15 Books You Should Read This Summer
1. Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel (Historical Fiction)
Quote: “He can’t imagine himself reading to his household; he’s not, like Thomas More, some sort of failed priest, a frustrated preacher. He never sees More-a star in another firmament, who acknowledges him with a grim nod- without wanting to ask him, what’s wrong with you? Or what’s wrong with me? Why does everything you know, and everything you’ve learned, confirm you in what you believed before? Whereas in my case, what I grew up with, and what I thought I believed, is chipped away a little and a little, a fragment, and then a piece and then a piece more. With every month that passes, the corners are knocked off the certainties of this world: and the next world too. Show me where it says, in the Bible, ‘Purgatory.’ Show me where it says ‘relics, monks, nuns.’ Show me where is says ‘Pope.’”
15 Books You Should Read This Summer
4. Watership Down Richard Adams (Fiction)
Quote: ” ‘I was dreaming. It was dreadful. You were there. We were sitting on water, going down a great stream, and then I realized we were on a board-like that board in the field-all white and covered with black lines. There were other rabbits there-bucks and does. But when I looked down, I saw the board was made of bones and wire; and I screamed and you said, “Swim-everybody swim”; and then I was looking for you everywhere and trying to drag you out of a hole in the bank. I found you, but you said, “The Chief Rabbit must go alone,” and you floated away down a dark tunnel of water.’ “
15 Books You Should Read This Summer
5. Year of Wonders Geraldine Brooks (Fiction)
Quote: “Of all the lonely moments of my day, this one is always the loneliest. I confess I have sometimes been reduced to muttering my thoughts aloud like a madwoman when the need for a human voice becomes too strong. I mislike this, for I fear the line between myself and madness is as fine these days as a cobweb, and I have seen what it means when a soul crosses over into that dim and wretched place…when the light is gone, the nights are long, for I sleep badly, my arms reaching in slumber for my babies’ small warm bodies, jolting suddenly wakeful when I do not find them.”
15 Books You SHould Read This Summer
6. In Cold Blood Truman Capote (Non-fiction)
Quote: ” ‘And seeing the dog-somehow that made me feel again. I’d been too dazed, too numb, to feel the full viciousness of it. The suffering. The horror. They were dead. A whole family. Gentle, kindly people, people I knew—murdered. You had to believe it, because it was really true.’ “
15 Books You SHould Read This Summer
7. The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver (Fiction)
Opening Lines: “We came from Bethlehem, Georgia, bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle. My sisters and I were all counting on having one birthday apuece during our twelve-month mission. ‘And heaven knows,’ our mother predicted, ‘they won’t have Betty Crocker in the congo.’”
15 Books You Should Read This Summer
8. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers Mary Roach (Non-fiction)
Opening Lines: “The human head is of the same approximate size and weight as a roaster chicken. I have never before had occasion to make the comparison, for never before today have I seen a head in a roasting pan. But here are forty of them, one per pan, resting face-up on what looks to be a small pet-food bowl.”
15 Books You Should Read This Summer
9. The Princess Bride William Goldman (Fiction)
Opening Lines: “The Year that Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette. Anette worked in Paris for the Duke and Duchess de Guiche, and it did not escape the Duke’s notice that someone extraordinary was polishing the pewter. The Duke’s notice did not escape the notice of the Duchess either, who was not very beautiful and not very rich, but plenty smart. The Duchess set about studying Annette and shortly found her adversary’s tragic flaw. Chocolate.”
10. Abundance Sena Jeter Naslund (Historical Fiction)
Quote: ” ‘Is it true that you were loved—so splendidly?’
Suddenly I see the image of Fersen, sitting on the high box of the berlin, with the straps of leather, the reins, hanging loosely in his gloved hands. And I envision the King beside him, ready to play the role of coachman for my sake. ’Yes,’ I say. ‘I was loved so splendidly.’ “
15 Books You Should Read This Summer
11. Abarat Clive Barker (Fantasy)
Opening Lines: “Three is the number of those who do holy work;/ Two is the number of those who do lover’s work;/ One is the number of those who do perfect evil/ Or perfect good.”
15 Books You Should Read This Summer
12. Zeitoun Dave Eggers (Non-fiction)
Quote: “It had been a dizzying series of events—arrested at gunpoint in a home he owned, brought to an impromptu military base built inside a bus station, accused of terrorism, and locked in an outdoor cage. It surpassed the most surreal accounts he’d heard of third world law enforcement… But then again, he noted, it was not unprecedented. During Mardi Gras, when the local jails were full, the New Orleans police often housed drunks and thieves in temporary jails set up in tents. This one though was far more elaborate, and had been built since the storm…It looked precisely like the pictures he’s seen of Guantanamo Bay.”
15 Books You Should Read This Summer
13. Girlchild Tupelo Hassman (Fiction)
Opening Lines: “Mama always hid her mouth when she laughed. Even when she spoke too gleefully, mouth stretched too wide by those happy muscles, teeth too visible. I can still recognize someone from my neighborhood by their teeth. Or lack of them. And whenever I do, I call these people family.”
15 Books You Should Read This Summer
14. A Girl Named Zippy Haven Kimmel (Memoir)
Quote: “Somehow my first wig and my first really excellent pair of slippers arrived simultaneously. Now my hair, my actual human hair which grows out of my head, was slow in coming. I was bald until I was nearly three. My head was also strangely crooked, and it happened that the little patches of wispy bird hair I did have grew only in the dents. Also my eyes were excessively large and decidedly close together. When my mother first saw me in the hospital she looked up with tears in her eyes and said to my father, ‘I’ll love her and protect her anyway.’“
15 Books You Should Read This Summer
15. Swamplandia! Karen Russell (Fiction)
Opening Lines: “Our mother performed in starlight. Whose innovation this was I never discovered. Probably it was Chief Bigtree’s idea, and it was a good one-to blank the follow spot and let a sharp moon cut across the sky, unchaperoned; to kill the microphone; to leave the stage lights’ tin eyelids scrolled and give the tourists in the stands a chance to enjoy the darkness of our island; to encourage the whole stadium to gulp air along with Swamplandia!’s star performer, the world-famous alligator wrestler Hilola Bigtree.”
