Malinda's 10ish Books for Summer Reading

Summer reading – it’s one of the Best events of the year. I love to spread out on a cozy quilt under a shady tree and dive into a book. Recently, a co-worker asked me for some recommendations for summer reading. I tried So Hard to keep my list to just ten books, but I stealthily name dropped my book friends until it was a bit more than 10.

Without further ado, here are 10ish books that I would recommend for your summer reading list.

1. The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver - I adore Barbara Kingsolver. Sometimes she writes a sentence that I need to read 2 or 3 times just because it is so beautiful. This book is about a young Mexican American man who becomes mixed up with Frida Kahlo and Trotsky and the Committee on Un-American Activities. History + Great Characters + Heartbreak + New Perspectives (I am also especially fond of her books The Poisonwood Bible and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.)

2. The Silver Star by Jeannette Walls – Walls’ The Glass Castle is one of my favorite dysfunctional memoirs, and I love this fiction work by the same author. I've read Star three times, I think. It is about two sisters who, abandoned by their mother, must move back to the small, southern, factory town where their family once owned the local mill. It is sort of a modern Southern Gothic, coming of age, classism/racism/sexism tome.  (This book was recommended to me by JM who recommends amazing books like A Year of Biblical Womanhood and Mindset.)

3. Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters - My colleague BD, who always recommends the best books (like Cultural Literacy and The Last Policeman), sent this one my way. It is a politically insightful, perhaps controversial, adult dystopian novel. The setting is a re-imagined America where the Civil War did not happen and there are still several slave states. An undercover African American agent works to catch escaped slaves for a government agency.  It is for the Black Lives Matter movement what The Handmaid's Tale is to liberal feminism. 

4. Winterdance by Gary Paulsen - I literally could not care less about sports adventure books where people go off and do something crazy in the name of proving they can. Except for this book. I love this book. Only the author of Hatchet and The Winter Room could make me care, deeply, about the Iditarod. I read it last summer and was, at points, forced to climb under a blanket because I was experiencing Alaskan cold along with Gary Paulsen. I plan to read it again this summer. 

5. Heartless by Marissa Meyer – If you have ever heard me gush, it might have been about Marissa Meyer. I think she is Beyond Fabulous. This is her most recent book and it is brilliant. It is the story of how the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass became a violent force of nature who roams Wonderland screaming, “Off with their heads!” The way that Meyer takes the stories and poems of Lewis Carroll’s classic works and weaves them into a beautiful, heartbreaking, romantic, adventure-filled YA novel is delicious.  

6. The Rosie Project by Grame Simsion - I read a lot of books about autism and this is one of my fictional favorites (along with Mockingbird and The Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime). It's a quirky Australian romance about a genetics professor who is attempting to find his perfect mate by using a carefully crafted questionnaire. It's sweet and funny and insightful. It was recommended by my friend BT (who also passed me the luscious mystery The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.)

7. Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell - This book is so weird. Sarah Vowell (who I really would love to have in my circle of friends – along with Anne Lamott) decides to delve into the deaths of assassinated presidents, largely by visiting their places of death and places associated with their deaths. It has a lot of cool history in it, and I relish Sarah Vowell's playfully sick sense of humor. 

8. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield - I got this book from my friend LG, who I still love even though she does not appreciate my devotion to Life of Pi. This is like Southern Gothic if that was a British genre. It's got a main character who loves books (which I'm a sucker for), a story within a story, and lots of really twisted family plots. Also, it makes some excellent allusions to classic Gothic novels. 

9. Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe - I read this because I wanted to read the part about the making of the Outsiders movie. I was not expecting much. It was so good that I passed the copy on to my husband who also really enjoyed it. It was well written with lots of crazy stories and endearing stories and inside Hollywood/political stories. It's my favorite celebrity book other than Bossypants. 

10. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell - I love geeky books (looking at you Invisible Gorilla and every book by Erik Larson) and Malcolm Gladwell always makes me feel really geeky and smart. This is a well-written book about how decisions are made. It leads to some introspection as well as some new thinking.