Your Summer Reading List

Your Summer Reading List

Your Summer Reading List

The best books, coming at you just in time for your 2017 summer vacation.

Uncomfortably Happily by Yeon-Sik Hong
Uncomfortably Happily by Yeon-Sik Hong

A look inside Uncomfortably Happily by Yeon-Sik Hong.

As a kid, a summer reading list was kind of a drag for most of us. We didn't want a relaxing afternoon, getting lost in another world. We wanted to be swimming at the pool or exploring someone else's backyard or playing video games in the air conditioning with a big bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. But today, we're looking for a different kind of escape—one that's more contemplative and introspective. Here are six titles that we recommend reading over the next few months—in a hammock, by the pool or just on your lunch break outside.

Fly Me by Daniel Riley

Fly Me

By Daniel Riley

This debut novel from GQ editor Daniel Riley takes place in the sun-soaked and debaucherous Los Angeles of the 1970s. It follows a whip-smart Vassar grad named Suzy Whitman who becomes a high-flying stewardess. Her longing for escape and danger gets her wrapped up in a drug smuggling scheme that clashes perilously with the skyjacking epidemic of the day.

$18.34 at Amazon

 
The Changeling by Victor LaValle

The Changeling

By Victor LaValle

At the center of this chilling book are Apollo and Emma, a young couple that falls in love, gets married and has a kid. A few chapters later, Apollo loses his wife and child in an act of horror and sets down a winding journey into metaphorical hell to try and get them back again. The genre-defying story will work every nook and cranny of the imagination.

$18.30 at Amazon

 
Al Franken, Giant of the Senate by Al Franken

Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

By Al Franken

The Minnesota senator writes candidly about how he went from a comedian and SNL satirist to a politician. It's a book about our deeply polarized, frequently depressing, occasionally inspiring political culture, written from inside the belly of the beast. And it perfectly demonstrates why he's good enough, he's smart enough, and why, doggone it, people like him.

$23.99 at Amazon

 
Uncomfortably Happily by Yeon-Sik Hong

Uncomfortably Happily

By Yeon-Sik Hong

In this stylish manga memoir, a young couple moves from Seoul to the countryside, in an effort to save money and live more simply. They find a run-down house to fix up and plant a garden but struggle to make ends meet. It's an honest story about the constant anxiety of barely having enough money and what that does to a couple trying to survive.

$18 at Amazon

 
Infinite Summer by Edoardo Nesi

Infinite Summer

By Edoardo Nesi

Take a trip back to Italy in the 1970s, a time when romance and dreams ruled Italy and a renaissance of manufacturing and craftsmanship blossomed. The book follows three enterprising Tuscan textile entrepreneurs and the women they love. It also intimately explores their secret passions, their ambitions and the compromises life forces you to make.

$19 at Amazon

 
No Middle Name: The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Short Stories by Lee Child

No Middle Name:
The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Short Stories

By Lee Child

This quick-reading compilation of 12 new and previously published short stories makes for the ultimate Jack Reacher experience. "No suitcase. No destination. No middle name. No matter how far Reacher travels off the beaten path, trouble always finds him."

$15.99 by Amazon

Stick
With It

According to Statistic Brain, 57% of books that are started, are never read to completion.