To be perfectly honest, I’ve never understood the concept of “summer reading,” because my reading habits and choices don’t change with the seasons. I read every day, come hell or high water, and I don’t base my book selection on the weather. So, to make things easy on myself, I’m going to write about what I am reading right now, which—by default—is summer reading…

I am so pleased to have discovered two new novels in Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels world: The Queen’s Bargain and The Queen’s Weapons. (I’m about halfway through the former now.) This series is one of my absolute favorites, even though fantasy usually isn’t my bag. The original trilogy is my go-to for “desert island material,” and has been read dozens of times. The story centers on a matriarchal magical society, and the writing is both crisp and lyrical. I like Anne Bishop’s other books (The Tir Alainn Trilogy is excellent—a must read for feminists, and closer to “historical fantasy” than her other books—and the Ephemera series always entertains), but the Black Jewels universe is the one I return to again and again.

Some of my other summer reading this year has been Edie Cay’s A Lady’s Revenge and The Boxer and the Blacksmith, both of which, aside from being excellent romances, are fascinating tales about women’s boxing in the Regency era. What I loved about these books, especially, was that they focus on “real people,” not (necessarily) lords and ladies, including happy ever afters for some unlikely characters, and they open up a world that just hasn’t been explored in any book I’ve ever read. To my mind, the seamy underbelly of Regency London is not tapped often enough as a milieu.

I also mean to read The Sky Worshipers, by F.M. Deemyad, for the PLW Fifth Friday Book Club July 30 (in our Shine group on Facebook), since the author will be appearing, but I have to admit that I’ve been sidetracked by the new Anne Bishop books. (Send up good thoughts for my good intentions!)

So, that is how I have spent (part of) my summer reading. How have you spent yours, and what’s on your TBR list for the next couple of months?