So, your last final is taken or graded, grades are in, you’re headed “home” and maybe, just maybe, you’re thinking about what you are going to do with yourself this summer.  Think about those “lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer” (a #6 hit for Nat King Cole in 1963, when the world was a little bit slower than it is now, perhaps) and all the time you’ll have.  If you’d like to continue the improvement of  your mind, I have two library resources to suggest that are right up your alley.

Fiction Connection – an online “reader’s advisor” resource.  If you really liked Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road and want to find a book like it, type the title into the search box in Fiction Connection and click search.  You’ll get a list of books with “road” prominent in the title, the first of which is McCarthy’s work.  Click on the green “Find Similar” button for a list of novels with similar themes, settings, etc.  If that list is too long, you can narrow the results down by using the checkboxes on the left in one of 7 or 8 areas of interest (topic, award, reading level – i.e., child or adult, character, – etc.).  Click on the title of the similar book to see published reviews (if any) and to use the “Search my Library’s catalog” and “Search online bookseller’s” links.

If you want to be read to, don’t overlook our Naxos Spoken Word Library collection.  This is a streaming audio collection, so these audiobooks can’t be downloaded and saved to an iPod; however, if you are at a desk job this summer or working online this collection has great resources.  It includes a rich collection of classic fiction (some with the text available on screen, too) and classical texts in translation (get a head start on those Great Texts classics for next fall!) – both abridged and unabridged, some biography and other non-fiction, religion, philosophy, and poetry (Homer, Dante, and Chaucer to Yeats).  There is also a selection of plays by “others” and by Shakespeare.

So pull out the hammock, find a shaded spot or a wi-fi coffee shop, grab a glass of lemonade and start enjoying summer!