Recommended Summer Reading

Mark A. Trowbridge

Summer is upon us and boy aren’t we glad.

This time of year is not just for relaxing in your backyard hammock, lounging by the pool, globetrotting to the latest hot-spot on your favorite travel writer’s blog, or unwinding with friends and family here in town. It is the perfect season to curl up with a good book (or two) and transport yourself to another time or place or frame of mind.

Last summer, we asked our friend Mitchell Kaplan and his incredible team of literary geniuses at Books & Books to curate a summer reading list for all of us to enjoy — something akin to what our young people might be handed on the last day of school. Except, our catalogue is for the big kids and covers quite the array of topics.

And this year Mitchell and the gang kindly agreed to do it all over again — only in an even bigger way. How cool is that?

The titles noted below represent an array of suggested fiction and non-fiction works (including some that won’t be released until later this summer) that you might want to pick up at Books & Books before heading out on your next adventure. Each volume will slip nicely into a carry-on, roller board, briefcase or beach bag — and all fit quite perfectly in the seat back pocket.

More importantly, every book has been carefully selected with you — the busy professional whose time is a precious commodity — in mind. There is tremendous variety, as well as some incredible gems that just might change your life. Well, at least influence and enhance it.

We have also noted publication dates for those titles that will drop later this summer (available now for pre-order, of course), shared the pricing and made special mention of author events that will be hosted in-store at Books & Books in the Gables, a community gathering point extraordinaire.

As I head out to points yonder this midsummer solstice, I will be stuffing the newest David Sedaris work into my bag, unmasking Andrew Lloyd Weber’s autobiographical tome and devouring a local work by a cherished friend, David Lawrence Jr.’s own A Dedicated Life.

Happy reading, summertime friends, and thanks again to our amazing curators at Books & Books for putting together one heck of a Gables summer reading list.

Recommended Fiction Works
Warlight by Michael Ondaatje (Knopf, $26.95)
Circe by Madeline Miller (Little, Brown & Co., $27)
The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer (Berkley, $28)
There, There by Tommy Orange (Dutton, $25.95)
Love and Ruin by Paula McLain (Penguin, $28)
Feel Free by Zadie Smith (Penguin, $28)
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (Algonquin, $26.95)
The President is Missing: A Novel by President Bill Clinton and James Patterson (Hachette, $30)
Calypso by David Sedaris (Little, Brown & Co., $25)
Florida: Stories by Lauren Groff (Riverhead, $27)
A Place for Us: A Novel by Fatima Farheen Mirza (Sarah Jessica Parker for Hogarth, $27), releases June 12
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata (Grove Press, $20), releases June 12
Bearskin: A Novel by James A. McLaughlin (Harper, $26.99), releases June 12
Confessions of the Fox (Putnam, $27), releases June 26
The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon (Riverhead, $26), releases July 31
The Third Hotel by Laura van den Berg (FSG, $25), releases Aug. 7
Ohio by Stephen Markley (Simon & Schuster, $26), releases Aug. 21

Recommended Nonfiction Titles
The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels by Jon Meacham (Putnam, $30)
The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli (Riverhead, $20)
In Praise of Wasting Time by Alan Lightman (Simon & Schuster, $16.99)
Principles by Ray Dalio (Simon & Schuster, $30)
How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence by Michael Pollan (Penguin, $28)
Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (Random House, $28)
Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art Out of Having an Opinion by Michelle Dean (Grove/Atlantic, $26)
The Third Door: The Wild Quest to Uncover How the World’s Most Successful People Launched Their Careers by Alex Banayan (Currency, $26)
Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo by Zora Neale Hurston (HarperCollins, $24.99)
Beneath a Ruthless Sun: A True Story of Violence, Race & Justice Lost and Found by Gilbert King (Putnam, $28)
Unmasked by Andrew Lloyd Webber (HarperCollins, $28.99)
Bruce Lee: A Life by Matthew Polly (Simon & Schuster, $35)
Project Fire by Steven Raichlen (Workman, $22.95)
Center of Dreams: Building a World-Class Performing Arts Complex in Miami by Les Standiford (University of Florida Press, $24.95)
The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump by Michiko Kakutani (Random House, $22), releases July 17

A Dedicated Life by David Lawrence Jr. (Books & Books Press, $27.95), releases Aug. 15, meet the author at Temple Judea on Tuesday, Sept. 25, 7:30 p.m.


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