The Summer Reading Guide
If you’re still drawing up your summer reading plan, The Atlantic has 25 recommendations for books in the following categories:
- an engrossing page-turner
- a book that teaches you something completely new
- a cult classic
- something to make you lose yourself in your emotions
- one great book you’ll be reading all summer long
What Close Reading Can Reveal About an Author’s Intentions
I was always taught that we cannot know what an author intended to do; we can only see what an author has done on the page. Nevertheless, this article by novelist Suzanne Berne on close reading gives us insight into how an author communicates meaning to readers: “A story is a window, with two people looking through it from opposite sides, both holding onto the faith that there’s something there to be seen.”
The Post-Trauma Plot Book Is Here
Gideon Leek describes what he calls “an emerging literary genre”:
novels and memoirs that detach trauma from innocence and consider how pain can become its own problem. These books are unafraid to depict imperfect victims: victims who upset others, hurt themselves, and use their victimhood to justify both.
According to Leek, “the classic trauma plot was about the shocking effect of revealed trauma.” In contrast, “the post-trauma plot, [is] characterized not by a fear of confronting a nightmarish event but by an inability to look away from it.”
Of course we look for ourselves in art — but if we stop there, we’re missing out
Spurred by watching the new Netflix adaptation of William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, Glen Weldon discusses “something I started noticing long ago, when I used to teach writing at the high school and undergraduate level.” He calls this phenomenon “literary narcissism — students tended to care about a piece of fiction only if they could see themselves reflected in it.”
But, he laments, we shouldn’t limit our appreciation of art (in this case, literature) to works in which we see ourselves. We should also look for how the artistic work represents something universal, something “made by someone who doesn’t happen to share their specific circumstances.”
The 100 Best Novels Ever Published in English
In what I expect will turn into an epically contentious discussion, The Guardian has published this list, “as voted for by authors, critics and academics worldwide.” Read how the list was generated, count how many of the books you’ve read, and, if you wish, add your comments.
8 Female Gothic Writers Who Inspired Modern Horror
“Countless women across time have allowed their imaginations to spin dark and terrifying stories, and these are just a few of the most influential to do just that.”
Eden Gordon recommends women novelists and their books that have contributed to the development of gothic literature.
The Sci-Fi Novelist Who Disappeared for Decades
Always remember: Science fiction is not about the future; it’s about the present.
Here Stephanie Burt, a professor of English at Harvard, discusses the new novel What We Are Seeking by Cameron Reed. Burt centers her analysis around the concept of “cognitive estrangement: the term, coined by the scholar Darko Suvin in the nineteen-seventies, describes how science fiction’s worlds seem strange, yet also make sense, according to knowable rules in a fictional universe, and according to readers in our own.”
Five Classic Novels Inspired by Ancient Greek Myths Everyone Should Read
Dimitra Gkatzelaki recommends “a few classic novels rooted in ancient Greek myths that everyone should read at least once in their lifetime.”
© 2026 by Mary Daniels Brown
