Your Summer Reading List (for the Next 50 Summers)

I am, as many of you have probably guessed, a bit of a workaholic.

I am also, as many of you know, at the beach this week.

I’ve spent the last month or so working ahead on all of my writing assignments so that I could have a fantastic week with my family that was unfettered by deadlines. I also planned ahead for a mental vacation of my own- one that would involve the one thing I love doing but don’t get to do enough lately (well, actually, there’s more than one thing, but stay with me, mkay?):

Reading.

And so about a week ago, in an effort to have the best Week O’ Reading possible, I asked for your book recommendations. And you delivered.

Boy, did you ever deliver!

You gave me so many great titles (each of which I cross-referenced on Amazon, by the way), that I decided I needed to share them with you. I also got out my handy dandy list of EVERYBOOKIHAVEVERREAD and picked out all the ones I think you’d love.

And so now, without further adieu, I present to you….

Your Summer Reading List. FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

You recommend:

My Family and Other Animals
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
If I Stay
A Girl Named Zippy
The Heretic’s Daughter
One Last Thing
Heaven is For Real
The Book Thief
Little Bee
The Bitch in the House
Same Kind of Different as Me
The Historian
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
The Magnificent Ambersons
Cane River
Pope Joan
The Dry Grass of August
The Last Chinese Chef
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
The Book of Joe
Every Last One
The Pillars of the Earth
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Water for Elephants
This is Where I Leave You
Cinderella Ate My Daughter
A Visit from the Goon Squad
One for the Money (Book 1 of the Stephanie Plum series)
The Paris Wife
How Did You Get This Number?
Sarah’s Key
Cutting for Stone
Little Bee
The 19th Wife
How to Talk to a Widower
Winter Garden
Firefly Lane
The Wilder Life
The Swan House
Divergent
In the Woods
The Passage
The Gargoyle

I recommend:

The Secret History- Donna Tartt
Run with the Horsemen- Ferroll Samms
Madame Bovary
All the King’s Men
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Night- Elie Wiesel
Love in the Time of Cholera
100 Years of Solitude
The Witching Hour- Anne Rice
What Fresh Hell is This (an excellent Dorothy Parker biography)- Marion Meade
Fear of Flying- Erica Jong
To Kill a Mockingbird
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Cold Sassy Tree
Christy- Catherine Marshall
Wuthering Heights
Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady- Florence King
The Two Mrs. Grenvilles- Dominic Dunne
I’m with the Band- Pamela Des Barres
Jane Eyre
Edie: Diary of an American Girl (amazing biography of Edie Sedgewick by George Plimpton)
Tales of the City-Armistead Maupin
Emma
Self Help-Lorrie Moore
The Diary of Adrian Mole
The House of the Spirits- Isabel Allende
Lakota Woman
Interview with the Vampire
The Vampire Lestat
Charms for the Easy Life – Kaye Gibbons
In Cold Blood- Truman Capote
My Father’s Glory/My Mother’s Castle- Marcel Pagnol
A Lesson Before Dying
The Lords of Discipline
Corelli’s Mandolin
Naked- David Sedaris
Play It as It Lays- Joan Didion
The Remains of the Day
A Year in Provence- Peter Mayle
The “Lucia” books by E.F. Benson
Anna Karenina- Leo Tolstoy
The Once and Future King
The Reader
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Memoirs of a Geisha
Vanity Fair
The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing
Jean de Florette/Manon of the Springs- Marcel Pagnol
The Harry Potter books- JK Rowling
The Corrections- Jonathan Franzen
Freedom- Jonathan Franzen
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency- Alexander McCall Smith
Mr. Bridge/ Mrs. Bridge- Evan S. Connell
Coraline
Bel Canto- Ann Patchett
The Hiding Place
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
The Blind Assassin- Margaret Atwood
The Lovely Bones
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius- Dave Eggers
The Time Traveler’s Wife
Running With Scissors
The Other Boleyn Girl
The Ruins

Feel free to add more suggestions in the comments- The more the merrier!

And your suggestions are totally rocking my world- We stopped in a locally-owned bookstore in Savannah yesterday and I had a GREAT time because I kept coming across all the books you’ve recommended. It was so much fun recognizing them and getting a chance to flip through them in person!

Now… What do you recommend?

Image courtesy of nseika/Flickr

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