20 Books of Summer is an annual challenge hosted by Cathy of 746 Books. This is all about reading and reviewing your backlog over the summer – just set a target of 10, 15 or 20 books and declare a TBR (you can always change it later). In spite of 2021 being my year of no goals, I’m taking part as usual with an achievable goal of 15 (which is what i said last year, then spent the summer rereading instead, ahem).

I had a glorious realisation this week: my conviction that I had Lots of Specific Books I Must Read In June was misplaced. I do have a stack of ARCs due by the end of summer, but June has plenty of room for free range reading. But let’s start with those ARCs, as they will be a significant chunk of this year’s 20 Books of Summer TBR (yes, I consider ARCs for upcoming releases a valid part of my TBR – so long as they were on my shelf on June 1st).

Another batch of Books I Absolutely Must Read By End Of Summer: my outstanding Subjective Chaos nominees. The good news is that three of these are novellas – the less-good news is that I haven’t bought 2 of them yet so they don’t count. I also suspect I’ll need to reread all the novella nominees to make a decision as all of them have been so good that I’m not sure I can make a decision unless I read them side by side. Oh no, such a hardship.

After that, it’s free range reading from my shelves, and there’s a lot of candidates. I’m going to set a broad TBR to pick from each month rather than declare a rigid list of 15 for the summer. I’m really excited to read books foregrounding queer characters as it’s Pride this month, so the immediate temptations for June are:

Obviously I won’t get through all of these – I’m aiming for 3-4 and as I’ve read a lot of fantasy this year I suspect the SF titles may win out… but we’ll see!

I’ll be back with a check-in post – and another free range TBR for August (my ARCs are heavily weighted towards July, so I doubt I’ll get much else read next month) – in mid-July.

What will you be reading this summer?