Winter might seem like the best season for reading, the weather being conducive to staying in curled up with a good book and all. But for me summer is the season for getting through as many books as possible.

There are flights and plane journeys to fill, and lazy sun-drenched holidays when it’s not unusual for me to average a book a day (thank goodness for Kindles and no longer having to lug seven books around for a one week holiday).

I’ve got a couple of books lined up and ready to read and a couple more I’ve read about and plan to buy, or hunt down in my local library. They include a historical novel that’s picking up all sorts of prizes, a book about who’s eating what around the globe, a collection of short stories and essays, a thriller and the latest novel by one of my favourite contemporary authors…

All the Light We Cannot See By Anthony Doerr

This Pulitzer Prize winning novel, about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France, keeps popping up in books you really must read this summer and who am I to argue. I want to know more about Marie-Laure, a French girl who goes blind aged six and learns to navigate the streets of her Paris neighbourhood with the help of a replica built by her father and Werner, a German orphan boy, whose talent for building and fixing radios leads to him becoming a tracker of the Resistance and what happens when their paths converge in Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast.

The Edible Atlas By Minna Holland

I read about this book a couple of weeks ago on one of those times online when you’re looking for something and you find something else entirely, which links you to another thing and before you know it an hour’s gone by and, well, you know. I promptly forgot about all it until I spotted it on the weekend in Artwords on Broadway Market (one of my favourite bookshops, stuffed as it is with books about fashion, design and food, as well as magazines from all around the world). I bought it there and then and I’m looking forward to reading this culinary world tour that, through anecdotes and history, breaks down nearly 40 different global cuisines and includes recipes from each region along the way. Yum. Not one to read when I’m hungry, I’m thinking.

The Opposite of Loneliness By Marina Keegan

I picked this up in a bookstore before heading off on yoga retreat on the bank holiday weekend because I was worried I was going to run out of things to read. I shouldn’t have worried, there was so much to do (Yoga! Country walks! Beach trips! Helping prep the food! Eat the food!) that I didn’t finish my previous book, let alone make a start on this one. The author of the book, Marina Keegan, graduated from Yale in May 2012. Tragically five days later she died in a car crash. The title essay, written for the Yale Daily News, went viral and consequently this collection of essays and short stories was published. I’m sure it’s going to be a bittersweet read, discovering a new voice but knowing this is everything of hers I’ll ever get to read.

Dark Places By Gillian Flynn

I’m firmly in the gotta read the book before seeing the film camp, so I need to get a move on with this thriller from the author of Gone Girl which has already been turned into a movie featuring Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Christina Hendricks and Chloë Grace Moretz. It tells the story of Libby Day whose mother and sisters were murdered at the family farmhouse when she was a little girl. Her testimony sent her older brother to prison for life. A quarter of a century later Libby is forced to revisit the events of that day by a group of amateur investigators who go by the name of the Kill Club. I loved Gone Girl and more than one RMS reader has said this is better.

{Next RMS Book Club Read} Sisterland By Curtis Sittenfeld

Having loved Prep (a funny, honest, cringe-inducing coming-of-age story) and American Wife (a fictional portrait of a political wife that was inspired by Laura Bush) I’m not sure how I managed to miss the fact that Curtis Sittenfeld had a book out in 2013. Luckily RMS reader Claire B made me aware of its existence when she nominated Sisterland for the next RMS book club read. It’s about identical twin sisters with psychic abilities, able to see future events and other people’s secrets. One twin, Vi, embraces her gift becoming an eccentric psychic, the other, Kate, tries to hide it, settling down in the suburbs to raise her two children. When a minor earthquake hits their hometown, Vi goes on TV to predict another, more devastating quake and Kate’s quiet life begins to unravel. Intrigued. Let’s get together the first week of July to discuss.

What’s on your reading list? What have you read and loved lately? Anything you’ve read and loathed? What should the next RMS book club book be? Do leave any and all book-related thoughts below!