My Summer Reading List, Maybe

I never quite have a formal to-read list. When I've tried, the database ended up being 400+ entries deep. I'm a mood reader, by nature, and can trust also that if I put down a book at one point, I may return to it months later, so there are some books I remain halfway-in for awhile.

At the beginning of this year, I read a ton. While [redacted] in the spring, I focused more on other elements of life, a little sick of words. Now, I'm relishing some other hobbies and curiosities—still reading plenty, but mostly expecting that I will inhale roughly three books a day when I eventually head to the cottage in Ontario my family goes to every summer. Even if I end up working the entire time, I have such a hunger to read up there.

But I'm placing a book order now through Barnes & Noble and ThriftBooks respectively, am rich in library holds, and also have some recent acquisitions I'm excited about. So in compiling what I'm reading next, here are some books that could make the cut. I'm organizing them just however for now, as this is very much a brain dump, but might overlay some formal structure as I go.

For now, I'll probably organize the way that I do my books page overall (dark 'n stormy, brain food, beach read, etc,.) but of course, there is overlap in categories. Some are rereads as well, or ones I need to go back and finally finish. I'll link and all later as well.

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Some Books I'm Reading This Summer, Potentially

Dark & stormy

• The Manor of Dreams by Christina Li
• The Maidens by Alex Alex Michaelides
• Gifted & Talented by Olivie Blake
• Local Heavens by K.M. Fajardo
• Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma
• The Wickerlight by Mary Watson
• The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater
• Immortal Consequences by I.V. Marie

Beach reads et. al

• Swift & Saddled by Lyla Sage
• The Love Haters by Katherine Center
• A Great, Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry
• One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune

Buzzy and/or loved by others

• A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
• Beartown by Fredrik Backman
• Us Against You by Fredrik Backman
• The Winners by Fredrik Backman
• James by Percival Everett
• The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
• The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
• Blood at the Root by LaDarrion Williams
• The Favorites by Layne Fargo
• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
• Alive Day by Karie Fugett
• The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Craft & writing

• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
• The Real Work by Adam Gopnik

Classics & philosophy

• Dear Life by Alice Munro (pretty much all of her works, especially considering our small town Canada connection)
• Travels in Alaska by John Muir
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• End of the Earth: Voyaging to Antarctica by Peter Matthiessen
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck
• The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
• more Aristotle
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
• A Nietzche Reader
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Festival of Insignificance by Milan Kundera
• IT by Stephen King
• The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy

Brain food nonfiction & social history

• How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett
• A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman
• Figuring by Maria Popova
• Useful Delusions by Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler
• The Explorer's Gene by Alex Hutchinson
• Superbloom by Nicholas Carr
• The Extinction of Experience by Christine Rosen

Poetry & essays

• Red Doc> by Anne Carson
• Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson
• The Odyssey by Homer (translated by Emily Wilson)
• Poems 1962-2012 by Louise Glück