June 23-24, 2018: Crowd-sourced Beach Reads

[For this year’s installment of my annual Beach Reads series, I wanted to revisit favorites from different stages of my life, all of which would make for fun additions to your summer bookbag. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from the nominations of fellow BeachReadStudiers—add yours in comments, please]

AnneMarie Donahue shares, “Luckiest Girl in the World, Bob (YA lit), Hate List (YA lit), Ink.”

Michael Giannasca writes that he “bought the Outlander series and Less.”

Andrew Joseph Pedoda nominates Monique Truong’s Bitter in the Mouth.

Maranda Fluet shares her own most recent book, Parallels!

Paige Wallace goes with Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove, and adds, “oh, and also, I'm Just Happy to Be Here by Janelle Hanchett. She's the author of the Renegade Mothering blog (but she isn't everyone's cup of tea) and she may or may not be a grad school friend of mine; it's a great read if you don't mind laughing hysterically one minute and sobbing uncontrollably the next.”

Andrew DaSilva writes, “For fiction The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway and The Pigman by Paul Zindel. For non-Fiction The Outer Beach: A Thousand-Mile Walk on Cape Cod's Atlantic Shore by Robert Finch and The Kerner Report aka The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders.” On the Kerner Report, Jeff Renye shares this follow up resource.

AnneMarie Donahue also responds, writing “I teach The Pigman, the kids love it! I read [Zindel’s] My Darling, My Hamburger and was blown away!”

Andrew later adds, “I know I already made some suggestions but here are three more. The Outermost House by Henry Beston, The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Shadows in the Asylum by D.A Stern.”

Jenny Fielding shares, “Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, The Humans by Matt Haig, The Comet Seekers by Helen Sedgwick, and You Are Not a Gadget by Jarod Lanier.”

Olivia Lucier writes, “The Night Circus—great mix of 2nd and 3rd person story telling, plot twists, poetry, and the imagery is breathtaking.”

Chile Hidalgo highlights The Glasgow Trilogy by Malcolm Mackay.

Tamara Verhyen writes, “Trying to make it the summer of poetry. Starting with Milk and Honey.”

Anne Holub nominates There There by Tommy Orange.

Nancy Caronia shares, “I'm actually reading a memoir, The Bosnia List from 2014. I have a feeling the experience of this writer could soon be ours.”

Patricia Ringle Vandever goes with Commonwealth by Ann Patchett.

Tom Murray writes, “If this is for the boys, check out John Christopher's WHITE MOUNTAIN trilogy, a sci-fi series about aliens who attempt to enslave humanity. The first book, THE WHITE MOUNTAINS, will surely grip its readers. When I ran a children's bookstore I gave a money back guarantee on this title for any kids around 8 or 9. I sold over 100 copies and no one ever came back with complaints.”

Kent Rose highlights “The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash—great historical labor-related novel!”

Kelly Stowell goes with The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas.

Quintin Burks shares At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O’Neill.

Tim McCaffrey highlights, “I'll be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara. Chilling.”

Lara Schwartz writes, “I just finished Tigerman by Nick Harkaway. Crazy good.”

Sue Wells shares, “The Overstory! This is an amazing book, and weeks later I'm still looking at trees differently.”

Tina Powell Tweets out “Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You.”

And my Mom Ilene Railton nominates The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry.

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other Beach Reads you’d nominate?