{"id":6154,"date":"2025-07-19T15:10:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T15:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/6154\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T15:10:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T15:10:16","slug":"the-20-books-to-read-this-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/6154\/","title":{"rendered":"The 20 books to read this summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

FICTIONOur Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst\"one <\/p>\n

Newly released in paperback, Alan Hollinghurst\u2019s Our Evenings is the story of\u00a0\ufeffDave Win, an Anglo-Burmese actor born in the late 1940s.\ufeff Unfolding across\ufeff seven decades, the novel moves from the 1960s to the pandemic,\ufeff tracing the quiet, formative moments of \ufeffWin\u2019s life with unhurried grace. Our Evenings is a\u00a0novel about acceptance: of time\u2019s\u00a0passage, of one\u2019s limitations, of the small victories that make existence meaningful. It is a work of\u00a0quiet power, a novel that finds its\u00a0emotional weight not in dramatic\u00a0confrontations but in the slow, steady accumulation of a life, with all its beauty and sadness.<\/p>\n

Picador, \u00a39.99; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a38.99\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie\"one <\/p>\n

Like \ufeffAmericanah and her\u00a0story collection The\u00a0Thing Around Your Neck,\ufeff Chimamanda Ngozi\u00a0Adichie\u2019s new novel, Dream Count, is s\ufeffet\u00a0between Nigeria and the US.\ufeff Where those earlier books eyed American mores from immigrant vantage points, her \ufefffirst novel in 10\u00a0years\ufeff is a bumper compilation of\u00a0middle-aged life experience, built\u00a0around the\ufeff friendship of three Nigerian women \ufeffwhose lives haven\u2019t\u00a0panned out as imagined with respect to marriage and motherhood. With its light-footed dialogue, witty\u00a0satirical flourishes and generous social portraiture, Dream\u00a0Count offers the thrill of time\u00a0spent in the company of flesh-and-blood characters lavishly\u00a0imagined in the round.<\/p>\n

Fourth Estate, \u00a320; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a318\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden\"one <\/p>\n

Yael van der Wouden<\/a>\u2019s compelling, clever novel\u00a0\u2013 now out in paperback \u2013 features several irresistible literary devices. A grand old house. A festering family secret. The shadow of the second world war. And plenty of erotic tension, bringing heat and dynamism to a story that interrogates dark themes of\ufeff antisemitism, displacement and inherited trauma. In the Netherlands in the 1960s, the reclusive, hardened \ufeffIsabel\ufeff lives alone in her childhood home, tending obsessively to its heirlooms, dreading the day her \ufeffelder brother might take possession of it. When his girlfriend\ufeff \ufeffEva\ufeff\ufeff moves in, Isabel is immediately suspicious of her. The thrill of Van der Wouden\u2019s sly book is that it feels both juicy (the US cover<\/a> features two suggestive pears, dripping with condensation) and deeply important.<\/p>\n

Penguin, \u00a39.99; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a38.99\ufeff<\/p>\n

Flesh by \ufeffDavid Szalay\"one <\/p>\n

To describe \ufeffDavid Szalay\u2019s sixth novel\ufeff as a rags-to-riches tale would be to undersell the lingering sense of precarity that never quite leaves his sparse but hypnotic prose. We meet \ufeff\ufeffIstv\u00e1n\ufeff\ufeff\ufeff as a young boy living \ufeffon a housing estate with his mother in Hungary, on the brink of\ufeff tumultuous\ufeff events \ufeffthat begin\ufeff with the shock of puberty. \u201cMy aim was to try to be as honest as possible about what it\u2019s actually like to be a male body in the world,\u201d \ufeffsaid Szalay in The Observer<\/a>, and the desires and disappointments of his body are \ufeffIstv\u00e1n\u2019s long companions over many years, from Hungarian strip clubs to helicopters drifting over London.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Cape, \u00a318.99; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a317.09<\/p>\n

Fun and Games by\u00a0John Patrick McHugh\"one <\/p>\n

In an excellent chaser to\u00a0Flesh, \ufeffObserver debut novelist John Patrick McHugh \ufeffcaptures teenage\u00a0boyhood in all\u00a0its\u00a0darkly comic absurdity. It is the summer of \ufeff2009 and 17-year-old John Masterson\ufeff\ufeff is dealing with the fallout\u00a0of a lo-res photograph of his\u00a0mother\u2019s breasts going viral on\u00a0the \ufeffremote island where he lives off County Mayo\ufeff\ufeff. As a result, John is\u00a0known as \ufeff\u201cTits\u201d\ufeff by his friends \u2013 one\u00a0of many blunt examples of the cruelty of teenage boys. \ufeffMcHugh set\u00a0the book in the pre-smartphone era and chose a year without the distraction of international football:\u00a0\u201cI wanted the mother\u2019s photo to be almost like a relic,\u201d he\u00a0told The Observer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fourth Estate, \u00a316.99; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a315.29<\/p>\n

All Fours by Miranda July\"one <\/p>\n

A woman leaves her family to drive from LA to New York; 15 minutes in, she abruptly stops to hide out in a motel room. But the real journey of this transcendent and frequently laugh-out-loud funny novel is an inner one. Standing at the cliff\ufeff edge of menopause, Miranda July<\/a>\u2019s protagonist reconsiders her own shame and desires. Vibrating with big feelings, All Fours is now out in paperback and having something of a renaissance. Perhaps it never went away: its presence in group chats and book clubs has been so great that women were reported to have suddenly, gleefully upended their own lives as a result of reading it and realising they could.<\/p>\n

Canongate, \u00a39.99; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a38.99<\/p>\n

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes\"one <\/p>\n

Georges Perec\u2019s 1965 novel\ufeff Things: A Story of\u00a0the Sixties\ufeff\ufeff was less concerned with its central\u00a0couple, \ufeffJer\u00f4me and Sylvie,\ufeff than their beautifully furnished surroundings. Here, the Italian writer Vincenzo Latronico<\/a> updates the book for the\u00a0era of flat-lay breakfast shots on\u00a0Instagram and the sort of half-hearted activism \ufeffthat has the main aim of being noticed online.\ufeff Anna and Tom\ufeff are freelance digital creatives, reflexively wanting \ufeff\u201cto press Command-Z\u201d\ufeff when they spill\u00a0their coffee, haunted by their own digital avatars, who they can never live up to. Excellently translated by Sophie Hughes, it is an all too recognisable snapshot of a generation \ufeffthat wants to be original, just like everyone else. It may even\u00a0help you leave your phone behind while reading by\u00a0the pool.<\/p>\n

Fitzcarraldo, \u00a312.99; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a311.69<\/p>\n

Show Don\u2019t Tell by \ufeffCurtis Sittenfeld\"one <\/p>\n

Curtis Sittenfeld<\/a> pulls from pop culture, celebrity gossip\ufeff and the\u00a0news for her witty, zeitgeisty short stories, which are full of astute observations and characters so convincing that they feel immediately familiar. These \ufeff12\u00a0stories\ufeff focus on clever but unfulfilled \ufeffmidwestern women, and\u00a0reference Jeff Bezos\ufeff\ufeff, social distancing, the \ufeff\u201cMike Pence rule\u201d \ufeffand public shaming. Her narrators\u2019 voices are funny, warm and informal, making her stories such an easy pleasure to read that they disguise the skill behind Sittenfeld\u2019s attentive prose.<\/p>\n

Doubleday, \u00a316.99; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a315.29<\/p>\n

Universality by Natasha Brown\"one <\/p>\n

Natasha Brown\u2019s taut\ufeff second novel\ufeff opens with a reminder of how heavy a solid bar of gold feels in your hands: a \ufeff12.5kg\ufeff \ufeffingot\ufeff is used to bludgeon a farmer in a murder case the story revolves around. But Brown compellingly makes the case that our words are our most dangerous weapon and, through the rotating perspectives of each chapter, our cynicism hardens as to whose we can trust. What first appears as a crime thriller becomes a story about media bias, the outrage economy \u2013 where broadsheet\ufeffs churn out stories claiming \ufeff\ufeffwhite men \u201care the most discriminated-against group in\u00a0this country\ufeff\u201d \u2013 and the far-reaching consequences of the language we use.<\/p>\n

Faber & Faber, \u00a314.99; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a313.49<\/p>\n

The Switch by Elmore Leonard\"one <\/p>\n

Elmore Leonard\u2019s centenary year\ufeff is the ideal time to discover, or rediscover, the prolific American western and crime writer whose work \u2013 fuelled by wit, charm, action and dialogue \u2013 dominated cinema screens in the 1990s:\ufeff Jackie Brown, Out of Sight and Get Shorty were all adapted from his books.\ufeff In \ufeffThe Switch (1978) \u2013 one of three novels reissued by Penguin\ufeff \u2013 a criminal pair teams up with a neo-Nazi with \ufeff\u201ccement for brains\u201d\ufeff to kidnap \ufeffMickey, the wife of a Detroit businessman, and demand a $1\ufeffm\ufeff\u00a0ransom\ufeff\ufeff. But unknown to them\u00a0\u2013 and to Mickey \u2013 her husband has just initiated divorce proceedings, so killing her is less of a threat and more of a gift. The chaotic, blackly comic story is carried aloft on Leonard\u2019s cool, easy prose.<\/p>\n

Penguin Modern Classics, \u00a39.99; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a38.99<\/p>\n

NONFICTIONJohn & Paul: A Love Story in\u00a0Songs by \ufeffIan Leslie\"one <\/p>\n

Instead of fading over time, \ufeffBeatles songs take on a richer colour. \ufeffThe effect of Ian Leslie\u2019s book is that a song we thought we knew suddenly sounds even better\ufeff. This is a book that offers not only a lesson in listening (again) but an enthralling narrative of friendship, creative genius and loss. At its centre is the songwriting partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and the\ufeff unprecedented peaks the two of them scaled in remaking popular music in Britain. You may find it impossible not to be awed by their achievement all over again.<\/p>\n

Faber & Faber, \u00a325; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a322.50<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t Forget We\u2019re Here Forever:\u00a0A New Generation\u2019s Search for Religion by Lamorna Ash\"one <\/p>\n

Two university friends spontaneously converting to Christianity inspired Lamorna Ash<\/a> to begin a year-long process of attending services by their side, asking seemingly straightforward yet colossal questions. Do they believe in heaven? What about demons? Ash soon sought out other converts and found Christians in their twenties and thirties who were looking for community and a way to find meaning in the world. Her account of living on the island of \ufeffIona in\ufeff the Inner Hebrides\ufeff, where her mind steadied and bouts of illness abated as she gave in to prayer and service, makes for a compelling exploration of the power of belief.<\/p>\n

Bloomsbury Circus, \u00a322; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a319.80<\/p>\n

Children of Radium: A\u00a0Buried\u00a0Inheritance by Joe Dunthorne\"one <\/p>\n

Joe Dunthorne originally envisaged this book as\u00a0a\u00a0story of his grandmother\u2019s childhood escape from the Nazis; the reality turned out to be more complex. Narrated with the\u00a0twists and turns of a detective story, Children of Radium is a family\u00a0memoir that records his\u00a0discovery of just how little he\u00a0knew of\u00a0his German Jewish heritage.\u00a0His\u00a0journey starts when he\u00a0\ufefffinds a\u00a02,000-page unpublished memoir by\u00a0his \ufeffgreat-grandfather\ufeff Siegfried,\ufeff a\u00a0scientist who worked at\u00a0a secret chemical weapons laboratory near Berlin before he and\u00a0his family left\u00a0for Turkey. As\u00a0revelations and ambiguities mount,\u00a0the book plays out as a\u00a0tangled investigation of complicity,\u00a0courage and cowardice,\u00a0ceaselessly oscillating between potential indictment and\u00a0mitigation.<\/p>\n

Hamish Hamilton, \u00a316.99; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a315.29<\/p>\n

We Were There: How Black\u00a0Culture, Resistance and\u00a0Community Shaped Modern\u00a0Britain by Lanre Bakare\"one <\/p>\n

What if the contributions of \ufeffblack Britons to the nation\u2019s history were not\u00a0simply overlooked, but purposely obscured? Focusing on the 1970s and 80s \u2013 when, he argues, modern black Britishness was forged \u2013 Lanre\u00a0Bakare unearths forgotten stories of \ufeffblack participation in cultural movements, restoring the true tapestry of British culture. We\u00a0Were There admirably provides further evidence of \ufeff\u201c\ufeffblack people\u2019s influence on the UK\u201d. \ufeffIf these stories\u00a0are only told in isolation, \ufeff\u201cthey can be dismissed as curiosities\u201d, writes Bakare, \u201cthat don\u2019t alter our sense of what constitutes British culture\u201d.<\/p>\n

Bodley Head, \u00a322; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a319.80<\/p>\n

Careless People: \ufeffA Story of\u00a0Where\u00a0I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams\"one <\/p>\n

Former Facebook employee Sarah Wynn-Williams\ufeff\u2019s book\u00a0\u2013 which\u00a0takes its\u00a0title from\u00a0the \u201c\ufeffcareless\u00a0people\u201d who \u201csmashed up things\u201d in F\ufeff\u00a0Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s The\u00a0Great Gatsby \u2013 \ufeff\ufeffwas\u00a0denied the\u00a0full outrage it\u00a0should have generated\u00a0upon release, \ufeffowing to a\u00a0legal ruling\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0company\u2019s favour that\u00a0prevented\u00a0her from promoting the memoir. Here, she recounts the\u00a0entitled behaviour of Facebook bosses, not least the thin-skinned Mark Zuckerberg, whose employees let him win at board games during flights on his\u00a0private jet\ufeff and who lied to Congress about his concessions to China.\ufeff Ex-chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg\ufeff comes off almost as poorly: encouraging female employees to take as little maternity\u00a0leave as possible and asking Wynn-Williams twice to\u00a0\u201ccome to bed\u201d with her on a\u00a0private plane. That Zuckerberg does not want you to read this\u00a0book\u00a0is perhaps the best endorsement of why you should.<\/p>\n

Macmillan, \u00a322; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a319.80<\/p>\n

Electric Spark: The Enigma of\u00a0Muriel Spark by Frances Wilson\"one <\/p>\n

Frances Wilson\u2019s biographies are intense, eclectic, intelligent and wildly diversionary. In Electric Spark, she \ufeffmight have found her ultimate subject \u2013 the cleverest and the weirdest\u00a0of them all. Wilson\u2019s chief interest lies not in Muriel Spark\u2019s fame and\u00a0those who fanned its flames; \ufeffin\u00a0Electric Spark, she is concerned only with the nascent writer, bubbling away like a pan on a\u00a0stove. This is the story of \ufeff\u201cthe years of turbulence when everything was piled on\u201d, \ufeffand to read it is to be drawn into a world that smells of\u00a0gas fires, Max \ufeffFactor pressed powder and thrumming ambition.<\/p>\n

Bloomsbury Circus, \u00a325; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a322.50<\/p>\n

The North Road by Rob Cowen\"one <\/p>\n

Rob Cowen\u2019s beautifully written study of \ufeff\ufeffBritain\u2019s longest numbered route,\u00a0the London-to-Edinburgh A1,\ufeff brings together its various verges, laybys and pit\ufeff stops to make the case for it as the \u201cbackbone\u201d of\u00a0Britain \u2013 one \ufeffthat everyone has a story about. Cowen journeys back through its long history, from the Roman road beyond York\ufeff that followed a \u201ctrail of\u00a0blood\u201d as the natives were suppressed, to the birthplace of Oliver Cromwell and childhood home of Margaret Thatcher. Conjuring the visual pleasure of\u00a0a\u00a0road movie as it motors on, The\u00a0North Road is an ideal companion for when you inevitably find yourself stuck in some good old\u00a0British summer\ufeff holiday traffic.<\/p>\n

Hutchinson Heinemann, \u00a322; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a319.80<\/p>\n

The Mind Electric: Stories of the\u00a0Strangeness and Wonder of\u00a0Our Brains by Pria Anand\"one <\/p>\n

In her \ufefffirst book, the American neurologist Pria Anand\ufeff combines memoir and patient anecdotes to lay bare the stories we tell ourselves when our brains go wrong. One woman comes to her channelling the voice of the holy spirit, while a family all strangely suffer from an inability to sleep. Anand plays detective in listening to their tales, believing that her sensitivity to storytelling makes her a better doctor, as she is alert to the body\u2019s \ufeff\u201ctells\ufeff\u201d and the layers of narrative in\u00a0which neurological problems manifest themselves.<\/p>\n

Virago, \u00a322; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a319.80<\/p>\n

Question 7 by Richard Flanagan\"one <\/p>\n

Now out in paperback, this unclassifiable book \u2013 part\u00a0memoir, part novel \u2013 is the story of Richard Flanagan<\/a>\u2019s attempts to understand his late parents\ufeff and, through them, the strange circumstances of his own life. \ufeffHe seeks to present his father as\u00a0an example of the absurd calculus\u00a0and complex happenstance of existence. The book\u2019s title refers to an \ufeffobscure Chekhov story that asks the same questions: can life be\u00a0reduced to a series of equations? \ufeffAre we all here as a result of the whims of chance? And, in Flanagan\u2019s case, what would have happened to his father had the atom\u00a0bomb not been dropped on\u00a0Hiroshima?<\/p>\n

Vintage, \u00a310.99; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a39.89<\/p>\n

Story of a Murder: The Wives, the\u00a0Mistress and Doctor Crippen by Hallie Rubenhold\"one <\/p>\n

On the evening of \ufeff31 January 1910, Dr Crippen and his wife, Belle Elmore,\ufeff had been entertaining their friends\u00a0until the small hours. It was the last time they or anyone would see Elmore alive. Thus sparked an international murder case, one of the most notorious in Britain, later called \u201cthe\u00a0crime of the century\u201d. In Hallie Rubenhold\u2019s engrossing account, \ufeffshe wades back through an Edwardian era of gaslight, grift and\u00a0gullibility to shed light on the previous wives whom Crippen gruesomely disposed of, and the music hall women who eventually brought him to justice.<\/p>\n

Doubleday, \u00a325; order a copy from The Observer Shop<\/a>\u00a0for \u00a322.50<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FICTIONOur Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst Newly released in paperback, Alan Hollinghurst\u2019s Our Evenings is the story of\u00a0\ufeffDave Win,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[64,63,457,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-6154","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}