Summer Reading List: Melanoma, I Mean, July Edition

You know how I'm always saying my goal is to be homeless tan? Well, over the weekend, my friend Kramer pointed out that "homeless tan" would mean a deeply bronzed face and hands, with everything else pasty from the neck down. So now I can't say that any more. Yet at the moment my tan is... prompting strangers to comment about how dark it is. I'm even using sunscreen with the SPF factor of flannel, but considering I'm pretty much living outside (save for sleeping and watching The Secret Life of the American Teenageron Netflix) I guess this is what happens. A good 90% of my outdoors time entails me propped up on a float by my elbows, drifting around while reading a book. On days when I don't have meetings or deadlines, I've been inhaling entire books in one sitting floating. My most recent one-day conquest, and the coincidentally, the first recommendation on this month's list is Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok. I'd seen this cover around for a while, but I finally bought it because Jean Kwok had been on book tour right before me and I kept getting drivers who'd just been with her. Because I trend a bit hyper-competitive asshole, I had to pick it up and see what it was about. Fortunately, my hyper-competitive assholishness often leads me to fascinating books (same thing happened with The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks) and I can't imagine having a better poolside read. The novel follows the...