My Summer Reading List and an Offer to Play a Toilet This Weekend

Here's what I've read and am reading this summer:

1. A Year in the Merde
I just finished this one; it's laugh out loud funny about a Brit in France who keeps stepping in it so to speak.

2. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Okay, here's where I have to admit that I've never read any of the H.P. books. I'm not sure why; usually it's the type of fantasy read I go for. Well, I have to work at a certain bookstore this weekend at the release party for Rowling's latest book. I figured if I'm going to help out, I should at least read one of the books so I can nerd out with the kids (Side note: I will be wearing my round Danish frames that evening, perhaps with a cigarette in my mouth and a robe and scarf so I can look like a balding, aging, disillusioned Harry - I know the kids will love that). One of my managers, whose name I'll change to "Crazy Lady" to protect her identity, told me that I will be on a microphone projecting my voice out of a toilet in the elevator. I haven't read or seen the film of the second Harry Potter book, but I am supposed to be the voice for Moaning Myrtle (With a name like that, I'm gonna have to go with a phone sex operator voice on this one - the families will love it).

I've read the first couple of chapters - so far so good (already better than the film). I am also going to try and get through the entire Harry Potter series at some point in the next few months (but I'm gonna read them between other books).

3. Never Let Me Go

I have only read about a chapter of this one, but it's getting good reviews and the premise sounds intriguing to me. I've read three other novels by Ishiguro - he's got this amazing way of conveying tragedy so gently and subtly, you hardly realize it until you're in the thick of it.

4. Sophie's World

I know very little about this book except people who've read it have told me it's a great read. It sounds fascinating to me.

5. Middlemarch

When I had lunch with Dr. Mink a few weeks ago and I let her know I'd never read a novel by George Eliot, she gasped audibly and suggested that this book was probably the best Victorian novel ever written. It looks large and dense and will be the perfect book to bring on the plane when I head overseas - wherever I end up.