Every summer, magazines inundate us with lists of “Beach Reads.” Most of these mind-numbing titles boast pink covers with stick figure women swinging purses and walking little dogs; reading them is like eating Twinkies—it’s fun at the time, but leaves you queasy and sugar-sated after the fact.
So, we’ve decided to counter with a different sort of summer book list: the “Hammock Read,” for the intellectual woman who doesn’t necessarily want to turn her brain off once the thermostat hits 85 degrees.
To cull the list of smart-food titles out there this season, we called our friend Thessaly La Force, web editor at The Paris Review, alumnus of The New Yorker and all-around literary It girl. Ms. La Force is living proof that style and substance needn’t be strangers—and so is her chic list of Hammock Reads below.
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The Chairs are Where the People Go
Sheila Heti and Misha Glouberman
“A charming collection of essays by the creators of Trampoline Hall, a Toronto-based lecture series. Sheila, a novelist, finds her friend Misha—a community organizer, charades instructor, and more—so interesting that they made a list of topics (games, cities, Casablanca, friends). Sheila typed down everything Misha said, and then they turned it all into a whimsical book!”
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Seven Years
Peter Stamm
“Alexander is an architect who is married to the beautiful and talented Sonia. But after seven years, Alex finds himself circling back to his college lover, Ivona. The women are complete opposites: Sonia is intelligent, sociable, ambitious, and gorgeous. Ivona is unimaginative, dull, taciturn, and plain. What does one offer that the other can’t? Translated from German by the expert Michael Hofmann.”
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Sempre Susan
Sigrid Nunez
“Nunez revisits her life in the early ’70s, when she was an aspiring writer dating David Rieff, the son of Susan Sontag. In a matter of months, she had moved into Sontag’s Upper West Side apartment, where she stayed for roughly a year. This brief memoir is an honest portrait of Sontag, who was both a mentor to Nunez and an exasperating and overbearing presence.”
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Bossypants
Tina Fey
“Tina Fey hates when people ask her how she manages to juggle it all as a working mother. But we still want to know, right? Fey is hilarious, irreverent, and inspiring (don’t miss the chapter about her father!). If you’re driving out to the Hamptons, I recommend the audiobook.”
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A Visit From the Goon Squad
Jennifer Egan
“Egan hardly needs my recommendation, since she was recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for this dazzling novel. If you’ve already read Goon Squad, I recommend her first novel, The Invisible Circus. If you haven’t, then I envy you. Egan’s voice is so sharp and sexy, and her mastery of suspense is awesome.”
- Lesley M. M. Blume
Photo courtesy of Thessaly La Force
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