Summer Reading List
Summertime means vacation for many, and even though I don’t have any long trips planned for this summer, one of the best ways I relax and unwind is curling up with a good book.
Instead of being stuck with what to read next, I always spend some time in June compiling a Summer Reading List. Whether I take a train or airplane, some of my best reading usually happens in transit – and I like to have a variety of books in mind to keep me entertained.
READ MORE: Summer Reading List 2017
READ MORE: Summer Reading List 2019
This new Summer Reading List is as eclectic as my travel style, so you’ll find it packed with both fiction and non-fiction, covering my randomly-determined categories of Easy Reading, Memoir, On a More Serious Note, Self Improvement, & Thriller.
Here’s what made it onto my 2018 ‘Summer Reading List’:
EASY READING
Circe
by Madeline Miller
This Greek goddess who is the daughter of Helios breaks out into her own and after being banished by Zeus has some of the more memorable encounters in Greek mythology with the Minotaur, Icarus, and Odysseus. Billed as part-fantasy, part-drama, this will definitely offer an escape to another world.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
The Kiss Quotient
by Helen Hoang
As a former math teacher (and lifetime math enthusiast!) how could I not already love a book that has quotient in the title?!? The main character uses math to organize her life and decides to hire a professional escort to get her acclimated to everything dating-related. Totally logical, right? I have a feeling I’m going to enjoy this one. Plus, there’s already another book in this series planned for next year.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
When Life Gives You Lululemons
by Lauren Weisberger
The title might be a bit too cute even for me, but after a second book that most people didn’t read, this is the third novel of The Devil Wears Prada series, with former unfavored assistant Emily taking her latest Hollywood image consultant skills to ritzy Connecticut. Sounds like this one is going to be one entertaining read for summer.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
MEMOIR
All Over the Place: Adventures in Travel, True Love, and Petty Theft
by Geraldine DeRuiter
Written by fellow blogger Geraldine DeRuite, this memoir is by someone who describes herself as inherently unsuited to travel . . . but does it anyway. I can’t wait to experience all her misadventures in her several years of traveling the globe and all the ways she gets lost – literally and metaphorically – along the way.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
Educated: A Memoir
by Tara Westover
Westover, born to survivalist parents, was nearly 18 years old before she ever attended school or saw a doctor. She was so motivated in her quest for education that it eventually resulted in her earning a PhD from Cambridge University. I can’t wait to experience this most unusual journey vicariously through her eyes.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
Priestdaddy: A Memoir
by Patricia Lockwood
Patricia’s father, already married with children, gets unusual approval to become a Catholic priest. And that seems to be the most normal part of her upbringing! The memoir looks back on her childhood and her experience as an adult moving back in with her parents, and all her hilarious observations along the way.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
Without You There is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite
by Suki Kim
This book is from 2014, but feels incredibly relevant this summer as one of the only available first-hand accounts of what it is like inside North Korea. Kim is an investigative journalist who posed as a missionary to get a position teaching English at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology to the country’s elite. Her novel has been controversial enough that the author addressed the ethics of her being embedded there on her personal website, but regardless of how you feel about her methods, it is one of the few independent accounts available of life on the inside.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
ON A MORE SERIOUS NOTE
American Kingpin
by Nick Bilton
Set around the Dark Web, the underbelly of the internet, a single person created a marketplace for all sort of illicit transactions in 2011. By the time law enforcement finally hears about it, it is a $1 billion unidentified enterprise nearly impossible to take down. The story of the manhunt may sound more like a thriller, but I imagine the possibilities of the evil of the internet will have me thinking some serious thoughts along the way.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
An American Marriage
by Tayari Jones
Once this book got picked as a selection for Oprah’s Book Club, you knew there were some serious ramifications to this story. An American Marriage touches on America’s criminal justice system and wrongful incarceration, and the havoc it can wreak on personal relationships. This one is definitely near the top of my Summer Reading List.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
Girls Burn Brighter
by Shobha Rao
On the surface it’s about two teenage friends who become separated and then struggle to find one another again, but along the way the story shifts from India to America and explores issues like extreme poverty and human trafficking. It ultimately seems to be about the friendship between the women though, which is what I find so compelling.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
Into the Raging Sea: Thirty-three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of the El Faro
by Rachel Slade
After watching a movie that involves an airplane crash while traveling on an airplane (2012’s Flight, in case you’re curious) I have no hesitation reading this highly anticipated book about a giant container ship that went missing in the Bermuda Triangle. Even if I end up reading it while I’m on a boat! More than anything, this strikes me as both a mystery solved and an unsettling look into the modern shipping industry.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
The Power
by Naomi Alderman
Named The Power because this book envisions a world in which women hold the power, but it seems to be grounded enough in reality that it reveals a lot we don’t necessarily want to see about power dynamics. Apparently terrifying at points when it takes situations to their logical conclusion in this alternate universe, the intersection of power and gender roles is bound to be interesting.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
Three Daughters of Eve
by Elif Shafak
This bestselling author who writes in both Turkish and English spins a tale set in Istanbul, where the main character has to reconcile memories from her time abroad at Oxford University with the modern terror attacks taking place in Turkey. Turkey has always been at the crossroads of continents, but this story also seems to explore the far scarier conflict between modernity and tradition, and the violence that results when they clash.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
Turtles All the Way Down
by John Green
The teenage main character chases a lavish reward by a billionaire, but the journey serves to unmask someone struggling vividly with mental illness and their attempts to cope. This story sounds like one that will draw me in and I just won’t be able to look away, even as she unravels.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
SELF-IMPROVEMENT
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Rönnlund
When Bill Gates puts a book on his 2018 list of 5 books worth reading this summer, you pay attention, especially when he calls Factfulness “one of the best books I’ve ever read.” The book addresses misconceptions people hold about global trends and how we’re not as bad off as we thought. I am already thinking of it as the 21st century version of “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” and hope Rosling changes my outlook for the better.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
THRILLER
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century
by Kirk W. Johnson
It’s the only non-fiction one in this category, but this one sounds like a real page-turning thriller. Unusual in that it tells the story of a heist that involved no violence, the American author happens to hear about the rare bird specimens that went missing in England two years prior and then becomes obsessed with the topic, doing his own investigating to find out more about this most unusual theft.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
The President is Missing
by Bill Clinton and James Patterson
Who cares what it’s about, former American President Bill Clinton and bestselling author James Patterson wrote a book together! Well, the title kind of gives the premise away anyway, but this a thriller that unfolds over three days that I can’t wait to read.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
The Wife Between Us
by Greer Hendricks
This seems to me to be in the same vein as Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, a suspense novel about love and marriage. From the reviews I’ve seen people seem to feel strongly about this one, and I get the feeling I’m going to breeze right through reading it to form an opinion of my own.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
The Woman in the Window
by A.J. Finn
A recluse in New York City sees something as she looks out her window that causes the whole spiral of the book. I haven’t read many of the details because I’d prefer to be surprised, but this might be the most-hyped book on this list – I’ve had it on hold at the library since March and am only just now in June approaching the top of the list to borrow it to read.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
The Word Is Murder
by Anthony Horowitz
I just read and loved Magpie Murders by the same author and his latest novel came out just a few weeks ago. The action seems to kick off when I woman is strangled just hours after arranging her own funeral. My previous read involved some quaint British mystery-solving in the style of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple or Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, and I can’t wait to see where this one leads.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
Two Girls Down
by Louisa Luna
Two young sisters disappear in a parking lot and their mother hires a bounty hunter and former cop to find them. I’m not sure where this will all lead, but it certainly sounds like an interesting premise that will keep me turning pages to see how it all turns out.
Check out versions and prices HERE.
READ MORE: Summer Reading List 2017
READ MORE: Summer Reading List 2019
Where are you headed this summer? Do you know what books you’ll be reading yet? Any great books that didn’t make my list? I love book recommendations, let me know what your favorite summer reads are!
And in case you missed it, my 2017 “Summer Reading List” is HERE.
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2 thoughts on “Summer Reading List”
You’ve picked some great books that I’ve never read before! Can’t wait to check them out !!
Nice Amanda, I’m so glad to hear!