Summer reading 2025

Laurie

Fabber Bookworms, it's that time again. What has everyone been reading and listening to since this time last year? I have definitely increased my consumption of audiobooks since last summer, mainly to listen to while walking. My preference is still a book read by its author, but there have been some books with utterly amazing readers - a single reader with many accents/genders/ages! (I think the winner for performant audio book might still be Lincoln in the Bardo, which is where we left off on our last discussion!)

Audiobooks have included:

Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
Democracy Awakening - Heather Cox Richarson
You Think It, I'll Say It - Curtis Sittenfeld
Show Don't Tell - Curis Sittenfeld
The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo - Amy Schumer

Books

Cold Crematorium - Jozef Debreczeni (note -I have read many, many books about the Holocaust. This memoir is, by far, one of the most harrowing)
I'm Glad My Mom Died - Jeanette McCurdy
The Magician - Colm Toibin

Need to refill my holds list on Libby - can't wait for everyone's suggestions.

5 months ago

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24 replies

Latest reply was from Karie

LJP

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I'm in a genre fiction mode right now (after a spring of heavy duty navel gazing literature - ugh, another story) : just finished the new Michael Connelly and am mid-way through the new Stephen King . I'll read anything and everything by either author. I don't remember the titles, and that's half the point

My Libby and hardcopy list is looong right now and I'm going to be in trouble in a few weeks when they all start coming in . In my bag for the lake next week is The Antidote by Karen Russell . No idea what it's about and I'm not familiar at all with the author (although I recognize her last book title " Swamplandia". but it must have popped up on some feed or another .

5 months ago

Sal

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I just finished "A week in December" by Sebastian Faulks - I really enjoyed it but it received mixed reviews. It was written about 2009 so some aspects were of that period but very topical still today.

Other 2025 reads include
- "Conversations with Friends" by Sally Rooney
- "The Women" by Kristen Hannah
- the third and fourth Thursday Murder Club books by Richard Osman

I have just started "Belonging" by Michelle Obama - I am enjoying it so far but not long into it.

I mostly buy books second hand so am not terribly up to date...

5 months ago

LJP

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I too read and loved The Women. I'm adding the HCRichardson to my reading list right now.

5 months ago

Laurie

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I listened to The Women last year, and found it moving.

I have the same Libby problem, Lisa! They all hit at the same time!

4 months ago

judy

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I much prefer to read books rather than listen to audiobooks, but the wait at the library for I Regret Almost Everything by Keith McNally was so long that I listened via Spotify. The narrator was the actor Richard E. Grant and he did such an amazing job...kind of like you could listen to him read the phone book :). Loved the content too. Keith is the owner of many famous NYC restaurants and suffered a stroke in 2016. I found him at times charming and at other times annoying, and was inspired by his honesty. Definitely recommend.

4 months ago

pil

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Judy, maybe you already know but Richard E. Grant narrates his own memoir ‘A Pocketful of Happiness’.

4 months ago

RobinF

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Sal - I just finished the first Thursday Murder Club and enjoyed it so much I right away started the second one. Fun characters.

I also read a book called Voyageurs by Margaret Elphinstone that stuck with me. It was about a young Quaker man in 1812 or so who comes to America from England to find his missing sister. It was a good story but I especially enjoyed it because he traveled to parts of Michigan that I am familiar with - Mackinac Island, Sleeping Bear Dunes and the Manitou Islands. It was enjoyable seeing these places through his eyes.

I would like to get an audiobook for a long flight we will be taking in August - taking notes!

4 months ago

Laurie

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RobinF - some long audiobooks for consideration:
- The Convenant of Water - Abrahan Verhese
- Shantaram (mentioned above) - amazing listen
- The Love Songs of W.E.B Du Bois - the first audiobook that I truly enjoyed. Very long.

4 months ago

kkards

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Love audio books. They make chores doable. And I’ve been known to read and listen to the same book.

Audio books
just finished the 2nd in the series-it’s fun, light but with some meat in the bone
#1– Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murders
#2 -Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping
both by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Recommend all of the Thursday Murder Club books in the audio version. I have #4 on pre reserve

paper books
just started “The Wedding People” by Alison Espach. I’m about 1/3 of the way, and so far I’m really liking it
“James” by Perceval Everett, this book has stayed with me. I liked it a lot, but the farther away I get from having read it, the more I realize just how brilliant the premise was, and how good the writing was.

“Trust’ by Herman Diaz. A finance, relationship, history book. Wont say much more as I don’t want to give anything away
non fiction “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland” by Patrick Radden Keefe. This was a disturbing and unsettling book. Not sure I’d recommend it, but it was worth reading

4 months ago

Suz

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I always love these threads! Thanks, Laurie!

I listened to Cold Crematorium, too, and yes, harrowing is the word for sure. Also important.

I have found myself on an unexpected history kick. The Scapegoat -- a brilliantly written biography of James Ist's favourite, which paints a fascinating portrait of James himself and of the times. It's got such a terrific structure. And then I went back to the Tudors -- Hunting the Falcon, about the marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. What terrifying times those were, to be alive, with a narcissistic and capricious king bent on self-enrichment and absolute dominance. (Ahem.)

I've been on a bit of a Sarah Winman kick, reading Stone Yard Devotional and Tin Man recently.

Reading The Names, now -- the second Irish book about domestic abuse I've read this year, along with Nesting, or maybe the third if you count Roddy Doyle. (The Women Behind the Door) but I think i read that one last year -- can't remember.

Contemporary London: Caledonian Road.

Memoir: Yiyun Li's Things in Nature Merely Grow.

Poetry: Diane Seuss, Modern Poetry.

4 months ago

NancyW

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Lots of Kate Atkinson this year beginning with Life After Life, then A God In Ruins. She plays with form while also writing great characters in situations that brought me to tears. Then I read her intricate and funny. Jackson Brodie detective books starting with Case Histories. Read James early in the year and will listen to the audiobook later this month for book club. P

4 months ago

judy

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Thanks for the tip, Pil...I'll have to do that one next!

4 months ago

Carol

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The Berry Pickers--just finished it. I like heavyweight novels, and this comes off at first like a summer read. But this is an easy-to-follow story with incredible depth, about what happened to a family when a little girl goes missing.

Tom Sawyer--I will get through the classics yet!

I'm Glad my Mom Died looks great--thanks for the reminder.

4 months ago

Laurie

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Suz - am currently listening to Stone Yard Devotional - perhaps you recommended it? I always forget who recommended a book, by the time my holds materialize.

As it is being read in a lovely Australian accent, I think audio enhances this book for me....

I still mostly read words!

4 months ago

Helena

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Carol I loved the Berry Pickers! I just finished an Elin Hildebrand one which was my long weekend beach read ... Swan song. If you like her light soap opera on Nantucket reads, it's as good as any before that I read All the Colors of the Dark and I didn't love it ... The beginning and end were decent, it was the middle that was the problem ha! I just started Firefly Lane by Kristen Hannah, and I'm interested. I also ordered Our Lady of the Lost and Found which I read years ago and loved, but I'm curious to read it as a middle age woman (the main character is middle aged). It's a non-traditional take on Mary from Christianity so won't be for everyone, but if reimagined mythology meets introspective life journey appeals you might enjoy it

4 months ago

Suz

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I don't think I recommended it, Laurie, because I listened to it quite recently. And yes, the accent makes a difference! I love the Irish and Scottish ones on audio, too!

4 months ago

Carol

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Helena--it was great! These other books you mention--are they like The Berry Pickers? Or different?

4 months ago

Helena

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Quite different ... our Lady of the lost and found is quite fantastical despite the ordinary setting, and so far Firefly Lane so far is more coming-of- age ... If you're interested in indigenous voices I've enjoyed the writing of Richard Wagamese. Almost meditative in his writing style from what I've read.

4 months ago

judy

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I loved Stoneyard Devotional. I read her other books that the library had too, well, one, The Weekend. Lighter, but enjoyable. The Natural Way of Things I couldn't get through.

Listened to an interesting book The Gift of Not Belonging: How Outsiders Thrive in a World of Joiners by Rami Kaminski about Otroverts, a personality type he has coined in his practice when one does not fall into the introversion extroversion spectrum.

4 months ago

Carol

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Helena--wow, thanks for the recs. I don't read as often as I used to, but I like anything that's good. And when I am focused, I usually do classics or highly regarded/discussed current works. It sounds like some of those might be worth a try!

4 months ago

Laurie

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Just listened to a nice, light historical fiction - "Carnegie's Maid" - about a fictional Irish ladies maid who worked for Andrew Carnegie's mother. Being from Pittsburgh, I enjoyed the references and it inspired me to look up quite a few people and places, also known as historical actual history.

I am also reading "Class Clown", the humorist Dave Barry's memoir. I love that guy, and this is an enjoyable read.

4 months ago

bella

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Why haven't I seen this before? I love discovering new reads.

My light reading this summer has consisted of:
Bad Publicity, Bianca Gillam (fun, flirty romcom)
The Maid by Nita Prose and the follow-up book, The Mystery Guest (fun, light murder mystery) - this was recommended by Stephen King! That's why I picked it up.
The Proof of My Innocence, Jonathon Coe (I was pleasantly surprised by this book. It brings together several of my interests,conemporary politics and murder mystery, with a little bit of English countryside thrown in for good measure)

For heavy weights:
I just concluded reading the third volume of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels. Not easy to read but simply brilliant imo.
The Original Daughter, Jemimah Wei - the Singaporean writer's debut novel. Poignant.
Intermezzo - another masterpiece from Sally Rooney

I read Kristen Hannah's The Women last year and really liked it.

3 months ago

bella

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Carol - I'd recommend Percival Everett's James. It is a modern retelling of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim.

3 months ago

Karie

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I love all these great recommendations!
If you liked Kristen Hannah’s Firefly Lane don’t forget to read the sequel Fly Away. While these were both good, I think her greatest work was The Nightingale. Second to that would be The Four Winds. I haven’t read The Women so I’ll have to put that on my list.
I always seem to go back and forth between historical fiction and adventure stories. I’m currently reading Force of Nature, which is about three women who hiked the John Muir Trail. I recently read Leave Only Footprints, which was an excellent book about one man’s journey to all the U.S. National Parks. Not your typical National Parks book at all, which is one of the things that made it so good.
Next up is A Walk in the Woods, about the Appalachian Trail, then it’s back to historical fiction with The Last Train to London.

3 months ago

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