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Pride and Prejudice, we meet again. By the wonderful Grace Farris.
P.S. Reading coincidences and summer report card.
Summer Reads
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Can I get some recs on favorite 10,000 word articles?
I’ll start! The 2015 New Yorker piece below about the overdue earthquake on the West Coast completely enraptured me and I’ve recommended it to so many people since. Would love to find more articles that do the same!
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one
Well. this was absolutely terrifying and is now going to give me nightmares.
Anyone wanting a “vacation in a book” book this summer should try Still Life by Sarah Winman! Another book I got completely lost in recently was Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell.
Took me a while to get through Still Life because I spent so much time researching all the amazing references in it.
I’ve just started it and I’m loving it!
To me, short stories are the way to go in the summer. The perfect amount of reading for an afternoon at the pool or laying in the park in the shade. Two always favorites are Marcovaldo (or the seasons of the city) by Italo Calvino and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver.
10,000 word magazine article!
It is funny how they’re always super interesting
Thank you for the laughs
I’m reading Lessons in Chemistry and it is SO GOOD. It takes about 100 pages to get into but I PROMISE the payoff is worth it. I just love the characters!! Sort of like Peggy and Mad Men, but in the world of science.
I devoured this in two days last weekend and absolutely loved it too!
Thank you for the recommendation. This keeps catching my eye at the bookstore but I’ve yet to pick it up. Next time!
LOVED it! Three cheers for the author: “These days it’s pretty amazing for a 64-year-old woman to get her first novel published at all, let alone in 35 countries.” https://www.you.co.uk/bonnie-garmus-interview/
If I can make a recommendation: Geraldine Brooks has a new(ish) book, called Horse. She’s my FAVOURITE contemporary writer. Her genre is historical fiction. I can’t say enough about how fantastic her books are. They are classic can’t-put-it-down novels. I’ve called in sick to work more than once because I was up until 3 am the night before reading her book. Every Geraldine Brooks novel is unforgettable. Perfection from start to end.
Please try “Eat Only When You’re Hungry”! It’s about addiction, and is told through a family’s addict son and father. Both addicted to very different vices.
I recently read One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle. Wow afterward I felt like I had just returned from vacation; such an engrossing book!
Yes! It was a book vacation!
It was like discovering a whole new book reading “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” after becoming a mother. I had always identified so strongly with Francie, her mother’s story was so much more meaningful to me after becoming a parent- like reading a completely different book
ooooh thanks for the recommendation! this was one of my favorite books when i was a teenager but i haven’t revisited since! will do so pronto, my tattered copy is right here on my bookshelf waiting to be rediscovered!
That’s a gorgeous observation! I love A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and try to read it every few years. I will say having a teenager, my heart feels for Francie so much knowing how difficult those years can be and literally watching it in my daughter right now.
I am LOVING all the Nolan family love on this post!! And Sarah, the timing of your comment is too weird – I’ve been re-reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn my whole life (my mum read it aloud to my sister and I before we were able to read ourselves!) and literally yesterday I was thinking about what it might be like to read it after I become a mom for the first time in December. It’s one of the things I love best about re-reading books over many decades, they become even more meaningful (and meaningful in new and different ways) throughout this wild and precious life!
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was the first book I read every summer break from school. Time with Francie officially marked my summer’s beginning.
After school ended, I stopped the tradition, but I’ll definitely be rereading it now. I never noticed Francie’s mother, to be honest, and am sure to experience the story differently now. Thanks for this!
Yes, exactly! My first time around I was in my 20s but still identified with Francie. But as a mom I really identify with Katie’s complexity! If you read nothing else, the birth scene (her 3rd child) in the last part of the book is worth it. (just amazing writing). Anyway, this same phenomenon happened when I read Little Women again as a 41 year old mom if 2. I’ll always love Jo but now I get Marmee in a new/more complex way.
Aunt Sissy is an icon.
Just yesterday I saw a young woman (can’t be more than 19) reading this on her break from work!! I had to tell her “I love that book so much” and she got really excited that I’d read it. I have my grandmother’s copy and I think I’m due for a re-read thanks to this post!
So true! I re-read this book a few months ago while pregnant with my second, and the book just hit differently!
i just finished ‘book lovers’ by emily henry, and it was suchhhhh a perfect summer read! heavy on the “is the temperature rising or do these characters just have tons of chemistry” thing.
omg I am reading “People We Meet on Vacation” by Emily Henry right now!!! And it is absolutely just as blissful for summer reading!
jem – i read that one a few months ago, too! emily henry’s books are generally not my go-to genre (i’m more a historical fiction type), but every now and then a good book version of a romcom is so needed.
Haha, a friend recommended Emily Henry’s “Beach Read” to me because of its Jonathan Franzen burns and playful romcom-vs-literary-fiction theme, and I read it and cackled. (I’m not typically a romance reader, but ever since Franzen straight-up *ate a songbird* I, in turn, have devoured anything that pokes fun at him.)
I assumed that “ate a songbird” was some euphemism for hating on romances / “women’s fiction” — but no, Google tells me he literally *ate a songbird*
The older I get, the less interested I am in capital-L literature just because it’s been identified as such and am more interested in finding books that speak to me.
P.S. love the Emily Henry books, haha
Agreed. Super swoony character chemistry!!! She’s fantastic.
Nailed it! I grabbed old friend, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” off my bookshelf just minutes before jumping on a plane for a family trip and I’m so glad I did. I haven’t read it in over 15 years and I’m connecting with the characters in a whole new way.
i’m so happy to see that favorite mentioned here! it is SO GOOD.
Oh it’s my favorite as well! I just love it. The pink wafer candy and ice water on the fire escape has always stuck with me.
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