Who's reading what this summer? Episode 2 - Rod Lott

It's part 2 of my ongoing series of summer reading lists of the rich and powerf...I mean, the talented and the willing to respond to my emails.

Today's list comes courtesy of Rod Lott. Rod is the editor of Bookgasm.com, a book review site that...well, here's how Rod puts it:

Hey, have you read the new Nora Roberts?
Are you a member of Oprah’s Book Club?
Do you enjoy stories about the struggles of the disenfranchised in our society?
If you answered “no” to all those questions, we’d like to welcome you to BOOKGASM, the site dedicated to READING MATERIAL TO GET EXCITED ABOUT.
That includes all kinds of genre fiction, from horror and sci-fi to mystery and suspense. It also includes graphic novels, trashy paperbacks, cheap magazines and other things that much of America pretends to be ashamed of, for no good reason.
At BOOKGASM, we celebrate these escapist efforts, through daily news, reviews, interviews and other things that don’t end in “-ews.” Think of it as a community; we encourage your posts via the comments section under each item.

Based in Oklahoma City, Rod Lott spends his days as the assistant editor of Oklahoma’s largest alternative weekly newspaper. In his “spare time,” he is the editor of Hitch Magazine: The Journal of Pop Culture Absurdity, and some of his humor essays have appeared in the anthologies 101 Damnations (St. Martin’s Press), More Mirth of a Nation (HarperCollins) and May Contain Nuts (HarperCollins). He also adapts classic short stories to comic book form for the ongoing Graphic Classic series of graphic novels from Eureka Publishing.

Rod's a terrific fella with great taste in books, and is a fearless promoter of novels that sometimes fly under the radar (hint, hint). Bookgasm should be placed on everyone's Netvibes list immediately.

And what is Rod planning to read this summer?

Here's what I hope to get to this summer (limited to things actually coming out between now and Aug. 31). You'll be able to judge how much I accomplish by seeing how many pop up as reviews on Bookgasm:

• Hit and Run by Lawrence Block
• The Shadow of Reichenback Falls by John R. King
• Old Devil Moon by Christopher Fowler
• Halloween and Other Seasons by Al Sarrantonio
• The X-Files: I Want to Believe by Max Allan Collins
• Who Can Save Us Now? edited by Owen King and John McNally
• The Mammoth Book of Crime Comics edited by Paul Gravett
• The Darker Mask edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers
• The Sandman Presents The Dead Boy Detectives by Ed Brubaker
• The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
• Tigerheart by Peter David
• Just Do It by Douglas Brown
• Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz
• Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life by James Hawes
• Rules of Deception by Christopher Reich
• The Seven Sins: The Tyrant Ascending by Jon Land

That is a huge list. Rod's a dedicated reviewer, so I have no doubt he will get through the list expediently.