Books read - start to summer reading

I've signed up for the Seattle Public Library's Adult Summer Reading Program.  Every three books I read this summer, I earn another entry in a drawing to win a Kindle.  Mind you, I already own a perfectly good second-generation regular Kindle AND a Fire, but this is still enough to get my competitive juices flowing.  If I win, I'll just give it to Miss Fraser (who otherwise will get her first e-reader for Christmas) or use it as a raffle basket prize at ECWC.  That said, I've given myself something of a handicap in speed-reading this summer in that I've started reading War and Peace on my lunch hours at work, so that's half an hour a day not going to nice short-to-medium-length novels.

Anything I finish between June 1 and August 25 counts toward the reading challenge.  (August 25 because the library shuts down for a week before Labor Day because of budget cuts, which has been going on since the dot-com bust recession back in 2001 or so, and I still think it's depressing.  Really, it's not helping the economy to furlough a bunch of librarians and shut down a service that for many is their only access to books, information, and the internet, and what we need is more stimulus and to save worry about deficits for when unemployment gets back down to 5% or so, but if I keep going this post will get very political very fast.)

Anyway, books.  I finished #48 before the challenge started, so I've just earned my first entry in the drawing.

48) If Walls Could Talk, by Lucy Worsley. An overview of how the major rooms in our houses and their furnishings and functions have changed over the past few centuries, focusing on Britain but with occasional comments on American and French homes. It doesn't go into a lot of depth, but it makes you think on how changeable the most basic functions of everyday life actually are.

49) Moscow 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March, by Adam Zamoyski. I've never been an admirer of Napoleon's, and every time I read about that campaign I want to go back in time and just scream at him or something. So many wrong-headed choices that led to so much death. That said...I now have some story ideas based around the invasion.

50) Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Promise Part 2, by Gene Luen Yang, Michael Dante DiMartino, and Bryan Konietzko. Second in a graphic novel trilogy filling in some of the blanks between The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, and likely to be the only overlap point between my summer reading and my daughter's.

51) Too Hot to Touch, by Louisa Edwards. Not only does Edwards write a sexy romance, her love of food and big city life shines through. Her books are among the few contemporary romances I seek out.