Do you remember that scene in the movie My Girl when the amazingly-named Vada Sultenfuss coerces Thomas J. into sneaking out to the old people’s bingo game? And she calls him a pacifist and a bed wetter because, 11 year olds that they are, he’s scared to go? I always thought she was saying “pessimist” and “bad weather.”

And you know when they’re riding their bikes down the street and “Good Lovin‘” is playing in the background? My brother and I sang the song as “Doodle Oven.” (In our defense, we were, say, four and eight years old. The music of the ’70′s wasn’t exactly part of our daily routine.)

Then, you know the part where Vada is talking to her English teacher–the one to whose picture she later croons the words of “Bill! I love you so, I always will!” and draws a heart around his face in her school picture–and she tells him she’s been working on her summer reading list and needs to hurry home to finish War and Peace? I was certain she was saying “Warren Peas.”

(Apparently those weren’t the only things in that movie I didn’t quite “get” back then because somewhere right in there my parents did a cleaning out of the movie closet and that one didn’t exactly make the cut. I rented it for old times’ sake a year or so ago… and I saw why. Heh.)

Well. I once asked my mom about this “Warren Peas” fellow and found out that, hidy-ho and fancy that, it’s the name of a book. A famous one at that. Kinda like the books I had on MY summer reading list–you know, Samantha Saves the Day and Paula the Waldensian–except that, lo and behold, I didn’t actually have one of these newfangled Summer Reading Lists.

So, since I was homeschooled and thus didn’t have an English teacher making me a list, but I’m a huge fan of the list and a gargantuan fan of the summer reading, I thought I’d take Vada’s example and make me a list. Which I did that summer, and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one…

That first year the list probably included such classic titles as Beezus and Ramona and Rainbow Promise and moved over the years through Princess in Calico, Home Fires at the Foot of the Rockies, all the Anne books, Island of the Blue Dolphins, Elsie Dinsmore, The Cay, Stepping Heavenward (15+ times), The Bronze Bow, Hind’s Feet, more Lamplighter books than I can count, Jane Austen, Lucy Winchester, the Isabella Alden/Pansy books and, oh goodness, so many more. If I had a nickel for every minute I spent sprawled out on my bed with a good book to get through those 110 degree summer days, I’d, of course, be able to build an entire library and fill it with more books than I could ever read.

Now that I think of it, I never actually made it to War and Peace. Actually, in all honesty, other than the works of both Jane Austen and L. M. Montgomery, Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, I didn’t make it through as many of the true classics as I probably should have. I’m eternally damaged, as you can see.

Anyway, other than to think fondly of my favorite girlhood books, the point of this is that I haven’t made a summer reading list in a long ol‘ time. Mostly because I haven’t had much time for summer reading in a long ol‘ time.

But it’s time. I read when I can snag some time throughout the year, but it’s almost exclusively books (good ones, still) on parenting, marriage and other practical topics of interest. It’s like it’s just part of the facts of life: once you graduate high school, good fiction doesn’t exist. But I’ve heard tell there ARE, in fact, some good books out there that I haven’t yet read, that are just… for fun. Good fiction.

This is where you come in. I want to revive the old habit of making my summer reading list, but I have a whole bunch of blank lines on that paper. I need suggestions of your must-reads. Any author, any topic, any story line. What are you reading?

Help a girl out?

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