Across the globe, students are putting on caps and gowns and preparing to march down the aisle to "Pomp and Circumstance." Whether they are continuing on to college or graduating to "real life," a mass of information waits to be absorbed by their eager minds. But for those of us who are well beyond our student days, are we really learning anything as we return to the same job in the same city day after day? In an effort to expand our minds, we've taken William Faulkner's wise words, "read, read, read," to heart and put together a City Weekend summer reading list, encapsulating the hottest books of the season and the two most outstanding novels from the last year. Turn to page 10 for your summer homework.

"Even though I'm straight, I've never had so much fun going out," says freelance writer Jamie Feldmar on covering Shanghai's gay scene for this issue's “Queer Me Out” (Shanghai Entertainment Guide, pg. E08). After scouring the city's best alternative hangouts and resources, Feldmar is happy to report that Shanghai is well on its way to becoming a world-class gay destination: "When I found the store that only sells men's novelty undergarments, I knew that Shanghai's gay scene is alive and well."

"Having a librarian for a mother, summer reading was always an important event while growing up,” says Deputy Managing Editor Lydia Holden. So as June approached, Holden started calling publishers, seeking the most anticipated books of the coming season for CW’s summer reading list (pg. 10). “It appears that Khaled Hosseini's (author of "The Kite Runner") second novel is going to be huge and I was lucky enough to snag an interview with him. When I asked him why he wrote another book set in Afghanistan from about the same period as his debut novel, I received one of the best answers from our hour long conversation: ‘I think we have no choice but to write what we know, but we know a lot of things.’”

"Can you believe City Weekend spent two years searching for a photo editor?” wonders Queenie Wang, City Weekend’s newly-arrived photo editor. “Can you imagine how excited I was when I found out I got the job?” Wang and her eagle eye are on a mission to make City Weekend the best-looking, most photo friendly magazine in Beijing. “This is a challenging job for me, but it’s exactly what I have always wanted to do. No matter how many Flickr sites I have to scour for a good picture, or how much time it takes to get the perfect cover shot, that’s what I’ll do to make City Weekend the best. A good picture is a moment of life: our life.”