Books To Read In Summer

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Do you know which books you're reading this summer? I do! Here's my summer reading list. A few of these books may have been on my summer reading list last year. Oops. In my defense, I work a zillion hours between April and October. I'm reading as fast as I can!

🌞  Summer Reading List  🌻

THE AMBASSADOR OF NOWHERE TEXAS BY KIMBERLY WILLIS HOLT

Middle Grade Contemporary

Decades after the Vietnam War and Toby's life-changing summer with Zachary Beaver, Toby's daughter Rylee is at a crossroads—her best friend Twig has started pushing her away just as Joe, a new kid from New York, settles into their small town of Antler. Rylee befriends Joe and learns that Joe's father was a first responder on 9/11. The two unlikely friends soon embark on a project to find Zachary Beaver and hopefully reconnect him with Rylee's father almost thirty years later.

Why I'm excited to read it: This is a companion novel to When Zachary Beaver Came To Town. I was in love with that book as a young teen. I read it over, and over, and over. It may have sparked my passion for historical fiction and stories set in small towns. Of course I need to read the sequel! Summer is a perfect time for this book because it's short. I can probably read it in a day or two.

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HEARTBREAKER BY MARYSE MEIJER

Adult Literary Short Story Collection

In her debut story collection Heartbreaker, Maryse Meijer peels back the crust of normalcy and convention, unmasking the fury and violence we are willing to inflict in the name of love and loneliness. Her characters are a strange ensemble—a feral child, a girl raised from the dead, a possible pedophile—who share in vulnerability and heartache, but maintain an unremitting will to survive. Meijer deals in desire and sex, femininity and masculinity, family and girlhood, crafting a landscape of appetites threatening to self-destruct.

 

Why I’m excited to read it: Well, the cover sure got my attention. That’s intense. This short story collection has amazing reviews on Goodreads, which is rare for a short story collection because people seem to hate them for mysterious reasons. The stories in this book are allegedly dark and disturbing. I’m intrigued.

 

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AFTER THE ECLIPSE: A MOTHER’S MURDER, A DAUGHTER’S SEARCH BY SARAH PERRY

Adult True Crime Nonfiction / Memoir

 

When Sarah Perry was twelve, she saw a partial eclipse of the sun, an event she took as a sign of good fortune for her and her mother, Crystal. But that brief moment of darkness ultimately foreshadowed a much larger one: two days later, Crystal was murdered in their home in rural Maine, just a few feet from Sarah’s bedroom.
 
The killer escaped unseen; it would take the police twelve years to find him, time in which Sarah grew into adulthood, struggling with abandonment, police interrogations, and the effort of rebuilding her life when so much had been lost. Through it all she would dream of the eventual trial, a conviction—all her questions finally answered. But after the trial, Sarah’s questions only grew. She wanted to understand her mother’s life, not just her final hours, and so she began a personal investigation, one that drew her back to Maine, taking her deep into the abiding darkness of a small American town.

 

Why I’m excited to read it: I’ve been searching the Internet for well-written true crime nonfiction, and I keep stumbling across this one. I’m intrigued that it’s a true crime memoir instead of a book written by a journalist. The author has more connection to the crime than a random journalist would. I’m interested in the personal angle. Also, this book has amazing reviews on Goodreads. I’m going to trust thousands of Internet strangers and give it a shot.

 

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THE LUCK UGLIES BY PAUL DURHAM

Middle Grade Fantasy

Strange things are happening in Village Drowning, and a terrifying encounter has Rye O'Chanter convinced that the monstrous, supposedly extinct Bog Noblins have returned. Now Rye's only hope is an exiled secret society so notorious its name can't be spoken aloud: the Luck Uglies. As Rye dives into Village Drowning's maze of secrets, rules, and lies, she'll discover the truth behind the village's legends of outlaws and beasts . . . and that it may take a villain to save them from the monsters.

Why I'm excited to read it: Whenever I meet an English teacher or a reading teacher, I have to ask which books their students are loving. A teacher I met said her students were passing this series around. I picked up the first book to see what the middle schooler hype is about.

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THE OVERSTORY BY RICHARD POWERS

Adult Literary Fiction

From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

Why I'm excited to read it: Look at that cover! It's very "summer." So . . . I don't think I understand what this book is about. I know it's about trees. And history. I kept seeing it on lists of best nature writing, and then it won a Pulitzer, so I finally decided to pick it up. Let's see if it lives up to the hype.

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TWO BOYS KISSING BY DAVID LEVITHAN

Young Adult Contemporary Fiction

The based-on-true-events story of Harry and Craig, two 17-year-olds who are about to take part in a 32-hour marathon of kissing to set a new Guinness World Record—all of which is narrated by a Greek Chorus of the generation of gay men lost to AIDS.

While the two increasingly dehydrated and sleep-deprived boys are locking lips, they become a focal point in the lives of other teen boys dealing with languishing long-term relationships, coming out, navigating gender identity, and falling deeper into the digital rabbit hole of gay hookup sites—all while the kissing former couple tries to figure out their own feelings for each other.

Why I'm excited to read it: It sounds weird. Like, I'm not even sure what it's about. What's the plot? I picked up this novel because I studied the Greek Chorus narration style as part of my graduate school thesis, but I somehow missed this book.

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A GAME OF FOX & SQUIRRELS BY JENN REESE

Middle Grade Fantasy

 

After an incident shatters their family, eleven-year old Samantha and her older sister Caitlin are sent to live in rural Oregon with an aunt they've never met. Sam wants nothing more than to go back to the way things were . . . before she spoke up about their father's anger.

When Aunt Vicky gives Sam a mysterious card game called "A Game of Fox & Squirrels," Sam falls in love with the animal characters, especially the charming trickster fox, Ashander. Then one day Ashander shows up in Sam’s room and offers her an adventure and a promise: find the Golden Acorn, and Sam can have anything she desires.

But the fox is hiding rules that Sam isn't prepared for, and her new home feels more tempting than she'd ever expected. As Sam is swept up in the dangerous quest, the line between magic and reality grows thin. If she makes the wrong move, she'll lose far more than just a game.

 

Why I’m excited to read it: Goodreads says this book “explores the often thin line between magic and reality, light and darkness.” It sounds like this novel has the potential to be delightfully weird. I’m game. Let’s play.

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THE BLACK PROJECT BY GARETH BROOKES

Adult Horror Graphic Novel

Getting yourself a girlfriend is easy, according to Richard. All you need is papier mache, string, soft material, a balloon, some old fashioned bellows, and a good pair of scissors. The difficult bit is keeping her secret. Set in an English suburb in the early 1990s, this is the story of Richard's all-consuming passion for creating 'girls' from household objects. But as his hobby begins to flourish, his real life friendships and family relationships deteriorate.

Why I'm excited to read it: Here's a story for you: Way back in 2014, I was looking at lists of horror graphic novels and came across this one. It immediately got my attention because dolls are creepy, and a dude who ruins his life by building himself "girlfriends" is even creepier. I searched everywhere for this book and couldn't find a cheap used copy. They just didn't exist in the US. I put the book on my TBR spreadsheet and waited, and waited, and searched. Fast forward to a few months ago. I found a copy for $3.88. YES! If you're broke, patience will eventually pay off. That's the moral of the story.

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THE POISONWOOD BIBLE BY BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Adult Historical Fiction

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.

Why I'm excited to read it: A few months ago, I wrote a post about modern books that I think will become classics. While researching that post, I kept coming across this book. I don't read enough about Africa, so I decided to give it a shot.

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RANGER CONFIDENTIAL: LIVING, WORKING, AND DYING IN THE NATIONAL PARKS BY ANDREA LANKFORD

Adult Memoir

For twelve years, Andrea Lankford lived in the biggest, most impressive national parks in the world, working a job she loved. She chaperoned baby sea turtles on their journey to sea. She pursued bad guys on her galloping patrol horse. She jumped into rescue helicopters bound for the heart of the Grand Canyon. She won arguments with bears. She slept with a few too many rattlesnakes.

 Hell yeah, it was the best job in the world! Fortunately, Andrea survived it.

In this graphic and yet surprisingly funny account of her and others’ extraordinary careers, Lankford unveils a world in which park rangers struggle to maintain their idealism in the face of death, disillusionment, and the loss of a comrade killed while holding that thin green line between protecting the park from the people, the people from the park, and the people from each other. Ranger Confidential is the story behind the scenery of the nation’s crown jewels—Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Great Smokies, Denali. In these iconic landscapes, where nature and humanity constantly collide, scenery can be as cruel as it is redemptive.

Why I'm excited to read it: Um . . . I guess I'm reevaluating my life choices? Do I want to continue working as a park ranger? Nature is cool, but OMG humans are exhausting. I just need everyone to remain calm and alive while I'm multitasking as fast as I can. I also need several naps.

Buy it on Amazon

What are you reading this summer?