My Summer Reading List

I received two books and a bunch of Barnes and Noble gift cards as retirement presents, and I have to say the cards have now been put to good use. As in, I used them all. Here’s what I will be reading this summer.

Young Eliot: From St. Louis to the Wasteland by Robert Crawford. A biography of T.S. Eliot, it includes numerous quotations from his poetry.

Coming Out Christian in the Roman World: How the Followers of Jesus Made a Place in Caesar’s Empire by Douglas Boin. Boin is a professor at St. Louis University and an expert on the religious history of the Roman Empire.

The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski. A literary biography of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams.

Plainsong and Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf, the writer’s first and last novels. My online friend John Blase highly recommends him.

The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz. A Sherlock Holmes novel by the author of Moriarity.

Our Only World: Ten Essays by Wendell Berry. Speeches and essays by one of our finest living American writers.

The Dead Lands by Benjamin Percy. A dystopian future with a Lewis and Clark expedition. Stephen King raves about it.

The Bridge by Hart Crane. Published in 1930, critics considered it a (failed) attempt at the great American poem.

 Poems on the Underground, the latest collection of poetry published on the London Tube.

Paris, Rue des Martyrs by Adria Cimono. A novel about a street that was close by our hotel when we visited Paris some years back.

Crow Hollow by Michael Wallace. A novel of suspense set in Puritan America (1676, to be precise).

Merlin’s Nightmare by Robert Treskillard. It’s volume three of a trilogy but a standalone novel as well. I’ve almost finished reading it.