My July reading list

My shortest monthly reading list yet

Photo by EYÜP BELEN

I have two desks in my office. One’s for working. The other is for model-making, art, and dumping stuff on. There’s currently a big pile of books on my “other” desk that I’m not going to be reading in July: Beau Geste, the first Witcher collection, some Louis L’Amour short stories, a thriller about Shakespearean manuscripts, a 1920s occult adventure by Dion Fortune, more of the Stormlight Archive, another Salman Rushdie novel, and so on. My original July reading list was, quite frankly, absurd, given everything that’s happening in July - vacations, work, gardening, hiking, etc. So I cut it down to less than half.

Here’s what’s left on July’s list after the cull. Just five books - that should be perfectly achievable.

• She, by H. Rider Haggard. An old favorite. I have an old leather-bound edition of this that I won as a school prize when I was nine. I’ve never actually read it. Now that it’s sat on the shelf for almost exactly fifty years, maybe I should.

• The Bridge over the River Kwai, by Pierre Boulle. I still find it astonishing that this was written by the same guy who wrote Planet of the Apes. I haven’t read this for years, but remember enjoying it a lot.

• Solo to the Top of the World, by Gus McLeod. Non-fiction about a guy who flew a vintage open-top Stearman biplane to the North Pole. Crazy. Flying one in Florida was a little chilly. Flying one in the Arctic? I can’t imagine it.

That’s me in the front seat. One of the biggest regrets of my life is that I never learned to fly. And now my eyesight isn’t up to it, so it’s not going to happen.

• Runway Zero-Eight, by Arthur Hailey and John Castle. Also known as Flight Into Danger, this was originally an episode of a Canadian live broadcast TV show, Encounter, starring James Doohan (yes, Scotty) as traumatized pilot Ted Stryker, who has to land a plane after the passengers and crew suffer food poisoning. Sounds familiar? That’s because it was later made into a feature film, Zero Hour!, starring Dana Andrews. And then, of course, Airplane! (which also parodied Airport, also by Hailey). What’s really astonishing is that the plot of Airplane! is almost identical to the source, including several lines of dialog that were lifted verbatim.

• Beep, by Bill Roorbach. Book club selection. It’s about a Costa Rican spider monkey, which appeals to me.

Here’s a Costa Rican monkey for you. Smart guy. Hung around at the edge of the beach, and when people went swimming, he’d steal their backpacks or lunch boxes. Not just the food - the whole damn thing.

• Stretch goal 1: The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London. Brutal maritime adventure. This is the sort of thing London is best known for.

• Stretch goal 2: Fluke, by

  Brian Klaas
  . Are we really at the mercy of utter chaos? Can we predict anything? Klaas is one of the people I follow on Substack and greatly admire.

• Stretch goal 3: I Know What You Did Last Summer, by Lois Duncan. Apparently, it’s quite different to the movie (which I’ve never seen).

What’s on your bookshelf this month?