Summer Reading Lists Arrive

      

Memorial Day is marked by parades, wreath laying, dreams of long days reading in the hammock, and summer reading lists. Several arrived as scheduled, and, as we’ve come to expect, there’s very little overlap among them. Only four titles were mentioned more than once in this round:

The Age of MiraclesKaren Thompson Walker(Random House, 6/26; BOT Audio; Thorndike Large Print; ebook and audio, OverDrive)

On NYT (Maslin), NPR (Schaub) and WSJ lists
Digital ARC on Edelweiss and NetGalley.

The Next Best Thing, Jennifer Weiner, (S&S/Atria, 7/3; S&S Audio)

On USA Today and Good Houskeeping lists
Downloadable from NetGalley

The Orphanmaster, Jean Zimmerman, (Penguin/Viking, 6/19; Penguin Audio; Thorndike Large Print)

On USA Today and Good Houskeeping lists
Digital ARC on Edelweiss and NetGalley

Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple, (Hachette/Little, Brown, 8/14; Hachette Audio)

On NPR (Schaub) and WSJ lists as well as on Time‘s list of the best ten novels of the year.

Below are the lists:

USA Today — Summer Books Preview”

Our favorite, because it’s most in tune with the titles we’ve been hearing about on GalleyChat and it is presented in an interactive format (flash cards for readers advisors), although, surprisingly, it misses the big buzz debut of the summer, Karen Thompson Walker’s The Age of Miracles(Random House, 6/26).

The Wall Street Journal — “Rewriting the Rules of Summer Fiction

The WSJ contends that several of the summer’s most anticipated novels “combine genres in unexpected ways and subvert long-held narrative conventions.”  It’s a good hook, but the phenomenon wasn’t invented this season. The prime examples are The Age of Miracles because it’s “a quiet family drama with science-fiction themes” and  Dare Me (Hachette/Regan Arthur, 8/31) by Megan Abbot, dubbed “High-School Noir” because it “turns the frothy world of high-school cheerleading into something truly menacing.”

NPR — 15 Summer Reads Recommended By Booksellers

Unsurprisingly, this is the least buzz-oriented of the lists. NPR has published several other summer reading lists, including Nancy Pearl’s and critic Michael Schaub’s (who is more clued in to buzz; The Age of Miracles is on his). The full roundup of the various NPR lists is here.

New York Times, Janet Maslin — “New Under the Sun: Books for Basking; Granddad, There’s a Head on the Beach and Other Summer Reads

Maslin lavishes the most attention on Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies, already a best seller, and includes some quirky titles, (such as the one in the headline, Granddad, There’s a Head on the Beach, a “droll mystery” by Colin Cotterill, Macmillan/Minotaur, 6/18), and some buzz titles (The Age of Miracles). One surprising recommendation; reality-show-creator-cum-talk-show-host Andy Cohen’s Most Talkative (Macmillan/Holt), currently #5 on the NYT hardcover nonfiction best seller list after two weeks. She says he is “as funny as Augusten Burroughs used to be.”

Good Housekeeping — 11 Summer Beach Reads

This list is also in tune with titles we’ve been hearing about on GalleyChat, such as Laura Moriarty’s The Chaperone (Penguin/Riverhead, 6/5) called a “fun romp” by GH. Also on the list, The Orphanmaster, a genre-bending title described as “A thriller, love story, and costume drama in one.” It’s also on USA Today‘s list, under mysteries. Many of you joined us in reading the book and chatting with the author as part of Penguin’s First Flights debut author program. The newly-released trailer features Jean talking about the historical background of the novel.

One Response to “Summer Reading Lists Arrive”

  1. Sarah Says:

    I HATE “interactive” lists – give me the option of a printable list, at least!