).
Casey E. Hamilton 