Welcome, dear readers, to our second annual Summer Reading Bucket List! As the weather gets balmier, we\u2019ve been eagerly assembling our to-read piles and dreaming of gently swaying hammocks and sand-crusted beach chairs, a cool beverage at hand and uninterrupted hours stretching ahead with nothing to do but soak up the sunshine and get lost in some great books.<\/p>\n
Now, the time is here. Over the next three months, we invite you to read along with us. We\u2019ve put together a list of 10 literary to-dos: Can you get through at least five before summer ends?<\/p>\n
Track your progress using our checklist. When you\u2019re ready, you can submit your list using the form at the bottom of this story<\/a> \u2014 and be entered into this year\u2019s prize drawing! We may not be able to throw all of you a pizza party, but we will be selecting 10 readers to receive some goodies personally curated for you by our editors. All the details are in the form.<\/p>\n 1. Read a book published in the last year<\/p>\n I\u2019m partial to a stream-of-consciousness novel, which makes my choice of book published in the last year easy: \u201cAngel Down<\/a>,\u201d by Daniel Kraus, one of our 10 Best Books of 2025<\/a>. In the past few weeks, since the novel won the Pulitzer Prize<\/a>, I\u2019ve heard from readers delightfully surprised by their love of the book, and from some who were grossed out or underwhelmed. I\u2019m excited to dive in and form my own opinion. \u2014 Emma Lumeij, audience editor<\/p>\n I\u2019m fascinated by Harriet Clark\u2019s new novel, \u201cThe Hill.<\/a>\u201d Suzanna, 8, shuttles between the hilltop prison where her mother is incarcerated and the New York City apartment where she lives with her grandmother, a former Communist. Clark draws on her own life experience<\/a> \u2014 her mother was a member of the Weather Underground and imprisoned throughout Clark\u2019s childhood \u2014 and the novel sounds like a coming of age that completely refashions the genre. \u2014 Joumana Khatib, newsletter writer and editor<\/p>\n 2. Read a book in a genre you don\u2019t typically read<\/p>\n I don\u2019t read a lot of psychological thrillers, or a lot of science fiction, but the buzz around Caro Claire Burke<\/a>\u2019s trippy, time-traveling, tradwife debut novel \u201cYesteryear<\/a>\u201d has been inescapable, and convinced me to put it at the top of my summer to-read list! \u2014 Jennifer Harlan, service editor<\/p>\n 3. Read one of The New York Times\u2019s Best Books of the 21st Century<\/p>\n I squandered some of my young adulthood avoiding the works of Ben Lerner, mostly out of the petulant cynicism that rafts of critical praise in the \u201cvoice-of-a-generation\u201d mode tends to provoke in me \u2014 especially when the term \u201cautofiction\u201d is liberally employed. As it turns out, it really was churlish of me! I wolfed down his latest novel, \u201cTranscription<\/a>,\u201d in two hours during an otherwise woefully sleepless Saturday night and have been thinking about it quite a bit since. I admit defeat. It\u2019s time to give \u201c10:04<\/a>\u201d a go. \u2014 John Maher, news editor<\/p>\n 4. Read a really short, or a really long, book<\/p>\n I spent the first day of 2026 reading Richard Siken\u2019s poetry collection \u201cI Do Know Some Things<\/a>\u201d and was blown away by his intimate account of learning to write again after a stroke. It inspired me to pick up his first book, the cult classic<\/a> \u201cCrush,\u201d which contains far fewer medical emergencies and, at just 80 pages, seems like an ideal companion for a heady summer evening. \u2014 Jennifer Harlan, service editor<\/p>\n For me, summer reading is often catch-up reading \u2014 time to at last explore that classic I\u2019ve been meaning to read, to dive into that chunky novel that\u2019s been daunting me, etc. This summer, I\u2019ve set my sights on \u201cThe Last Samurai,\u201d Helen DeWitt\u2019s 500-page masterpiece about a single mother and her genius son (which came in at 29 on our Best of the 21st Century list<\/a>). It\u2019s long, it\u2019s ambitious, it\u2019s lauded \u2014 checks all my boxes for a summer project! \u2014 MJ Franklin, review editor and host of the Book Review Book Club<\/p>\n 5. Read a classic you\u2019ve been meaning to read (or revisit)<\/p>\n A forthcoming biography of Anita Brookner<\/a> (due this fall) has inspired me to go back and read as many of the British novelist\u2019s books as I can, beginning with her 1981 debut, called \u2026 \u201cThe Debut<\/a>\u201d (\u201cA Start in Life\u201d in England), about a wry and lonely 40-year-old Balzac scholar who reconstructs her coming-of-age in upper-middle-class London in an effort to determine how she ended up living such a \u201csolemn life.\u201d Like most of Brookner\u2019s books, this one is beguiling, quietly funny and slim enough to finish in a weekend, if not a single sitting. \u2014 Lauren Christensen, review editor<\/p>\n It\u2019s going to be an \u201cAnna Karenina\u201d summer for me. The Russian greats are a blind spot of mine \u2014 I only read Turgenev for the first time this year, after finishing Daniyal Mueenuddin\u2019s \u201cThis Is Where the Serpent Lives<\/a>\u201d \u2014 and my friend has been tantalizing me with screenshots from her own recent dive into Tolstoy. I can\u2019t wait to get started. \u2014 Joumana Khatib, newsletter writer and editor<\/p>\n 6. Read a book that takes place during the summer<\/p>\n Last year in this category, I read Catherine Newman\u2019s novel \u201cSandwich<\/a>,\u201d about a woman contending with various midlife travails on her family\u2019s annual beach vacation \u2014 so this year, I figured I\u2019d tackle a similar story from the husband\u2019s point of view. Richard Russo\u2019s 2009 novel \u201cThat Old Cape Magic<\/a>\u201d seems sure to deliver another wistful, loose-limbed look at marriage in middle age against the backdrop of summer at the beach. \u2014 Gregory Cowles, senior editor<\/p>\n 7. Read a book in translation<\/p>\n BookTok made the Belgian novelist and Holocaust survivor Jacqueline Harpman a posthumous sensation<\/a> for \u201cI Who Have Never Known Men<\/a>,\u201d her startling portrait of a group of women living in captivity. Now comes \u201cWe Were Forbidden<\/a>\u201d \u2014 three novellas, newly translated by Ros Schwartz and packaged as a single book, that promise more dystopian literary surrealism from a master who\u2019s belatedly getting her due. Count me in! \u2014 Emily Eakin, senior editor<\/p>\n 8. Read a book that\u2019s been adapted for the screen<\/p>\n I have discovered some really good books \u2014 and some very odd ones \u2014 by working backward from movies I like. Hitchcock, in particular, adapted fun source material: Patricia Highsmith\u2019s \u201cStrangers on a Train<\/a>\u201d and Boileau-Narcejac\u2019s \u201cVertigo<\/a>\u201d are certainly worth reading on their own terms. As to Winston Graham\u2019s 1961 thriller \u201cMarnie<\/a>,\u201d the basis for one of the Master of Suspense\u2019s most bizarre, problematic and unsuccessful films? Ask me in a few months! \u2014 Sadie Stein, review editor<\/p>\n 9. Listen to an audiobook<\/p>\n To hear Toni Morrison read her profound, incantatory 1970 debut, \u201cThe Bluest Eye<\/a>,\u201d recorded 41 years later, is to feel like you are this much closer to understanding the outer limits of language. Is that something to do specifically in summer? Why not! \u2014 Lauren Christensen, review editor<\/p>\n I\u2019ll never know what Homer\u2019s \u201cOdyssey\u201d sounded like when it was recited by rhapsodists on the streets of Athens millenniums ago; even if I could somehow hop through time, it would all be (ancient) Greek to me! But Claire Danes narrates the audiobook<\/a> of Emily Wilson\u2019s recent translation<\/a>, and Ian McKellen reads the classic Robert Fagles version<\/a>. Either sounds like a treat. \u2014 John Maher, news editor<\/p>\n Audiobooks are a boon for families on summer road trips \u2014 especially if anyone is prone to car sickness while reading! I\u2019m particularly partial to Stockard Channing\u2019s completely wonderful reading of Beverly Cleary\u2019s Ramona books<\/a>. \u2014 Sadie Stein, review editor<\/p>\n 10. Check out and read a book from your local library (bonus points if it\u2019s recommended by a librarian!)<\/p>\n My mother is a retired librarian, so technically I suppose I could have just asked her what she\u2019s liked lately and called it a day. But that wouldn\u2019t have seemed sporting, and anyway I\u2019m always happy for an excuse to drop into my terrific local library, where at least a couple of the librarians are also close neighbors of mine. One of them pointed me to a suspense writer I\u2019d never read before, Freida McFadden<\/a>, who has a new psychological thriller called \u201cDear Debbie.\u201d<\/a> That one went onto my pile along with a horror novel, \u201cThe Eyes Are the Best Part<\/a>,\u201d by another new-to-me writer named Monika Kim, which came recommended by a second librarian at the front desk. \u201cI hope you\u2019re OK with body horror?\u201d she asked. No time like the summer to find out. \u2014 Gregory Cowles, senior editor<\/p>\n Ready to submit your reading list? Tell us what you read, and which items you checked off, using this form<\/a>. You can also enter this year\u2019s prize drawing! Terms and conditions apply<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome, dear readers, to our second annual Summer Reading Bucket List! 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