There really isn’t anything much that’s better than laying out in the summer sun and reading something great. So, here’s a list of some things that you should definitely read this summer:
1. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.
“All that liquor and those sticky kisses I saw and the dirt that settled on my skin on the way back is turning into something pure.”
2. American Pastoral by Philip Roth (fun fact: Philip Roth went to Bucknell!)
“Am I mistaken to think that even back then, in the vivid present, the fullness of life stirred our emotions to an extraordinary extent? Has anywhere since so engrossed you in its ocean of details?”
3. Just Kids by Patti Smith
“I knew one day I would stop and he would keep on going, but until then nothing could tear us apart.”
4. 100 Collected Poems of e.e. Cummings
“–who’ll solve the depths of horror to defend/ a sunbeam’s architecture with his life:/ and carve immortal jungles of despair/ to hold a mountain’s heartbeat in his hand”
5. Eighteen Years by Madisen Kuhn
“I hope you take the time to be alone,/ To sort through the cluttered shelves of your heart…”
6. Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
“Above all, she is the girl who “feels” things, who has hung on to the freshness and pain of adolescence, the girl ever wounded, ever young.”
7. The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac
“But now let me tell you about Mardou herself (difficult to make a real confession and show what happened when you’re such an egomaniac all you can do is to take of on big paragraphs about minor details about yourself and the big soul details about others go sitting and waiting around).”
8. “I’m not a religious person but” by Chen Chen (honestly, just read everything from Chen Chen)
“God sent an angel. One of his least qualified, though. Fluent only in/ Lemme get back to you.”
9. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest.”
10. This Is How Your Lose Her by Junot Diaz
“That was the summer when everything we would become was hovering just over our heads.”
11. Looking for Alaska by John Green
“So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was a drizzle and she was a hurricane.”
12. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
13. The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
14. “Against Dying” by Kaveh Akbar
“–I sit under/ a poplar tree with a thermos/ of chamomile feeling/ useless as an oath against/ dying–”
15. The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water–”
16. Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person by Shonda Rhimes
“Happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to. As your inner voice tells you to. Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be.”
Happy reading!