It’s Forum’s annual summer book show. We’d like to hear your recommendations for a good book to throw in a beach bag, prop next to your fishing pole, or relax with in the shade of a tree. Whether your idea of a great summer read is “Gone Girl” or “War and Peace,” call or write with your picks.
Listener and Guest Recommended Books
Books are sorted by genre and listed alphabetically
Fiction
- The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
- The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
- As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
- Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
- Bone Mountain by Eliot Pattison
- The Bone People by Keri Hulme
- Brilliant by Marne Davis Kellogg
- Cha Ching by Ali Liebegott
- Children of the Days by Eduardo Galeano
- The Chinese Jar by Willie Gordon
- Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
- Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
- The Dinner by Herman Koch
- Dog in the South by Charles Portis
- Fever by Mary Beth Keane
- The Flamethrowers by Rache Kushner
- Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
- Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
- The Golden Age by Gore Vidal
- The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
- A Happy Marriage by Rafael Yglesias
- A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers
- Ingredients of Love by Nicolas Barreau
- Live by Night by Dennis Lehane
- Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
- Me Before You by Jojo Moyse
- Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
- And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
- The Mystery Series by Louise Penny
- The Night In Lisbon by Erich Maria Remarque
- Olive Kitteridge by Elisabeth Strout
- The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
- Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford
- Perfect by Marne Davis Kellogg
- Priceless by Marne Davis Kellogg
- Quick Silver by Neal Stephenson
- The Red Book by Deborah Copaken Kogan
- Redshirts by John Scalzi
- The Roundhouse by Louise Erdrich
- Runaway by Alive Munro
- Sacre Blue: A Comedy d'Art by Christopher Moore
- Seeing in the Dark by Timothy Ferris
- Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld
- Skull Mantra by Eliot Pattison
- Song of Solomon by Tony Morrison
- Stoner by John Williams
- A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
- Thera by Zeruya Shalev
- True Grit by Charles Portis
- A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
- Water Touching Stone by Eliot Pattison
- Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple
- A Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
- Wonder by R.J. Palacio
Non-Fiction
- 1776 by David Mccullough
- The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain
- American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard
- Apples are From Kazakhstan by Christopher Robbins
- Bailout by Neil Barofsky
- A Beautiful Boy by David Sheff
- Buzzkill by Peter Goodman
- Culture and Dignity: Dialogues Between the Middle East and the West by Laura Nader
- Dirty Love by Andre Dubus III
- Far Away Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
- Far Flung and Well Fed by R.W. Apple
- A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II by Adam Makos
- Infinite Cities by Rebecca Solnit
- King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild
- Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
- The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan
- Midnight in Peking by Paul French
- Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison by Piper Kerman
- To Repair the World by Paul Farmer
- Return of a King by William Dalrymple
- Roving Mars by Steve Squyres
- Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea by Gary Kinder
- Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
- Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK by Lamar Waldron with Thom Hartmann
- The Unwinding by George Packer
- The Way of the Dreamcatcher: Spirit Lessons with Robert Lax by S.T. Georgiou
- Why Knot? by Philippe Petit
- Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Poetry
- Poems Retrieved by Frank O'Hara
- The Complete Poems: 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop