{"id":220989,"date":"2026-01-05T04:07:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T04:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/220989\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T04:07:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T04:07:09","slug":"summer-reading-recommendations-of-six-dedicated-readers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/220989\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer reading recommendations of six dedicated readers"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was orignally published in The Conversation on 25 December 2025.<\/p>\n

When I think about summer reading, I think about relaxing with an easy page-turner \u2026 but I also think about finally having the headspace for the more complex, challenging books that have haunted my bedside table during the busy year.<\/p>\n

Summer reading is often characterised as paperback romance or detective fiction. And it is that. But it\u2019s also anything your tired, finally well-rested brain wants to apply itself to in the sunnier months: on a beach, by a pool or splayed on a couch under an air conditioner.<\/p>\n

We asked six avid readers what they plan to read this summer \u2013 and their answers reflected all of the above and more. I\u2019ve already stolen a few ideas to add to my own hopeful pile. (So far, it includes Susie Boyt\u2019s much-raved-about novel Loved and Missed, a biography of her father Lucian Freud, Dominic Amerena\u2019s literary satire, I Want Everything \u2026 and Anna Karenina.)<\/p>\n

The Summer Book \u2026 and Belgian crime<\/p>\n

What better time to revisit The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson? It helps that there is a film adaptation on the way (starring Glenn Close), though I wonder how this bittersweet, funny and pitch perfect story of a girl, her grandmother and her father spending a summer on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland can be rendered in filmic form.<\/p>\n

Talking of adaptation, the latest TV adaptation of the chief inspector Maigret detective novels has recently dropped \u2013 and that encourages me to read more of the short novels by the Belgian writer, Georges Simenon. I read half a dozen Maigret novels last summer, but that\u2019s fine \u2013 there are 75 books in the series. Good times.<\/p>\n

David McCooey is professor of writing and literature, Deakin University.<\/p>\n

Page-turning rural noir<\/p>\n

As a former managing editor of television and video for ABC News, Tim Ayliffe has always had a keen eye for the hot button issues of the day. That\u2019s reflected in his John Bailey series of tense political thrillers. But Dark Desert Road promises to be something different.<\/p>\n

Here, Ayliffe heads west into the New South Wales Riverina and the territory of the rural noir. His usual burnt-out journalist in the eye of the storm is replaced by a burnt-out cop. Kit McCarthy hasn\u2019t seen her twin sister Billie in years. This is quite understandable as Billie seems to have got herself involved in a survivalist cult hell bent on blowing things, and people, up. So now she needs help.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the premise \u2013 and it promises to be just the right kind of energetic page-turner for a lazy holiday read.<\/p>\n

Sue Turnbull is honorary professor of communication and media studies, University of Wollongong \u2013 and a crime fiction expert.<\/p>\n

Patricia Lockwood<\/p>\n

Last summer I read Patricia Lockwood\u2019s No One is Talking About This, a novel that\u2019s up-to-the-minute smart about contemporary life on social media until halfway through when it takes you by the throat and leaves you gasping.<\/p>\n

I went quickly to her 2017 memoir, Priestdaddy, where she recounts life as the child of a married Catholic priest. More lately, I read her viral poem, Rape Joke, a remarkable reshaping of thought and talk around women\u2019s experiences of rape. You have to love a writer who can come up with (in a London Review of Books column):<\/p>\n

Perhaps for the bug reason, she could only ever picture Kafka lying on his back. Perhaps because of his surviving photos, she had the idea that he medically could not blink.<\/p>\n

This summer, I hope to read her new post-COVID novel, Will There Ever Be Another You, hoping for more writing that identifies and breaks our taboos \u2013 like the best jokes do.<\/p>\n

Kevin Brophy is emeritus professor of creative writing at University of Melbourne.<\/p>\n

Novels about academia<\/p>\n

To some, summertime means spontaneity. To me, an adorer of a syllabus if there ever was one, it means a carefully curated reading list. This year, the plan is to spend as much time as possible reading novels about the idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies of academia.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll start by revisiting three classics \u2013 Mary McCarthy\u2019s The Groves of Academe, Vladimir Nabokov\u2019s inimitable Pnin, David Lodge\u2019s Changing Places \u2013 before I move on to books I haven\u2019t read before.<\/p>\n

At the top of my list is Alison Lurie\u2019s The War Between the Tates, a portrait of infidelity and pomposity at Corinth University (a fictional reimagining of Cornell). Next are two darkly comic novels from the nineties: Javier Mar\u00edas\u2019 Oxford novel All Souls and Ishmael Reed\u2019s Japanese by Spring. Then, I intend to round out the summer with My Education by Susan Choi (shortlisted for this year\u2019s Booker for Flashlight) and Elif Batuman\u2019s The Idiot.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s any summer left at the end of all this, I\u2019ll devote it to rereading some old favourites: JM Coetzee\u2019s Disgrace, Philip Roth\u2019s The Human Stain, and Zadie Smith\u2019s On Beauty.<\/p>\n

Joseph Steinberg is Forrest Foundation postdoctoral fellow, English & Literary Studies, The University of Western Australia.<\/p>\n

Book & film: The Virgin Suicides<\/p>\n

Every summer, I return to the same perfect pairing: Jeffrey Eugenides\u2019s elegiac novel The Virgin Suicides and Sofia Coppola\u2019s fever-dream adaptation. The story \u2013 a meditation on loss and longing \u2013 follows the tragic fates of the Lisbon sisters (Cecilia, Lux, Bonnie, Mary and Therese) who are withdrawn from school by their stifling mother and imprisoned at home \u2013 before eventually dying by suicide.<\/p>\n

Set in 1970s Michigan, in the heart of the Rust Belt, the story brushes against some big themes: the horror of the mundane, the decay of memory, the failure of the American Dream. But the novel\u2019s thematic complexity is not as powerful as its aesthetic imagination. I revisit the girls\u2019 world obsessively because its hazy, dreamlike quality captures, with unnerving accuracy, how it felt to be a teenage girl. Simply put, the summer was long and languorous, and the house was always too small.<\/p>\n

Eugenides\u2019s novel, like Coppola\u2019s film, skilfully blends the magic and misery of adolescence: the sacred rituals and secret pacts, the constant scrutiny and creeping sense of entrapment. Like adolescence, summer too is defined by its inevitable ending.<\/p>\n

Kate Cantrell is a senior lecturer in writing, editing, and publishing at the University of Southern Queensland.<\/p>\n

Australian romantic comedies<\/p>\n

A couple of years ago, I nominated Abra Pressler\u2019s Love and Other Scores as my beach book and noted that it was part of an increased investment from major Australian publishers in local romantic comedies. As someone who both writes and studies romance fiction, I\u2019m delighted that this trend has continued.<\/p>\n

There has been a spate of excellent Australian rom-coms released this year: Steph Vizard\u2019s A Smart Girl\u2019s Guide to Second Chances, Patrick Lenton\u2019s In Spite of You, Emma Mugglestone\u2019s In the Long Run, Darcy Green\u2019s After the Siren, Karina May\u2019s That Island Feeling, and Holly Brunnbauer\u2019s What did I Miss?, just to name a few.<\/p>\n

My beach read this summer is also a local rom-com: Brooke Crawford\u2019s Better Than the Real Thing. This is a story about a Melbourne teacher in the midst of a series of life crises who unexpectedly finds a reclusive rock star\u2019s childhood diary. When he offers to pay her a lot of money to travel in London and return it to him \u2013 how can she refuse?<\/p>\n

Jodi McAlister is a senior lecturer in writing, literature and culture, Deakin University.<\/p>\n

\"The
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