Summer Reading List and Rocking the Sunshine

It's weird here, in Ireland, these past couple of weeks because there's been this big yellow orb in the sky casting heat and good cheer over the land, causing outbreaks of bbq-ing and sitting round with a good book while four years of Vitamin D are soaked up by milk white skin. So, I know I should probably be using GoodReads for this but I can never figure the damn site out--blogging it up here is hard enough for me and would probably be impossible without my daughter's technical imput--but I've been reading loads of fiction that I'd put off during Irregulars edits etc. and here's some of it:

Mission to Paris by Alan Furst--I save Alan Furst for my holidays.  If I have a hero, it's Furst.  No one writing better prose at the moment.  Tone, style and content match perfectly with the pre-war (WWII) settings.  All of his books are brilliant.  Twenty pages in, so is this one.
My Hero: Alan Furst...If I write half as well as he does I'm happy
Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter--Wouldn't have probably picked this one up in a bookshop, though I'd read very good reviews of it.  In England at my nephew's communion last month and my sister said she hadn't read a novel she'd loved as much in years.  I convinced her to let me take with me and read it in two days.  Brilliant, funny, romantic and really, really well written.  Some writers make you jealous with just how well they can write.  Walter is one of them...bastards!
Beautiful Book
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn--Needed something to read on a train to Dublin and bought this at the local Spar shop.  Now, normally I don't find much to like in the way of books at Spar...Becks and Heineken, yes.  Books...ummm, well...  But needs as needs must--I get very nervous if I've nothing to read on me--and I wasn't able to put the damn thing down.  Was hooked by Rush/Lusk and finished it in 24 hours.  Again, a writer who can really write, well in control of tone and shifts in narrative and voice.  Clever plot, even cleverer commentary on modern marriage and the expectations of those who came of age in the bubble economy and now living with expectations shattered.  Believe the hype.  A damn good psychological thriller.
No, really, it really is un-put-downable!
Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay by Don Rickey Jr.--Research and that's all I'll say on that one other than it's fascinating and giving me just what I need for the new book which I'm sporadically writing researching at the moment.
A lot of what a writer reads for research is dull...this ain't
And because I've seen other authors doing it on their blogs...here's what I'm listening to:

Scissorfight--Balls Deep--New Hampshire's finest.  Heavy...very, very heavy and very clever at the same time.  Someone described them as Clutch's substance abusing younger brother.  I wish it was me who said that. I challenge anyone to listen to New Hampshire's Alright (If You Like Fighting) and not want to...umm, fight?  And Outmotherfucker the Man is surely an anthem for our times.
New Hampshire's Finest...R.I.P.
(Riot In Progress)
Clutch--Earthrocker--The older, wiser brothers to Scissorfight put out their finest album since Blast Tyrant in May and it hasn't been off my turntable...ok, car CD player/computer etc. since.  Fast, heavy, bluesy.  This baby got bounce.  Like Sabbath crossed with Skynard and sent to college.  Genius.
Earthrocker...The Best Hard Rock Album in the Last Ten Years?