Since John shared his summer reading list and I'm also doing a lot of reading this summer, I thought I'd join in with my own.

First, a bit of background. Back in May near the end of the schoolyear, I came across a link to Paul French's weblog and read his commentary on The Independent's "Black and white and red all over: Left-wing reads". Since I have socialist sympathies (China, Christianity, etc), I decided to check out a few of those. By the end of the schoolyear I had finished Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London" (great book, it's now on my list of books to give to Charlotte to read when she turns 16) and had read almost all the way through Tressel's "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" (by 2/3 of the way through this monster I was wishing for an abridged version).

At about that time, the AskMetafilter post on the Great American Novel caught my eye because it overlapped with Paul French's recommendations and because I like to read book recommended to me by people I know (or "know," in the case of internet communities). From these sources, and from an off-hand remark by Adam Minter, I built my summer reading list:

• F. Scott Fitzgerald - "The Great Gatsby"
• Willa Cather - "My Antonia" (finishing this now)
• John Dos Passos - "U.S.A.: The 42nd Parallel / 1919 / The Big Money"
• ??? (will have more time, still looking for recommendations)

Of course this summer I'm also completing 4 intensive week-long Masters courses in Education, so I'm reading and writing a lot for those. Otherwise my list would be longer, trust me.

The interesting thing is that not one of these has been a paper book: every single one was downloaded to and read with Anyview on my un-smart Samsung cellphone. I've read more books in English in the past few months that I've had Anyview installed than in the last few years I've been in China.