Still looking for summer book recommendations after checking our 2015 Second-Half Preview? We’re not sure we believe you, but here are fifty of the greatest summer reads as ranked by Flavorwire, just in case.
Greatest Summer Reads
Agent of Chaos
Recommended Reading: Daniel Marc Janes on the fictional namesakes of London’s mayor.
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The Likeness Man
“If you’re doing an assignment for some Luddite professor who insists on originality – and probably uses typewriter ribbon – keep in mind that I only offer phrases from hard-to-trace sources. Just today I was slipped some primo stuff from an English teacher in Simonton, Iowa who’s been advising the high school literary magazine for decades. This woman, her voice is as smooth as creamed corn.” Confessions of a metaphor merchant.
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“Ephphatha!”
Recommended Reading: “Saliva” by Álvaro Enrigue, whose English-language debut Hypothermia was published this month by the folks at Dalkey Archive Press.
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The World Begat by the King James
As the King James Bible turns 400 this year, it is perhaps more revered than read. That’s a shame, argue three new books, which contend that its cultural influence and literary merit are unsurpassed in the English language.
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Weird and Wonderful
It’s no secret we love bookstores (we’ve written about them here and here and here, for starters) and so this gallery of “weird and wonderful bookshops worldwide” is pure joy.
Rise Up
“Our culture has focused so much attention on the most visible members of the Black Panthers that it has been easy to forget it was a nationwide organization — an entity that needed to attract ordinary people who believed in something and were also willing to work for it.” In the Times, Rembert Browne reviews two new books about the Black Power movement.
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A New History of the Essay
“You might say we are awash in definitions of the essay and essays themselves, or to mis-paraphrase Wallace Stevens, ideas about the thing as well as the thing itself.” On The Making of the American Essay, the third and final volume of John D’Agata’s A New History of the Essay.
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