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I don't consider myself an adrenaline junkie. I don't leap out of planes or off bridges. I don't race cars. I understand the adrenaline rush though, the build up and the anticipation. I get it from book releases. The anticipation of a good book that is just waiting for you around the corner. The itching to get your hands on it. The midnight release parties. I love it. I thrive on it. But if feels like there's none to be found this summer and I find myself feeling flat.
Now, I'm not saying there aren't great books out there that are waiting for me to read them or that there are no good books being released this summer. There's just nothing that I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for. Last summer there was Stephanie Meyer's Breaking Dawn, which ok I'll admit I really wasn't waiting on it too much. Until it was released and everyone started talking about it and I was trying to avoid spoilers like mad. I realized it was futile and broke down and bought Breaking Dawn. How long did I last? Half a day. Pathetic, I know.
While it didn't have a midnight release party or command the press the way Breaking Dawn did I rather anxiously await the release of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. I was later getting it than I wanted because there was an issue with a Big Online Book Company that well, let's just say I didn't get until close to a month after it was released. In addition to the excitement of those two books there was the re-release and updated versions of the first three books of Ellen Emerson White's President's Daughter series, which I literally could not wait to get my hands on. When they finally arrived I almost hugged my mail carrier.
The summer before that was the last Harry Potter summer. It was the year of the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and the end of the Harry Potter book franchise. (Or so we thought, J.K. Rowling sort of surprised us with The Tales of Beedle the Bard.) There is no release like a Harry Potter release. Harry Potter created the down-to-the-minute embargo.
I feel like I've just rediscovered that there will never be a Harry Potter, like in this InkyGirl Cartoon. Of course, I knew it after I read Deathly Hallows but it didn't really sink in. With books to look forward to last summer and talks of midnight parties for Twilight abounding on the internet I didn't really miss it then either. But now I'm feeling deflated because this summer? Nothing. Sure, there are notable books coming out this summer but nothing that whips the masses (or bloggers) into a frenzy. This fall is shaping up to be a good book release season with Suzanne Collins' Catching Fire and Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. Margaret Atwood is releasing The Year of the Flood. Neil Gaiman's Absolute Death comes out in October. But I'm hard pressed to name a single book that I'd even considering ordering this summer.
I miss the theories (often verging on conspiracy theories) about what was going to happen in the next book. Who would die in the next Harry Potter? Would Bella become a vampire? I miss the planning when I was going to get the book and plotting to clear my schedule so that I could do nothing but read for the entire day (or night). Maybe with both the Harry Potter and Twilight series, and their related media frenzies, behind us we won't see anyone get quite so worked up again. Maybe the glory days of mass book excitement are over.
What are other bloggers doing this summer? In the absence of any new Harry Potter or Twilight books and without a new Sookie Stackhouse until the fall TinaGirl is getting caught up on other books that have been languishing on her bookshelf.
New York Kidd is reveling in the Harry Potter movie releases and joined the crowds at the Harry Potter premiere last week.
Others like Elise have their eye on the Catching Fire in the fall. There's even word out that there's going to be a third book in Collins' series as well.
Is there a book release are you excited about? Is there an older book or series that are you discovering for the first time that is making you go OMG!
