My Summer Reading List

I’ve just this hour finished a book that I think everyone should read. It’s called The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time and it was written by economist and visionary thinker Dr. Jeffrey Sachs. This book is easily the most important book I’ve read in ten years and I will certainly pick it up and read it again at some point. Next up I’m going to read Dr. Sach’s follow up book, called Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet.

This summer I also made my way through two long novels, both over 900 pages. The first was a reread of Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I read this book first when it came out, more than ten years ago, but it’s the kind of book you want to read over again, it’s dense and nerdy like all good books should be.

Next I read Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet. This book was hard to put down, it’s a real page-turner. But I have to say that sometimes I found myself yelling at the characters for the daft choices they were making. Sometimes it seemed that a character was having things done to them by the author in order to set things up so that later other things could happen. I guess what I’m saying is that the construction of the story was pretty obvious, and sometimes frustrating. But I did enjoy the book enough that I plan to read the sequel which is called World Without End.

I’ve just started reading A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon. I’m excited to read this because I loved Haddon’s previous book, called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Haddon’s writing is dry and witty and I’m sure I will giggle all the way through this book.

So what books have YOU been reading this summer? Got any I should add to my reading list?