Reading Through These Dog Days

The dog days of summer are upon us. They have been for a few weeks now. Pictured above are my stack of books getting me through.

On top, "Headed for Home," was written by my former professor and boss Mary Helen Brown. She's a Texan at heart and her family-oriented-something-of-a-mystery debut novel deals with all things Texas.

I'm currently on "The Fellowship," which is the true tale of four Oxford compatriots, each name widely known and loved in the world of literature, and the time they spent each week encouraging and critiquing one another's work. It's a fascinating travel-back-in-time account that is probably my favorite summer read thus far.

Two of the books I read only about 50 pages into and set aside. "The Hero With A Thousand Faces" and "The Way We Never Were" are great books. It's just they feel like the kind of reading I did in graduate school. And since the reading I do now is all for pleasure, these weren't making the cut.

The last book, "The Opposite of Loneliness," was one on my list from last summer that I never got around to. It's comprised of the fictional and non-fictional short stories of a Yale graduate killed in a car accident shortly after her graduation. A promising career loomed bright, but was cut short due to her untimely death. This book impacted me in so many ways, not least of which were the thoughts of a former student of my own cut down in the prime of life at 23 when the world seemed his for the taking.