Books of summer: recommendations

Summer is coming, y'all, a hot hot terribly hot summer is coming! So here's a reminder to bring out your sunscreen, tape a water bottle to your person and seek out a summery book.

They say it’s gonna be an H-O-T HOT one, this summer. The dread of it hangs in the afternoon air these days where already the heat makes sitting in a black car a precarious task, and I am weeks ahead in preparing my welcome for sweat on skin and white sun piercing head. All this awfulness calls for some kind of breeze - I’m thinking of sitting with an iced latte in an air-conditioned café or under the shade of trees or by the water. And between my hands a good book. My summer reading recommendations this year have either the force of a gale or the caress of a friendly wind, but in either case should carry you off towards times and places hopefully more enthralling than the airless season ahead. Fun, gutting, adventurous, nostalgic and whimsical - here’s to a good book-filled summer.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Waking up in a spaceship to find himself without memory of how he got there and bereft of his crew mates, Ryland Grace gradually learns in flashbacks all that led up to his current state. All the while the Hail Mary spaceship is headed towards a distant star, and the journey that proceeds becomes one beyond our imagination. Accessibility to and fascination with the possibilities of science are domains that Weir always succeeds at, but what I wasn’t expecting at all was how refreshing and friendly the book felt. 400 pages will never fly by so fast as Grace balances between reconciling with the painful story his memories bring to the surface and attempting a seemingly impossible mission so far away from his home. As summer recommendations go, this is as punchy as it gets.

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

If you’re on the lookout for a different kind of punch might I suggest a classic Baldwin, which takes place in the dim, close, sweaty spaces of 1950s Paris. So taut and powerful is this “love” story of two doomed men that you will debate to yourself whether to read it all right here and now or pause to let settle into your mind the wretchedness and lifetime shrieks of longing. Baldwin is a writer that needs to be read by all of us; here is the terrifying and agonizing story of a man’s escape from his sexuality in order to set himself free, though the freedom he both desires and is petrified of lies in a suffocating room in France.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

This 800-page iconic Western is a rompity-romp of an adventure that spans between Texas and Montana. McMurtry strikes a fine balance between action and reflection, between the stuff happening out on the plains and prairies and the stuff swirling around in the inside of the lovable, flawed cast of characters. When a slow reader like me is able to cover almost 100 pages every time she opened the book, you bet there must be some dang good writing embedded in the story. If you’re in need of a Big Summer Read, look no further.

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

Eternity, a summer’s eternity for twelve-year old Douglas, exists in the “golden tide” of dandelion wine capped up in the dimly glistening bottles of his family’s cellar. And when you dip into this gem of a summer novel, each vignette will resemble a precious bottle of the stuff pressed out of flowers. In riding the trolley for the last time or licking a strangely-flavored ice cream with a neighbor Douglas’s heart starts to open up to Life’s enormity, and through Bradbury’s prose that seems to breathe in and out, we are shown the universal wisdom that can derive from a youth’s precious season.

Marcovaldo: Or the Seasons in the City by Italo Calvino

Sometimes you just need an easy read that tickles your mind and leaves your lips a-grinnin’. Marcovaldo - unskilled laborer with a family to care for and an imagination bigger than his mundane reality allows - embarks on small quirky adventures that read like those of a cartoon character, albeit a tiny bit sad when the true state of things makes itself known. But life doesn’t have to be confined to the basement room his family sleeps in or his days working in a warehouse. Instead, it is one where a sad office plant can grow into a gigantic tree on the back of a man’s motor bike, where huge soap bubbles wiggle in the sky as their translucent shapes catch the different colors of sunlight; to me this was like reading a good bedtime story collection, but for grown-ups who might’ve forgotten how to see the whimsical in the ordinary.

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And there you have it, my 2024 summer book recommendations! Let me know what you’d recommend reading to beat the heat. ☼