So many books, so little time...

I'm often asked, "What would you tell someone who wants to be a writer?" And the first thing out of my mouth is, "They should read. A lot." I find that I'm most productive in my writing when I'm also reading. And this summer, I read a lot. Several of the books were YA novels in series, follow-ups to the first or second books. I'm not going to mention the titles because I was disappointed. But so many of the books I read were so great. I'll start with one I just finished the other night. ( Technically, fall doesn't start for another week or so, right?)

Those Across the River by Christopher Buehlman. Wow. I still can't get this one out of my head. Set a few years after WWI, failed academic Frank Nichols and his wife arrive in a small town in Georgia, which has some serious secrets. A reviewer called it "As much F. Scott Fitzgerald as Dean Koontz."

Another one I highly recommend is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. "The circus arrives with no warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices plastered on lamposts and billboards. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not..."

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children was another I thoroughly enjoyed. A mysterious island, an abandoned orphanage, a strange collection of odd photographs...

And my last recommendation:

Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley was one of my favorite YA reads of the summer.

In the summer before Cullen Witter's senior year, a birdwatcher in the small Arkansas town claims to have seem a bird declared extinct in the 1940's. Amid all the hubbub, Cullen's beloved younger brother disappears.

It was hard to narrow all my summer reads down to just this list, but they are terrific and I think you'll enjoy them as much as I did.