The last five books I tried to read

The Lemon of Pink - I love to read, and there's no better time to do so than in the summertime.

While the rest of the year is usually run, run, run, summer just seems to provide the best time to relax with a good book and to absorb all it has to offer.

One of my favourite memories of growing up in Stephenville is the trips I would take to the old Kindale Library with my mother. I can still remember walking up the old wooden steps to go inside, I see what the front counter looked like, and I recall the way the late afternoon sun would illuminate books on shelves far out of reach for a five or six-year-old.

I would beg my mother every day to take me to that library. When she did, I would check out a lot of books at the one time - enough, she probably thought, to tide me over for a few days. But even at a young age my appetite for books was insatiable and first thing each day I asked if we could go back to the library.

I really loved it there.

But this summer, for the first time in a long time, I haven't done so well with reading. As I get older, I get pickier and perhaps even flighty when it comes to choosing books. My moods change, and day-to-day I find myself looking for something different.

Because of this, I've suddenly found myself in the middle of five different books.

To be fair, there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of these books. Each provided what I guess I needed to get from them when I started them -escapism, education, romance, comedy, and maybe I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

So in no particular order, the last five books I tried to read (so far) over the course of this summer, are:

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein;

The End of Fashion: How Marketing Changed the Clothing Business Forever by Teri Agins;

Frankly My Dear: Gone With the Wind revisited by Molly Haskell;

Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman, and;

Armageddon in Retrospect By Kurt Vonnegut.

The Shock Doctrine is a good read for anyone interested in world economics, a bit of a history lesson, or maybe even conspiracy theories, but the chapter on torture told me it was a bit too heavy for my summer reading list. I'll finish it come fall.

End of Fashion is about the change from early French couture to the fashion of today and how it's - hold your breath - almost not even fashion. A T-shirt screen-printed with a designer's logo or label? It's merchandising, marketing and licensing; it's big business, but is it fashion? Teri Agins doesn't think so.

Frankly, My Dear provides a behind the scenes look at how author Margaret Mitchell came to write the book and how film producer David O. Selznick and leading lady Vivien Leigh brought it to the big screen. Written by feminist film critic Molly Haskell, it's worth a read for fangirls like me, but it also made me long to see the film again so I put the book down and spent three hours doing that instead.

Downtown Owl. It's a fictional place in North Dakota. And if you don't know Chuck Klosterman, you should. He's a funny guy. I bought all of his books last spring (I believe that's five) and was instantly attracted to his witty and quick style of writing. He mostly writes essays on pop culture - discussing everything from his basketball heroes of the 90s, to why so many women under the age of 35 love John Cusack.

Downtown Owl is his first complete work of fiction and while I'm excited to pick it back up and finish, I wasn't ready for its dark tones at the time. Books about life, its meaning, and the complicated interpersonal relationships that happen along the way, I think, are maybe best left for days when the sun isn't beaming down.

This leads me to Armageddon in Retrospect. Released posthumously by the author's son, it's a collection of previously unreleased short stories and essays. What I like about books like this is the fact it lends itself to being picked up and down. There's no need to finish all at once.

I would fail at being in a summer book club.