Tell Me What to Read: Beach Reading Edition
I am ridiculously excited for summer to be here this year.
I’ve dubbed this the summer of the homemade popsicle (we made our first on Tuesday), we’ve broken out the sunscreen and swim diapers, and with both of Ella’s preschools finished up, we are keeping things pretty calm and lazy around here. I’m loving it.
And summer calls for summer reading. Here’s where you come in – a beach version of Tell Me What to Read. This is not the time to suggest War and Peace (sorry, Sherry).
Suggest something fun (although that doesn’t have to mean chick-lit – I’m up for fascinating non-fiction, memoirs, YA, middle grade, AND chick-lit), and I’ll pick three from the comments to read over the next three months of summer.
This summer, for the first time in many moons, we actually are making a trip to the beach. I think your book would like to come along too.
In review:
- Comment with the title of one fun book you think I should read. One title only, please, lest my brain explode.
- I’ll choose three from the list and announce them next week.
- I’ll read one a month – June, July, and August. Feel free to read along.
- I’ll write a review of each one here. Even if I hate the book, I will not hate you.
And. . .go!
One More Time: A Memoir, by Carol Burnett.
Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall or Bring Up The Bodies.
If you like science, I recently read two non fiction books by Mary roach. One was Stiff, about cadaver science and the other was called Gulp and was about the GI tract. Yucky stuff for sure, but she makes it interesting AND funny.
The Selection, by Kiera Cass. It's a trilogy if you like it!
Hey! I was going to suggest Mary Roach, too! I think you'd like Packing for Mars, but Bonk was my favorite.
Have you read Edenbrooke yet? If so, The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley.
If you haven't read Maisie Dobbs, that's on my new "must read" list. Lighter, clean mysteries set in post WWI England. Female private investigator. So good!
Only Time Will Tell by Jeffrey Archer. It's a series and the first three are out already.
An oldie but a goody… Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood. (Just avoid the movie, it's awful).
ok yes! good book, stupid movie!
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling … funny and light!
Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth
I think you should read Monstrous Beauty by Elizabeth Fama. I listened to the audiobook and thoroughly enjoyed every minute.
Have you read Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis? I just finished it (audio), and I liked it. Either that or War and Peace, I guess.
I see that you have already read my first instinctual suggestions (Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow), since I'm mid-re-read and LOVING them now. So I dug around Goodreads, and you have already read the NEXT ones I thought of (The Phantom Tollbooth, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, Rebecca).
HMMM.
That leaves me with Secret Ingredients, edited by David Remnick. It's a collection of food writing from The New Yorker. It's kind of hefty, but you can skip around as you like. My favorite pieces were:
– Don't Eat Before Reading This, by Anthony Bourdain
– A Forager, by John McPhee
– The Fruit Detective, by John Seabrook
– An Attempt to Compile a Short History of the Buffalo Chicken Wing, by Calvin Trillin
– The Magic Bagel, by Calvin Trillin
– Night Kitchens, by Judith Thurman
– Taste, by Roald Dahl
Attachments: a novel by Rainbow Rowell. Light, witty romance. The ultimate beach read. I was dying to get to the end, but was enjoying the book so much that I didn't want it to end. I highly recommend it.
I LOVED this book – I couldn't put it down either!
I recommend The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (fun mystery with lots of literary allusion in a strange alternate reality) or Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer(nonfiction about memory championship competitions, hilarious and fascinating).
I *loved* Moonwalking with Einstein!! So good!
xox
Silver Linings Playbook
The 5th Wave, Rick Yancey
Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail by Malika Oufkir
The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson. I unexpectedly liked this book about a fat princess.
The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
I love this book – in fact Ani's blog name comes from this.