Goodreads asked Rhonda Riley:

What books are on your summer reading list this year?

Rhonda Riley Summer never has been a big--or should I say, bigger--time of reading for me. And now that I have no association with academic schedules, my vacation reading might be any time of year. I am a member of a book club and our first read this summer was/is WAVE by Sonali Deraniyagala. An amazing book and good writing, but it is a memoir of grief and loss and might be tough for some who recently suffered a loss or never have. Grief is the major part of this memoir, but in the end what you will know is an extraordinary family. I find a lot of inspiration and solace in books about science and nature. I just finished two books on trees, David George Haskell's THE SONG OF TREES and THE HIDDEN LIFE OF TREES by Peter Wohlleben. Blew my ideas about trees. Haskell is wonderful with descriptions and parts of his book are spiritual in ways that I found very appealing. During a recent party conversation, I got an earful of praise for A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Tool, one that I never read but always planned to read--it is on my summer list. And on vacations, I love to read the annual short story collection titled BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES. A new one every year and a new editor. A good way to sample a lot different authors. My research reading now includes COUNTRY DRIVING by Peter Hessler and FACTORY GIRLS by Leslie T. Chang. I CONTAIN MULTITUDES by Ed Yong
Some truly amazing stuff in the multitudes book. Did you know bacteria can exchange genes horizontally, no need for mating, they can just roll up to each other regardless of species and trade genes. Fascinating stuff. There all kinds of critter symbiosis out there and inside us.

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