Need Some Help Finding Fun Reads This Summer Vacation?

image from Teo's photo's flickr

While the recent stormy weather and the looming shadow of exams sometimes make it easy to forget, summer vacation is almost here!  And whether you'll be spending your summer lying on a beach, traveling on a variety of planes, trains, and cars, leading adventures at camp, working a cash register, visiting family, or just lounging around, there's one summer activity we can all share: reading for pure, unadulterated personal enjoyment!

But with so many new novels, nonfiction books, magazines, and daily news publications, how can we figure out what to read this summer?  Sometimes the sudden freedom from assigned reading and the busy schedules of the school year can make choosing some fun reading material overwhelming!  Happily, your NCS librarians are here to help you deal with the sudden abundance of reading options.

First, check out our grade-level fun summer reading lists available for download on our website, http://www.ncslibrary.org.  They can be found on the right side of the page, listed and labeled by grade level under the title Summer Reading Lists.  Just click on a grade level and a PDF of the list will open for you!  Next, check out some of our other book recommendation lists and tools, including the Purple & Gold Picks of the Week (which exist on this blog as well as in the library as mini-posters on Ms. Dickinson's desk), our Thanksgiving, winter, and spring break book lists and some of our genre or theme-specific book lists (all available around the library). 



image from aafromaa's flickr

You can also get good reading ideas from lists or reviews created by your local public library, your local independent bookstore (like Politics and Prose, for example), or publications like the New York Times Book Review. You might also want to track down lists like The 2012 National Book Award winners or the "Best of 2012" lists created by publications like The New York Times, Publisher's Weekly, Library Journal, or School Library Journal; any of these lists are easily found with a simple Google search.

Want to find out what your friends or favorite authors are reading? Look into joining GoodReads, a social networking site for readers.   If you're looking to get a bunch of ideas based on your last awesome read, you might want to test out book recommendation sites like YourNextRead or What Should I Read Next?

Finally, even though we're now collecting all our NCS library books, your NCS librarians are never too busy to help you find a good book!  Please feel free to come by the library and chat with a librarian about reading recommendations!  We're happy to help put together a little personalized list of summer reading ideas for you to take along on your next trip to the public library, local bookstore, or Kindle shopping spree!