Long summer afternoons are meant for quiet reading. The six books below will transport you from bustling contemporary Kolkata to the woods of 17th century New England. Whether you’re a true bookworm or just looking to fill the summer days, we hope you will give these picks a read.
1. “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” by Muriel Barbery
This is a book that happened to find me at just the right moment. I read it last summer while studying abroad in Spain, feeling lost in a country where I couldn’t speak the language or the culture. I identified with Paloma, the adolescent protagonist who feels out of place in her life in Paris. She watches her mother and sister furiously and contemptuously engage in the superficial world, and she just can’t understand why they care. Ultimately deciding that life is simply too boring to be worth all this strife, she plans to kill herself on her 13th birthday. As the novel unfolds, however, Paloma comes to understand what makes her life worth living: the illusion of camellias, the perfection of movement and the elegance of the hedgehog.
— C.H.
2. “North Woods” by Daniel Mason
After multiple recommendations from friends and family, Daniel Mason’s hit novel was the first on my reading list when I arrived on campus for the summer. I was not let down. In fact, “North Woods” exceeded my expectations in its historical sweep and immersive quality. This book boldly and inventively weaves the stories of the people and animals who have inhabited a New England house from the 18th century to present day. What I loved most about this book was the way I could track the passage of time over the course of the narrative — not only in descriptive details but also through changes in the author’s language. Mason experiments with all sorts of writing styles and formats — including ballads, letters, magazine columns and speeches — many of which are fun and surprising. While I enjoyed the beginning, I found the strongest part to be the back half, which led to a beautiful conclusion — I won’t spoil it. Pick up “North Woods” and you may never look at the woods of New England the same way again.
— K.F.
3. “Água Viva” by Clarice Lispector
Clarice Lispector was a painter, and you can tell by the way she writes in her novel, “Água Viva.” The book follows nothing; there is no plot. The words are a broad and clear fresco, an abstract meditation on time and existence. She describes nature and the “nebula” of life, sunflowers slowly turning their corollas to the sun. She writes about how she handles herself and how she wants to treat others.
I loved the sound and rhythm of the words as much as I loved their meaning — which also speaks to an excellent translator, since the book was originally written in Portuguese. It’s a short read, but totally consuming. I also recommend Lispector’s short stories and novels, “The Hour of the Star” and “A Breath of Life.”
— C.H.
4. “The Children’s Bach” by Helen Garner
This slim gem of a novel, published in 1984 and reissued in 2023 with an excellent foreword by novelist Rumaan Alam, is quiet but illuminating in its 160 pages. I read it over a weekend and found it sharp and relevant in its examination of contemporary life. It’s easy to get sucked into the atmosphere of this novel. A synopsis of the plot — several lives colliding in 1980s Melbourne, Australia — is probably not the best way to go about recommending this book. Yes, on the surface not too much happens, and the stakes seem low, but the insights on relationships and family life this novel imparts are often piercing and revelatory. I challenge you to read to the last page without at least a shiver of recognition of your life in the lives of the characters. That is not going to be a flattering revelation. This is a novel that looks at the way we live and leaves us wondering if the price of changing ourselves is worth it.
— K.F.
5. “Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel García Márquez
From the first moments, this book is captivating. It begins with the suicide of a man who decided he could not bare to grow old and the accidental death of the doctor who comes to examine the corpse. Suddenly, a man, Florentino, confesses his enduring love to the wife of the late doctor, Ariza. The story then jumps back decades in time, to when Florentino and Ariza first met and fell in love.
Florentino and Ariza’s courtship is relatively brief — the book is more about Florentino’s longing for her than their time together. After Ariza chooses to marry the wealthy doctor, Florentino has 622 affairs, in an attempt to distract himself from Ariza’s decision. The drama is true magical realism and the writing is beautiful: “The idea of substituting one love for another carried him along surprising paths. Little by little the fragrance of Fermina Daza became less frequent and less intense, and at last it remained only in white gardenias.” This is my favorite novel by Márquez. I think that the plotline is tighter than that of “100 Years of Solitude” and the prose is more beautiful than his “Chronicle of a Death Foretold.” There is no higher drama than Márquez writing about love.
— C.H.
6. “Mouth” by Puloma Ghosh
I just finished this debut collection of short stories, which I found haunting, occasionally terrifying and brilliant throughout. I stayed up late, getting lost in the worlds Ghosh has created. Worlds where, despite the ghosts and fangs, there are moments of longing, loneliness and loss that are not so different from our own. These surreal stories traverse places like bustling Kolkata, an unusual midwestern field, a snowed-in college town and a planet beyond our solar system. I particularly loved “Leaving Things,” “K” and “Anomaly.” The writing opens doors into strange places, allowing the reader to look at the darkness we try to ignore and the places where we hide unspoken desires and fears. Ghosh is an author to watch — I can’t wait to see what she does next.
— K.F.
