Inspiration
Shelf care: Summer reading edition
Can you believe we’re here again with the northern-hemisphere-centric content? I’m honestly sorry. And just so you know, my actual favorite time to hunker down with a book is the winter. Beach reads come second.
So I hope this tiny list (along with your recs, too) will serve both needs, wherever you may be this July.
Anyway, I just finished the final (sob!) Nantucket novel from Elin Hilderbrand, and I haven’t shaken off the feels. Let’s talk about it.
This one is for my people who could use a bit of fluff. Something you can put down to dreamily watch the dolphins at play in the surf and pick up again without having lost the plot. But like most Hilderbrand entries, it’s a deceptively fluffy confection … with a core of molten iron. In other words, it burns.
Because bad things do happen here, and some bittersweet things, too. Also some very, very satisfying things, especially for you longtime Hilderbrand persons (I know there are a few here). It’s not social justice, it’s Justice, comma, Social.
Many of your favorite minor characters get their day in the sun of Swan Song, and you will like this turn.
Like This American Ex-Wife and All Fours, this memoir of middle-aged rebellion has been making a splash. Glynnis MacNicol emerges from lockdown in New York to take a nearly empty flight to Paris, where she spends a month doing her version of pandemic Eat Pray Love—minus the prayer.
There is a lot of eating and drinking and sunbathing in this book! And a lot of conviviality, because Glynnis has some delightful female friends in Paris. (Reader, I was envious.)
Not to bury the lede, she gets on the apps right away (have you heard of Fruitz? I had not) and sets about feeding her pandemic-induced “skin hunger.” Notably, this narrative of no-strings sex is free of guilt or unreasonable timidity. I can only admire this woman, and her vivid story of Get French Quick™ enjoyment.
And her way with words. Recommend!
Bwahahaha! DO YOU LIKE CATS? Or poetic justice? Or both, plus satire!? Then you will like John Scalzi’s Starter Villain.
As with most Scalzi heroes, ours is down on his luck, like, all the way down, couldn’t get much worse, when things do in fact take a turn for the worse. And the bizarre.
I’m struggling not to tell you too much! But the cover offers a portrait of a tabby in a business suit, so yeah: there are some very smart cats in this book. Also featured: villains, supervillains, island-volcano villain lairs, capitalists, unseemly funeral behavior, and some moral conundrums for our hero.
To be enjoyed poolside, with a martini, shaken, not stirred.
What Should We Read Next?
What else can you suggest for your fellow needy beach readers? I beg you, put your recommendations in the comments below. Plenty of good page-turnin’ weather left in the season.
Image credit: On the Beach, Victor Laredo, 1935-1943, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, The New York Public Library. Used with permission.
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune. To prepare for the sequel coming out in September— Somewhere Beyond the Sea
I loved this book too! It was one of my son’s favourite books.
I loved this book so much. Thank you for letting us know there is a sequel!
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton is a literary thriller. It’s full of vivid characters with rather extreme agendas that push on to a conclusion you can’t wait to get to.
Nominated in the non-fiction category which is where I oddly find myself this summer:
A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell why has this woman’s story and her impact in France in WWII just now been told?!
Landlines by Raynor Winn so many themes: a love story, an epic journey ala The Odyssey, climate change and since I am not finished I expect a few more themes.
I adored A Woman of No Importance! a non-fiction page-turner!
Oh I listened to Starter Villain and parts I still giggle over. For me Will Wheaton made these characters come to life. It was a hoot to listen to the story. For me it proves animals are smart.
Agree Wil Wheaton and John Scalzi are an unbeatable combo
Also best to listen to because of the voices are Tom Lake with Meryl Streep narrating – wonderful!
Along with Remarkably Bright Creatures – the deadpan Octopus voice is the best.
I loved Octopus!
I re-read (listened) to Tom Lake, just for Meryl Streep. It was SUCH a treat. And a book that held up to two readings nearly back-to-back.
I just finished listening to Tom Lake—it WAS a treat!
Am now reading Trespasses by Louise Kennedy. Set in Ireland during the Troubles, it is so well written, tender and true.
Yes, absolutely, to the audio version of Tom Lake.
And speaking of audiobooks, y’all know about Libro.com, right? Just as we like to support our favorite LYS, Libro encourages you to register your favorite indie bookstore, and each time you purchase an audiobook from Libro, a percentage of that transaction goes to the coffers of that shop. Hoooray!!!
So interesting. We read that for book club. The women that listened to it loved it and the ones who read it hated it.
Don’t forget about your taxpayer funded resource, your public library! In addition to paper books, you can access eBooks and audiobooks via the Libby app.
Send a portion of the money you save by not buying (as many) books to the Friends of your local library. I cannot stress to you how important their advocacy is in keeping our libraries thriving.
I use the library as a way to determine what books I want to buy- to re-read or just support the author.
I’ll add to this list The Woman Who Smashed Codes, which I borrowed via Libby from my local library in St. Paul. I listened to the audiobook on a road trip and it was so well done. “the incredible true story of the greatest codebreaking duo that ever lived, an American woman and her husband who invented the modern science of cryptology together and used it to confront the evils of their time, solving puzzles that unmasked Nazi spies and helped win World War II.” Plus gangsters, bootleggers and battles with J. Edgar Hoover!
Thanks for your comment, well said, retired public librarian here.
Anything by Karen White. I need to catch up on her Tradd Street series. Thank goodness for audio books so I can knit and read.
Oh I have to agree – enjoy the Tradd Street books. She writes other series too.
The Black Bird Oracle is the fifth book in the Discovery of Witches world. It’s a continuation of the story of reluctant witch Diana and 1500 year old vampire Matthew and their extended families – dealing with life and the politics of their world. If you haven’t read the first four books and you like modern, complex adult fantasy set in our world, start with the first book and work your way to this one. It’s great year-round summer reading.
Sandwich by Catherine Newman for laugh-out-loud moments between three generations of a highly functioning family.
In Memoriam by Alice Winn for an unforgettable story of love, devotion, and war.
I enjoyed Pet by Catherine Chidgey. Sort of a dark coming of age story- well done!
Latest on my recommendations list –
If you want a Summer Read that’ll help you chill the heat & humidity while also holding you with a quietly simmering page turner, then Waubgeshig Rice’s “Moon of the Crusted Snow” is a great one. It follows an isolated northern Canadian community through a hard cold winter of greater-than-usual isolation due to unknown disruptions to society-at-large “down south”.
If that compelling storytelling leaves you wanting more (it was intended to be a one-&-done book, no sequel) fear not because Waub was compelled by SOOOOO many fans to write the sequel. “Moon of the Turning Leaves” extends the story several years into the future to follow the lives of the main characters and their community into their uncertain future.
Great storytelling, compelling characters, strong females & compassionate community… finding a way in dark |& uncertain times.
Post apocalyptic drama but not too dark!
Highly recommend!
James MeBride’s, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, is storytelling at its best. With pathos mixed with biting commentary and humor, the author tells us how a diverse community living with bigotry and hypocrisy show love, substance and hope for its members.
And the audiobook is brilliantly narrated!
Earls Trip (yes, it’s a pun) by Jenny Holiday is a fun read. She’s a Minnesota-raised, now in Canada author. So much fun, with tender moments too.
YES! To those who recommended A Woman of No Importance. You will be in awe of this woman’s courage and determination, and should be outraged by the lack of recognition for her service. I live near DC and searched The Spy Museum for information on her – nothing! I suggest a boycott.
On the historic fiction genre, loved The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell. Based on the marriage of Lucrezia de Medici. Will make you very glad not to have been a woman in Renaissance Italy.
I loved Starter Villain! But reading comments here, now I think I need to listen to the audiobook too.
Summer Romance by Annabel Monaghan. Never thought I’d be romance girl…
The Wealth Money Can’t Buy by Robin Sharma (nonfiction). Literally the best book on how to live life that I’ve ever read.
Anything Anne Lamott.
You’re Gonna Die Alone by Devrie Donalson. I laughed out loud.
Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara. Absolutely brilliant.
The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece by Tom Hanks, audio book read by Tom Hanks. A fun read, brings the disparate characters to life on the movie set.
This was a great book! I loved listening to it, and didn’t want it to end!
I loved that audiobook! Tom Hanks is a wonderful narrator who brings the story to life!
For smart fun and sizzle, I recommend my favorite romance writer, Eloisa James—her new books drops TOMORROW and is the first in a new series, so it’s a good one to pick up. EJ is a pen name for Mary Bly, who teaches Shakespeare at Fordham and is a champion of the romance genre.
I shouldn’t be telling you this (but I am going to anyway)
Chelsea Devantez
The Personal Librarian, by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray – historical fiction about the personal librarian — a black woman passing as white, Belle Da Costa Greene—to JP Morgan at the Morgan Library.
I had heard about this book. But now I’m going to buy it since we will be visiting the Morgan Library this September while in NYC. Thanks for the reminder!
YES! Then you must read Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade by Janet Charles Skeslien. Historical fiction about Anne Morgan, JP Morgan’s daughter, bringing books to a bombed out village in France in WW2. Fantastic! Shows just how very important reading is to survival.
Starter Villain IS SO GOOD! I laughed so much!
The very definition of fluffy reading: Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer. So much laughing! I am all about a quirky, plucky protagonist these days. Good news if you slurp this one up in a single sitting: sequel drops in early August!
Great recommendations! I was looking for some new reads.
I recommend any book written by Emily Henry. Her books are about relationships and how love finds a way even if love doesn’t look like there’s even a possibility. Maybe I’m not her “demographic”, but I love her writing. She has quite a few bestsellers including, BEACH READ.
Some books I’ve enjoyed this summer:
The Paris Novel, by Ruth Reichl
Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting, by Clare Pooley
Forget Me Never, by Susan Wittig Albert (newest in the China Bayles series, all good)
A Short Walk Through a Wide World, by Douglas Westerbeke
The Stolen Child, by Ann Hood
Also reread Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver
Rereading is nice!
Welcome to Glorious Tuga by Francesca Segal and How to Read a Book: A Novel by the ever-wonderful Monica Wood. I happened to read them back to back and couldn’t over my good luck at being on a roll of good books!
I just finished I’m Mostly Here …. much enjoyed! Other summer-ish recs from my Recently Read list: West by Carys Davies (short, surprising, hypnotic, bit of an anti-Western); The Feast by Margaret Kennedy (imagine The White Lotus set on the Cornwall coast in the late 1940s); The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard, first of the Cazalet chronicles (family saga, author is a genius of pithy characterizations). Also, don’t miss The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt.
Part of my self-care is reading fluff and I do prefer I bit of that “core of molten iron” – recently finished Swan Song – loved it and looking forward to seeing what Elin comes up with alongside her daughter next year.
Anything by Cathleen Schine, Penelope Fitzgerald, Ben McIntyre, or Barbara Pym.
A friend told me yesterday that I had to listen to Fredrik Backman’s “Anxious People” (2020). She also warned me that she and her husband had to stop listening in the car since he was laughing too hard to drive safely.
You will LOVE this! Anything written by Backman has been entertaining. Save it for winter, but the trilogy beginning with Bear Town is read by Marin Ireland. It is captivating. It is set in a hockey town and would not normally be anything I would try, but by the third book these people are your friends!
Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richarson (actually, anything by HCR!)
I second the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store!
For anyone who loves the Discovery of Witches books as much as I do (a lot), the fifth book, The Blackbird Oracle, just came out. I devoured it over the weekend and loved it. It has everything you want from this series. The world expands just enough, there are revelations and conflicts and nighttime romps on the woods. Highly recommend.
Try The Wind Knows Your Name by Isabel Allende. I liked it very much. I thought that the plot line was very clever—two stories that mirror each other in many ways. And a happy ending—always nice.
I loved The Woman of No Importance !
Anything by Kristin Hannah but 2 of hers I’d recommend are The Women about a nurse and Vietnam War. The other is The Nightingale about French resistance in WWII.
Since childhood I have disliked Summer. I dislike being hot more than anyone I know and I wasn’t one to sit by the pool until I was brown. But I did live at the library, consuming every book possible and I could ride my bike and put it in the rack without a lock. My daughter is like me and my son is like his father. The only difference was that we belonged to a family swim club and my daughter could read in the shade and her brother would be in the pool all day. And Summer books are light reading and knitting for me. I always look forward to the first change in the weather because Fall is the BEST SEASON of the YEAR !
Just finished “The Night in Question” by Susan Fletcher. It’s the kind of book you finish and then go right back to the beginning to reread. If you are a Thursday Murder Club fan, try this…..or if you loved Moon Tiger…..there’s a lot of depth to Florrie.
And thanks for the Woman who Smashed Codes….we drive 15 hours next week, home from Michigan to NH and finding an audiobook I like (retired English teacher) and Husband (retired actuary with physics tendency!!) is tough! Simon Winchester always works, but he can’t keep up with us!
Barbara M. In NH, currently visiting family in MI…
I highly recommend the audio of Starter Villain read by Will Wheaton. He gets slightly overdramatic at some points, but he is a delightful narrator.
NK Jemisin’s “The City We Became” is a book that I didn’t read so much as IT READ ME. Superb, punchy, and fun urban fantasy of the highest degree.
This may be too British, and too fantasy for many, but my current love enjoyment is The Stranger Times series.
“Happy Hour” by Elissa Bass, a romance novel with a post-menopausal heroine, laugh-out-loud moments, fully developed characters, zippy dialogue and startling narrative depth and richness. A great read!
If you love Stephen King and wish Harry Potter was a bit darker, try Ordinary Monsters by J M Miro. So good. And the second book in the series comes out in the fall.
Kevin Kwan’s latest, Lies and Weddings, is perfect dishy summer reading. It’s a retelling of Trollope’s Doctor Thorne. And if you enjoy that one, go back to 2020’s Sex and Vanity based on Forster’s A Room with a View. They are both fizzy, fun, jet-setting beach reads with a classical core.
A Gentleman in Moscow. Not a new book but a wonderful story that captures your interest with historical notes and fascinating characters.
The Searcher and the sequel The Hunter, these 2 books by Tana French are magnificent. An outsider retires to a village in Ireland and tries not to get involved. The writing is superb.
Ooh! Terry Pratchett is my desert island author, and I’ve enjoyed every Jodi Taylor I’ve tried (I’m pacing myself with her Saint Mary’s series because I don’t want to finish it too quickly). I’d recommend Neal Stephenson too (occasionally some of his concepts can be challenging, as can the length: Snow Crash and Reamde are the most holiday-friendly that I’ve tried). And for prose that floats around you I’d go for Alice Hoffman and Carlos Ruiz Zafon.
Sipsworth, by Simon Van Booy. A charming book about a lonely widow who moves back to the village where she was born (in the UK). She rescues a mouse and everything changes. This isn’t a cute book for children. It addresses loneliness, aging, friendships and connections. I loved this book and plan to give copies to friends and family for Christmas. ❤️
A wonderful wonderful book: Sipsworth by Simon Von Booy. Little treasure of a read, recommended initially by Ann Patchett. I’ve been telling everyone to read this short, beautiful book.
For light summer reading, I finished Elin Hilderbrand’s “Swan Song”. Now I’m almost finished with her “A Perfect Couple”. It’s equally entertaining and is being made into a movie to be released this fall. Thank you for the new book ideas, one and all! My reading time is usually around 3pm and is one of the best parts of the day before getting dinner ready. Nothing better than a good book and my granny square lap blanket for an hour of pure cozy enjoyment! Said blanket was so fun to create this summer! I used 22 colors and just kept crocheting around and around until it was the size I wanted, about 34″ x 34″. Even though I love knitting, I also love simple crocheting and never met a granny square I didn’t adore.
I just finished reading The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst, a cozy fantasy in which a very introverted librarian escapes her burning library with spellbooks and her sentient plant companion. She moves to a small island and sets up a jam shop while learning how to people. There’s a gentle romance and strong female friendships. I’d say it’s perfect for fans of TJ Klune.
I am currently loving the Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman. So odd and hilarious. Princess Donut the cat is a true diva.
There are wonderful books I’ve read here (Heaven and Earth Grocery, Ann Lamott, Democaracy Now) and I can’t wait to read some of these recommendations! Besides all books Amor Towles, my favorite this summer has been Go As a River by Shelley Read. It’s about a strong woman trying to save her family’s peach farm, scandal for the early 1920s+, racism, and more. I tried it when it was selected as the all Pikes Peak reads for the year by the library (yes! Cheers for libraries)