Matthew Linton shares a couple recent
works in U.S. intellectual history: Edmund
Fawcett’s Liberalism: The Life of an Idea and
Jamie Cohen-Cole’s The Open Mind: Cold War Politics and the
Sciences of Human Nature.
Osvaldo Oyola writes, “Hoping to read some Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany, and plug the unforgivable gap of Af-Am
sci-fi writers in my reading.” (Heather Urbanski suggests “adding N.K.
Jemisin to the list.”)
Paige Swarbrick writes, “I’ve got plenty of Stephen King I
plan on reading, including Pet
Sematary, Joyland, and On
Writing.”
Ilene Railton highlights “Black Water Rising by Attica Locke—found it at City
Lights Bookstore a few
weeks back.”
Heather
Urbanski will be reading “If
We Shadows by D.E.
Atwood—magical realism with
Shakespeare and a trans* teen protagonist,” “plus stories nominated for The
Hugo Awards this year.”
Andre Carrington
highlights “Capital
in the 21st Century, Mat Johnson’s Pym, and Samuel Delany’s latest gigantic novel.”
Serena-Rose Ciccarello writes, “Sarah
Dessen is my guilty
pleasure & favorite for a beach read. Starting This
Lullaby soon.”
Jeff Renye notes that, “If I were going to the beach, I would bring Joyce
Carol Oates’ The
Accursed.”
Anna Consalvo has “just finished Adichie’s Americanah.
Beautiful and poignant commentary on race in the good ol’ USA and much more.
All told through the details of Ifemelu’s day to day life and love.”
Elizabeth
Duclos-Orsello shares “Passing
Strange by Martha Sandweiss—just
got my 12 year old hooked on it!”
Jana Tigchelaar
writes, “I beach-read (and loved) Louise Erdrich’s Master
Butchers Singing Club and Karen Joy Fowler’s We
Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. I also think Edith Wharton’s Summer would
be an excellent beach read.”
In response to a Twitter question about poetry beach reads, Vicki Ziegler writes, “I would happily
re-read Sue
Goyette’s Ocean on a beach.
Perfect poetry beach read!”
AnneMarie Donahue shares, “Gillian Flynn's trilogy: Gone Girl (read it soon before it
becomes a film directed by David Fincher and starring Batfleck!... in truth,
that film is going to rock!); Sharp
Objects; Dark Places! All are
awesome and read very quickly. Also you will be the official badass at the pool
or beach. Yeah, they are murder mysteries, but they are awesome, each has a
nice and highly unpredictable twist at the end and characters that say 'go
ahead, sum me up to your friends, I double dare you!' Then for the inner-geek
who wants to get old school and show off to those GoT HBO fans... Robert
Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. Both are completely nookable
books, but you know these are covers you wanna show off. A good book is better
than a string bikini, let's be honest.” AnneMarie also highlights Bernard
Cornwell’s The Pagan Lord and David Foster
Wallace’s Consider
the Lobster.
Finally, Irene
Martyniuk adds, “I keep thinking about my closing plea to
my European Literature II students a few weeks ao—now that you have finished
this class, when you see a book by an author whose last name you cannot
pronounce, read it! Or, and this is good advice for all of my classes, make it
a goal to read one more book by one of the athors that we have read this
semester. Or, at the beach, turn back to a book you were assigned to read in
high school or college (or even junior high/middle school). Now read it for
pleasure. Lord of the Flies is really
good. Heart of Darkness is
incredible. Even The Scarlet Letter
deserves more than a trip through Spark Notes. Finally, there are wonderful
creative non-fiction books out there, which is more in line with what you wrote
today, although your point about academic books being more accessible is far
more clever than what I'm typing. The
Devil in the White City by Erik Larsen (huge best seller) is worth the
read, A
Civil Action is still terrific. Stuff like that. Frankly, just read
this summer.”
I couldn’t agree more! Next series
starts Monday,
Ben
PS.
So I’ll ask again: what would you recommend for a good beach read? What are you
hoping to get to by the pool this summer?
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