A new Summer Project

I need a Summer Project. I've had a few Summer Projects over the years, all of which have involved books and with summer closing in this is the perfect time to plan the New Project. A good project take time but is also fun, there's no point in for example reading school books over the summer. My projects have been many and miscallaneous. There was the summer I read A la reserche du temps perdu (not in French mind you, my knowledge of French is pretty much limited to s'il vous plays), the one when I read all the Harry Potters back to back (well, that hardly took all summer, more like a week), the one with Lord of the Rings which then continued with The Hobbit and a Tolkien biography, the one with Virginia Woolf... I can't even remember all the Summer Projects from years gone by. But now I feel like finding one again.

I've been thinking about maybe reading all four of Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie books, perhaps visiting Jonathan Coe's The Rotter's Club -series (although can you call it a series if it's just two books?) or maybe finding something completely new? Finding the Summer Project really is the trickiest part of the project...

I know I could catch up on my classics; maybe reading all or even just a few Dickens', but I've never really been a fan so I doubt I'll go into that direction. The great Russians - I really have no enthousiasm going back there. Jane Austen I quite like because her books are so light and funy but I've read them a few times and I'm not sure Jane Austen really qualifies as a Summer Project. A proper Summer Project is something heavier or bigger. Like when I read all the Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events books. Although with that project the main hardship was trying to find all the volumes in different libraries. And then when I got to part 11 it turned out that parts 12 and 13 hadn't been published yet! Which is why I still own only the last two parts of the series. I did not have time to wait for them to appear in the local library, I had to get them straight from the printers!

I'm starting to lean more and more towards re-reading something I've been meaning to re-read for a long time. Only the trouble with re-reading something you've really liked is that there's a very true danger you won't like the book the second time and you'll end up destroying all the lovely memories you had. But. A few years ago Armistead Maupin published a new volume in the Tales of the City series. (See how a good project tends to involve a series?) I was very doubtful about it - very doubtful indeed. After all, the original series had been lovely; funny and interesting and captivating, I read all the volumes and learned to love the characters and have fond memories of it and them. Now how was I going to feel about a completely new volume which took place in the present time?

To my surprise I liked it. A lot. Well, really I guess it shouldn't have been such a surprise, I did after all like the first umpteen volumes so why not the latest one? The characters all came back to me in a flash and it felt like meeting old friends after a long time. Sure they had aged a little but inside they were still the same.

So maybe re-reading the series will be this summer's Project. Or maybe I'll just settle to reading all the I don't know how many books I've bought but haven't had time to read. Zadie Smith, Kate Atkinson, J.K.Rowling, Diane Keaton's biography, Mark Z. Danielevski's latest... All waiting for me in the book case. Oh, there's still time. Summer's a long time coming.