Summer Reading List — Capital Citizenne

I love to read. Biographies, thrillers, slightly serious fiction, non-fiction, silly romcoms (I am pretty sure that genre translates to books), travel books, even a little literature now and again, I just love books. I was one of those kids that was excited to get her summer reading list, and still love to spend an hour (or more) wandering around a bookstore, generally buying too many books that, lately, have been getting stacked higher and higher on my bedside table. Not this summer!

Between the planes, trains, metros, picnics in parks and afternoons in cafes, I have been a fairly voracious consumer of books, thanks in large part to the traveling reader's best companion: an ebook and some sort of e-reader device. Don't get me wrong, I love and prefer (and have many bookcases overflowing with) physical books. I am a sucker for a good hardback with nice deckled paper, or a paperback just the right size to tuck into my purse. Cover design, typeset, paper quality, I am a total dork for the physical book. But when you are traveling for six months with three suitcases, e-books are where it's at. I have indulged in a few paperback purchases, but have mostly kept a running list on my phone of books to download after my wanders through the bookstores...

And since I am always on the hunt for a good book recommendation, I thought I ought to make a few of my own, and highlight a few of my favorite reads from this trip.

After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story, by Michael Hainey

NW, by Zadie Smith

The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, by Anton DiSclafani

Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, by Therese Anne Fowler (full confession, I read this after seeing it in a bookstore and my interest was based entirely on the fact that I loved the character of Zelda Fitzgerald in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. I really enjoyed this one!).

I also picked up and couldn't put down Gone Girl (like seemingly everyone else this past year) - it was intense.

While in Paris I enjoyed Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag and Angela Davis, by Alice Kaplan (three VERY different women in Paris at three very different times in the city's recent past) and just finished The President's Hat, by Antoine Laurain (which I promptly gave to two lovely sisters, who promised they would share it, after I overheard them commenting on it from the next table over during lunch today, we had a lovely chat about our travels and swapped restaurant recommendations -- a conversation that probably would not have happened without my cute looking book!). I picked up both books at the lovely and addicting Daunt Books in Marylebone (along with my Paris guide and French phrase books), a place I look forward to visiting when I return to London next week.

It is hard to believe my time in Paris is nearly up. Not particularly wanting to leave, I think my next read will be a book set in Paris, I have had The Elegance of the Hedgehog on my iPad for over a year now (the digital equivalent to stacked up on my bedside table), and it seems like as good a time as any to dive in (despite mixed reviews from friends).

If any of you have any good books you recommend, please pass them along! I am trying out GoodReads, if you are also using it, look me up (Capital Citizenne) and share your reading list!