Books, books, books are your friends, my friends.

Books keep you company, books take you cross the sea and down along a trail that never ends.

This is Code Switch from NPRM, Sheerin Marisol Maraji.

And I'm Karen Grigsby-Bates in Fragine.

And that was the theme song from the Mickey Mouse Book Club, the 1950s Mickey Mouse Book Club.

Sheerin, too young to remember that, but maybe you remember this.

What are these books having common?

Native Sun, The Gropes of Wrath,

To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, and 1984?

They're all depressing.

They're definitely not about topics that are lively and fun and fluffy.

They're about racism and common equality, our dystopian future.

And by future I mean right now.

Right now.

Yes.

Well, there's that.

But I was thinking that they've all been part of our summer reading list, you know,

when we were growing up, maybe in high school.

I had to read To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby, those were the two that I had to read in high school.

And the reason why we're talking about all this is if you haven't figured it out yet,

we are going to be doing the Code Switch Summer Reading List,

a reading list of our own, the 2019 edition.

...