Summer Reading

Start by reading this.

Done? Okay, so I'm nearly finished with The Golden Compass, and it's great. Today I saw the student who lent me the book, and he's offered to lend me the other books in the series, too. That should tide me over until the next Harry Potter comes out July 16.

LIFE magazine today recommended about a half dozen books for summer reading. A few that look interesting to me:

• 1776 by David McCullough
  LIFE says, "The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer brings to vivid life America's birth year--when mere men became Founding Fathers and 13 contentious colonies a country."
• Crossworld by Marc Romano
  LIFE says, "What Word Wars did for Scrabble, this will do for the crossword, with its fascinating look at the quirky culture of puzzle fanatics. (And you thought Trekkies [sic] were strange!)"
• Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham
  LIFE says, "The celebrated author of The Hours trades Virginia Woolf for Walt Whitman in this ambitious work that's equal parts ghost story, thriller, and sci-fi--and likely to boost sales of another literary giant."
• The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
  LIFE says, "At 600-plus pages, it's not nearly as quick a read as Dan Brown's chart-busting Da Vinci Code, but this similarly riveting tale of professors-turned-vampire chasers who race around Europe in search of Vlad the Impaler (a.k.a. Dracula) will have you up all night."

Check out the links above for more information.