summer reading. by Charley {like, the girl way} on flickr
- Total Recall / Paul Verhoeven
Adapted from a Philip K. Dick story, a re-make with Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, and Bryan Cranston will be released in August 2012. Be sure to see the 1990 original with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone, or read the Philip K. Dick short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale“: the re-make promises to be very different than the Verhoeven version.
- Bring Up the Bodies / Hilary Mantel
“Its great magic is in making the worn-out story of Henry and his many wives seem fascinating and suspenseful again… [not] nostalgic, exactly, but it’s astringent and purifying, stripping away the cobwebs and varnish of history, the antique formulations and brocaded sentimentality of costume-drama novels, so that the English past comes to seem like something vivid, strange and brand new. — New York Times
- That Deadman Dance / Kim Scott
“It is an extraordinary work, both realist and visionary, a historical-lyrical recreation of early encounters between black and white on the south coast of Western Australia… That Deadman Dance is a novel to read, recite, and reread, to linger over as Scott peels back layer after layer of meaning, as he slides unapologetically across time and between cultures and ways of being, seeing and understanding. — Sydney Morning Herald
- Home / Toni Morrison
“Part of Morrison’s longstanding greatness resides in her ability to animate specific stories about the black experience and simultaneously speak to all experience. It’s precisely by committing unreservedly to the first that she’s able to transcend the circumscribed audience it might imply. This work’s accomplishment lies in its considerable capacity to make us feel that we are each not only resident but co-owner of, and collectively accountable for, this land we call home.” — New York Times
- Are You My Mother? / Alison Bechdel
“Alison Bechdel is still not the household name she deserves to be… Well, rectify that without delay because her latest volume of ravishingly drawn, brilliantly written autobiography is her biggest crowd-pleaser to date…. [T]his deceptively light book is in fact a serious excursion into the meaning of identity and how our selves are created through early interactions with our mothers.” — The Telegraph
- 2312 / Kim Stanley Robinson
“His boldest trip into all of the marvelous SF genres—ethnography, future shock, screed against capitalism, road to earth—and all of the ways to thrill and be thrilled. It’s a future history that’s so secure and comprehensive that it reads as an account of the past.” — Slate