Summer Reading. Readers' Picks.

Summer in the north, hot, busy, short and brilliantly coloured. What to read? Something light and easy like a good friendship.

Suggestions have been pouring in.

Sault Ste Marie writer Peggy Lauzon suggests the whole Harry Potter series before the final movie comes out in July .

She also sent in a great list. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradly, The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies and anything at all by David Sedaris. She writes, "Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins is my favourite fun read. And try Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman - short, fun, Harry Potteresque

Peggy adds, "I laughed so hard reading Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America (while sitting in a park in South Carolina) that the people nearby actually started edging slowly away from me.

Local writer and Blue Pencil Maven Glen Ponka weighs in with the light stuff recommending Bossypants by Tina Fey as “very funny stuff!" He adds “Oh, and I also have to endorse Neverwhere and Jitterbug Perfume. They're great. I'm also enjoying Jasper Fforde's, The Fourth Bear, part of the Nursery Crime series. Once you suspend all disbelief, they're great fun. Also by Fforde: The Eyre Affair and The Big Over Easy.

Colette Mailtand, one of Canada’s best short story writers brings in the Can Lit. “Okay, not light, but definitely a great read, and I'd read it in the summer –The Outlander by Gil Adamson.


Ottawa Poet Margaret Rose Cunningham says “All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy is very good. My book club also read the Biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery by Mary Rubio. As for The Elegance of the Hedgehog which you recommended in another post, my book club liked it, but I didn’t really care for it.”