What’s on your summer reading list?

by
Staff
4.20.09

In preparation for our upcoming July/August issue, we want to hear from you: What books do you, as a writer who reads deeply year-round, turn to in the warm months ahead? Perhaps you're a student who uses the break from required reading to revisit the classics. Or you’re a fiction writer who chooses to pull from the neglected poetry shelf. Or, perhaps, you indulge in the best-sellers to read what everyone else is talking about.

Post a comment and let us know what's on your list.

Comments

Here's a few in my TO-READ

Here's a few in my TO-READ pile: The Other Side of Paradise by Staceyann Chin; Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson; The Signal by Ron Carlson; Life List by Olivia Gentile; Poems From the Women's Movement edited by Honor Moore; C.P. Cavafy's Collected and Unfinished Poems edited by Daniel Mendelsohn; Take It by Joshua Beckman; Castle by J. Robert Lennon; The Temple of Wild Geese by Tsutomu Mizukami.

Reading Summer

A friend "ingests" the work of JG Ballard, so I'll try his book Crash; I'll get to Haruki Murakami's After Dark, a 5-month old gift from my lover; a friend is writing a bio on Wilkie Collins', so I've got Woman in White on the list. . . & Toni Morrison's A Mercy, DeLana Dameron's How God Ends Us, Jennifer Fireston's Holiday, & Letters to Poets: Conversations about Poetics, Politics, & Community. If it's not too heavy to carry, Adrian Piper's Out of Order, Out of Sight, Vol 1 and 2.

my summer reading list

sag harbor - colson whitehead; pygmy - chuck palahniuk; collected stories - john cheever; underworld - don delillo; hell's angels - hunter thompson

Summer Reading

Moby Dick, In The American Tree, On Photography

Love Is a Dog from

Love Is a Dog from Hell-Charles Bukowski; On The Road-Jack Kerouac; Off the Road-Carolyn Cassady; Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas-Hunter S. Thompson; The Magic of Blood-Dagoberto Gilb; and if patience is on my side, Only Revolutions-Mark Z. Danielewski

Sag Harbor is on my list

Sag Harbor is on my list too--I love Colson Whitehead. Also: Normal People Don't Live Like This by Dylan Landis, A Person of Interest by Susan Choi, Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham, and anything I can find about the circus.

Off My Shelf

_Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush_ by Luis Urrea (author) Christopher Cardinale (Illustrator) _Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives_ compiled and edited by Peter Orner _Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq_ by Riverbend _The Mariposa Club_ by Rigoberto González _Dear Darkness_ by Kevin Young _Ruins_ by Achy Obejas & any other YA Novels about music/rock n roll

I'm all about lit in

I'm all about lit in translation and the books I just got the McSweeney's sale this summer: The Riddle of the Traveling Skull by Harry Stephen Keeler, Voyage Along the Horizon by Javier Marias, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower, The Conqueror by Jan Kjaerstad, Landscape in Concrete by Jakov Lind, and, if there's any summer left, The Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian.

summer reading list

Julian by Gore Vidal, Fire in the Blood by Irene Nemirovsky, Collected Poems of Allen Ginsberg

Summer reading list

Warhorses by Yusef Komunykaa. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, The Dance Most of All by Jack Gilbert, The Garden of Last Days by Andre Dubus III, The Women by T.C. Boyle, Endpoint by John Updike and...because I liked the HBO series: The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith.

Reading

Ali, Agha Shahid - The Country Without a Post Office: Poems; Hass, Robert - Sun Under Wood; McMichael, James - Four Good Things; Rae Armantrout - Next Life; Ted Berrigan - Sonnets; Frank Stanford - The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You; Michael McGriff - Dismantling the Hills.

My Summer Reading List - 2009

The Plague of Doves: A Novel by Louise Erdrich; Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami; Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems by Juan Felipe Herrera; Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds: The African Diaspora in Indian Country by Tiya Miles, et al.; Black Woman and Other Poems/Mujer negra y otros poemas by Nancy Morejon; Femme du Monde: Poems by Patricia Spears Jones; Burro Genius: A Memoir by Victor Villasenor; Sister Nations: Native American Women Writers On Community (Native Voices)- Heid E. Erdrich; Reckonings: Contemporary Short Fiction by Native American Women by Hertha D. Sweet Wong, et al.; Sonata Mulattica: Poems by Rita Dove; Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros

Some American classics:

Some American classics: Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson) and Tender is the Night (Fitzgerald). Poetry: Then, Suddenly (Lynn Emanuel); A Book of Luminous Things (ed. Czeslaw Milosz);Blue on Blue Ground (Aaron Smith); In the Surgical Theater (Dana Levin). For fiction: The Rose Metal Press Guide to Writing Flash Fiction (ed. Tara L. Masih); re-read Romancer Erector (Diane Williams); and purchase Olive Kitteridge (Elizabeth Strout). There will be more.

summer reading

The Mistress's Daughter by A.M. Homes; The Owning Stone by Jim Peterson'; How It Ended by Jay McInerney; a handful of lit journals that seem to collect in all corners of my house; emails from friends; Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower; A Dog Heaven by Stephanie Vaughn; something by Tobias Wolff (not sure yet which one); Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk

I'm going to explore John

I'm going to explore John Banville, aka Benjamin Black, James M Cain, Andrea Camilleri, Watchmen by Alan Moore, Wells Tower, Low Boy by John Wray, Don't Cry by Mary Gaitskill, Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey and Evelyn Waugh.

Finishing 2666 by Roberto

Finishing 2666 by Roberto Bolano, Anna Karenina, Reif Larsen's The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet, and The Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian.

Summer reading

I just started reading "God Says No" by James Hannaham and it's grabbed me from the get-go. I am also reading, and meditating on, Barbara Brown Taylor's newest, "An Altar in the World." Fabulous. I have "A People's History of Christianity" by Diana Butler Bass to start on next in the nonfiction pile. Hope to read Josh Weil's new book of three novellas, "The New Valley." I'll probably also jump into some fun summery fiction, like Nick Wilgus's latest Father Ananda mystery.