Chapter 24 - Another Summer

As we've already noted, summer is a super time to catch up on all your reading. Longer days just promote sitting outside, soaking up the sun and enjoying reading outside. Relaxing in a hammock, a beach chair or lounge chair, with a cold drink beside you, is a version of heaven in my book!

Here are some more really good reads for those long summer days where you just want to be spirited away from all the strangeness that is currently our world. These are books which either have just recently come out in paperback or have been recently published in paperback.

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert - Every one knows Elizabeth Gilbert from her memoir Eat, Pray, Love but she is also a terrific novelist too. City of Girls, last summer's blockbuster, has recently come to paperback and is about a young woman sent to live with her aunt in New York City. Vivian Morris finds an interesting life with her Aunt Peg, the owner of a small theater in NYC. The tag line on this is "you don't have to be a good girl to be a good person."

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid - This book reads like a series of Rolling Stones interviews detailing what became of the fictional band The Six and their front singer, Daisy Jones. If it sounds a little bit like a novelized version of Fleetwood Mac, so be it. It is still an interesting story with love, sex, rock and roll, and redemption at the end.

The Prisoner's Wife by Maggie Brookes - This book was inspired by a true story of a British soldier and a Czech woman fleeing Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia when they are captured and taken to a POW camp. This is a powerful debut novel.

Beach Read by Emily Henry - Two authors are living in side by side beach houses for the summer and both have writer's block. He writes literary fiction and her specialty is romance. While she writes happy endings, he kills off all his characters. They agree he will write something happy and she will write the Great American novel. Does it work? You'll need to read it to find out.

Circe by Madeline Miller - I may have mentioned this book when I first read it last year but it has recently been release in paperback and it is a worthy read for your beach read. It is the story of the demi-god Circe, a child of Helios. She has neither the power of her father nor the beauty of her mother and after she is banished from the hall of the Titans, she finds that her power is witchcraft. Circe is a large part of Greek mythology and this story is a wonderful tale.

Please share your favorite beach read with us!