20 Books of Summer

Summer is around the corner and that means Cathy of 746 Books will once again be hosting 20 Books of Summer. With surprisingly little thought involved I slapped together a list of 20 books plus five alternates this morning I’d like to pursue over the next three months. 

1. Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz (2002)
2. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (2008)
3. A World Without Islam by Graham E. Fuller (2010)
4. Introduction to Contemporary History by Geoffrey Barraclough (1967)
5. Mullahs, Merchants, and Militants: The Economic Collapse of the Arab World by Stephen Glain (2004)
6. Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff (2014)
7. God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215 by David Levering Lewis (2008)
8. Descartes: The Life and Times of a Genius by A.C. Grayling (2005)
9. The Attack by Yasmina Khadra (2006)
10. Early Modern Europe: From About 1450 to About 1720 by Sir George Clark (1962)
11. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett (2006)
12. 5 Ideas That Changed the World by Barbara Ward (1959)
13. The Evolution of God by Robert Wright (2009)
14. The Third Horseman: Climate Change and the Great Famine of the 14th Century by Willam Rosen (2014)
15. The Promised City: New York’s Jews, 1870–1914 by Moses Rischin (1977) 
16. Growing Up Jewish edited by Jay David (1969)
17. The Goodly Fellowship of the Prophets; Studies, Historical, Religious, and Expository of the Hebrew Prophets by John Paterson (1948)
18. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor by David S. Landes (1999)
19. Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King (2012) – Kindle
20. Not Our Kind by Kitty Zeldis (2018) – Kindle 

And five alternates

1. Innocence; or, Murder on Steep Street by Heda Margolius Kovály (2015) – Kindle
2. The Son and Heir by Alexander Münninghoff (2020) – Kindle
3. Last Train to Istanbul by Ayşe Kulin (2013) – Kindle 
4. Cilka’s Journey by Heather Morris (2019)
5. World Prehistory: A New Outline by Grahame Clark (1969)

In past years I began each summer with high hopes of making it through all my books only to come up short. On top of that, I constantly deviated from my original list of books, usually just reading whatever the heck I wanted to. Fortunately, Cathy is a kind and flexible host. To her, all we need to do is read as many books as we’d like and substitute freely along the way.

I’m hoping to use this as an opportunity to also tackle a chunk of my to be read pile (TBR) while at the same time also participating in other reading challenges like the TBR 22 in ’22 Challenge, What’s in a Name Challenge, Mount TBR Reading Challenge, and Books in Translation Reading Challenge. With a number of these books published prior to 1980 this is also a great chance to spotlight my Old Books Reading Project.