Summer Reading Club winding down

Jan 06, 2024

Fowles

As of this writing, there are only 10 days left in the Delaware County District Library’s annual Summer Reading Club. If you think about it, that’s plenty of time to still reach your reading goals for the summer. The youth program requires kids to track their reading and complete six hours of reading to collect their first prize, and 12 hours to complete the program and earn a book of their own to keep.

If a child were to read once a day over the next 10 days, it would amount to just over an hour a day. Depending on the age of the reader, a good graphic novel can be started and finished within one reading session. The “Treehouse” series has been entertaining my family this summer. It begins with “The 13-Story Treehouse” by Andy Griffiths, and continues the fun in the next books with a 26-story treehouse, then a 39-story treehouse, and so on. Fun reading – and learning to count by 13s!

The silly series introduces readers to a treehouse that contains logic-defying things like a bowling alley, a see-through swimming pool, a tank full of sharks, a library full of comics, a secret underground laboratory, a games room, self-making beds, vines you can swing on, a vegetable vaporizer and a marshmallow machine that follows you around and automatically shoots your favorite flavored marshmallows into your mouth whenever it discerns you’re hungry.

Of course, Summer Reading Club is not just for kids. Adults are encouraged to participate and read along, as well. When you read four books or attend four programs (or any combination), you will earn an entry into the grand prize drawing. Check two lines off your list by reading “Horse” by Geraldine Brooks and then attending the virtual or in-person book club to discuss it. If you’re a fast reader, the Virtual Book Club meets on Thursday, Aug. 3, at 5:30 p.m. online. You can find details on how to register and connect to the club at www.delawarelibrary.org/event. The Liberty Branch Library Evening Book Club is also discussing this same title next week on Tuesday, Aug., 8 at 5:30 p.m.

“Horse” tells the story of a discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history; and how these strands braid a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history. Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, “Horse” is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks.

Bookmarks are available online at www.delawarelibrary.org/SummerReading to help kids and adults keep track, but a notebook or piece of paper works fine, too. Be sure to come in and collect or enter to win your prizes, no matter who in your house has been reading this summer. It’s nice to reward yourself after a fun summer of reading and learning.

These titles are currently topping the “New York Times” bestseller list in hardcover fiction. Perhaps you’ll breeze through them as quickly as the rest of the country has.

• “Fourth Wing” by Rebecca Yarros. Violet Sorrengail is urged by the commanding general, who also is her mother, to become a candidate for the elite dragon riders.

• “Happy Place” by Emily Henry. A former couple pretend to be together for the sake of their friends during their annual getaway in Maine.

• “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus. A scientist and single mother living in California in the 1960s becomes a star on a TV cooking show.

• “Obsessed” by James Patterson and James O. Born. A killer, who targets women in New York City, becomes obsessed with Michael Bennett’s daughter.

• “The Five-Star Weekend” by Elin Hilderbrand. After a tragedy, a popular food blogger brings friends from distinct times in her life to spend a weekend in Nantucket.

• “The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese. Three generations of a family living on South India’s Malabar Coast suffer the loss of a family member by drowning.

• “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver. Winner of a 2023 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. A reimagining of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield set in the mountains of southern Appalachia.

• “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin. Two friends find their partnership challenged in the world of video game design.

• “The Only One Left” by Riley Sager. In 1983, a mute woman confined to a wheelchair types out her side of the story about a family massacre to her home-health aide.

• “Yellowface” by R.F. Kuang. June Hayward, a struggling writer, must conceal the fact that she stole Athena Liu’s just-finished masterpiece after Liu’s sudden death

If you have a question that you would like to see answered in this column, mail it to Nicole Fowles, Delaware County District Library, 84 E. Winter St., Delaware, OH 43015, or call us at 740-362-3861. You can also email your questions by visiting the library’s web site at www.delawarelibrary.org or directly to Nicole at [email protected] No matter how you contact us, we’re always glad you asked!