16 Books For the End of Summer
Hope you had lots of fun and reading during last days of Summer :-) Since vacation is coming to an end we would like to make Summer to Fall season shift easier. We asked several BookLikes bloggers and BookLikes authors to pick book recommendations best for the end of summer. Here are 16 books of various genres which will leave you in good spirits and with positive energy.
We're easing Fall with books - enjoy reading!
Michael form Literary Exploration wrote : It was winter here in Australia (which was still hot) so my recommendations are a little cold and dark. Let's see:
A soldier haunted by his memories turns to a machine to take his nightmares away, but it takes everything away; now his wife is determined to rebuild him. Dubbed as Frankenstein for the 21st century, The Machine is a wonderfully dark and complex novel that really deserves more attention.
In a small village in war torn Chechnya, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena explores the dangers three very different people experience. I'm not a fan of the heat so I do enjoy a novel set in a colder climate and this one was perfect; the imagery, the characters and the proses in this debut was masterfully executed.
In a small town in northern Iceland 1829, Agnes Magnúsdóttiris waiting her execution for her part in the brutal murder of two men. I know I'm hooked on these cold and dark novels, that is what I like but I couldn't go past mentioning this amazing debut about the last execution of an Icelandic carried out in Denmark. Extra bonus, Hannah Kent is a fellow Australian.
Sara from The Page Sage points to four books:
This is one of those books that I always recommend to everybody. It’s perfect for summer because of the deserted island setting (which means a lot of the story is on a beach), but it’s also guaranteed to make you go back to school/work feeling empowered.
Even though I’ve never actually been on a road trip, I equate them with summer. And An Abundance of Katherines has an awesome road trip. It will also prepare you for all the math you’ll have to do once school starts again, but in a way that is actually really cool. (Trust me: this is coming from a person who panics over math tests.)
Summer is also a perfect time for traveling and in Wanderlove, Bria goes on the backpacking trip of a lifetime. You’ll be transported to Central America. This book features gorgeous artwork by the author, too, which just adds to the amazing atmosphere.
Summer books aren't just contemporary novels, of course! Poison is a light, fast-paced, fun fairy tale about a poison master set out to kill her best friend. (But seriously, it really is fun and light.) It’s the perfect book for some outdoor reading as you soak up the last of the summer sun.
Kinga the Eclectic Reader prepared books perfect for younger people:
Uplifting memoir of an African boy who dreamed big and didn't stop learning even though he had to drop out from school. Using things he found in scrapyard, he built a windmill and provided his small village in Malawi with access to electricity. Great motivation for anyone still studying – just in time to for the school year!
If you don’t want to think about school just yet, here is a book for teenagers (the actual ones and those at heart) full of adventure and spunk, perfect to chase away the approaching melancholy of autumn. It’s a story of Saba who walks around the dry and dusty post-apocalyptic world in search of her twin brother.
The book is narrated by Henry who looks back on one very hot Labor Day weekend (that’s the first weekend of September for all non-Americans out there) when he was thirteen and his life changed forever. It marked not only the end of summer for him but also possibly the end of his childhood. Sweet and sad at the same time – a perfect read for early September.
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BookLikes author Sharon E. Cathcart says: All three of these were exceptional reads, light enough for the beach but entertaining enough to keep you going.
England 1818. Determined to find love, Aurora Glendenning hides her wealth and status, wanting a man to love her for her...one who will overlook her mistakes. When she meets Levi, Lord Greville, she thinks her prayers have been answered. There's just one problem: he needs wealth to right his wrongs.
In this fantastical novel, Disney's Magic Kingdom suddenly becomes a bit eerie. Finn Whitman and four other teens have been hired as Disney World guides, but with an odd twist: With cutting-edge technology, they have been transformed into hologram projections capable of leading guests around the park. What begins as an exciting theme park job turns into a virtual nightmare.
Straitlaced marriage therapist Claudia Davis had a plan—and it definitely did not involve getting pregnant from a one-night stand or falling for a gorgeous French actor. She thinks her life can’t possibly get more complicated. But when Claudia takes a tumble in her grandmother’s San Diego dance studio, she awakens in 1950s Paris in the body of Ruby Kerrigan, the glamorous star of a risqué cabaret—and the number-one suspect in the gruesome murder of a fellow dancer
BookLikes author Lauren B. Davis picks three incredible reads:
First published in 1931. The companion novel to Virginian Woolf’s (who was Sackville-West’s friend and lover) Room of One’s Own, this is a perfect little book (170 pages) for reading in a quiet summer garden. A proper Victorian lady, Lady Slane, now widowed, had devoted her life to others, but now – gracefully but firmly – removes herself from under the stifling wings of her well-meaning, if pompous, children and rents a small house to live out her remaining days in as she pleases, socializing with an eccentric group of new acquaintances who scandalize the children!
Utterly delightful and just as relevant today as when first published.
First published in 1940. Not only does this novel have the best title in the world – can you think of a book it would not suit? – but the steam and heat of the humid south rises off every page.
A beautiful and wistful meditation on isolation, loneliness and a yearning to connect. Just the sort of bittersweet sentiments appropriate to the end of summer.
A modern classic in which the sensory details of landscape are so vivid one is utterly immersed in them. Full of compassion and grace. A haunting story of how our desire and attempts to love and connect with another are what make us fully human, even when faced with the permanence of loss and the ephemeral quality of love.
It doesn't matter what season it is, it’s always the right season for this book. I can do no better than quote it:
To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it . . . and when do our senses know anything so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing—the world will be made whole.
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Thank you all for awesome book recommendations. Now we can jump into September and upcoming Fall with hands full of books.
