Summer Reading List
- Kelly Stewart
- Sep 3, 2016
- 6 min read
With the kickoff of college football and the buzz of Pumpkin Spice Lattes in the air, I guess I have to face the reality that summer is just about over.
Even though I know the official last day of summer isn’t until Sept. 21, Labor Day Weekend, College Gameday on Saturday mornings and pumpkin spice everything just makes summer feel so final.
With a lot of down time between jobs this summer, I had the opportunity to read a lot of interesting, inspiring and fun books.
Here’s a look into my summer reading list:
It's no secret that Virginia Woolf is a literary genius, and To the Lighthouse is one of her finest works. If you want to be more creative in your own writing, this is a great book to find inspiration. It’s not necessarily a quick or easy read, I'd recommend sitting down when you have a good chunk time to dive into it, but it’s worth it.
My favorite part of this book is Woolf’s description of the Ramsy’s dinner scene (chapter 17). It is a masterpiece. Through her vivid descriptions of the dinner, the reader visualizes the scene as an outsider looking in while also getting inside each of her character’s heads.
Woolf's descriptions, her story line and her overall message of the passing of time in To the Lighthouse made it one of the best books I've read as a writer.
This book was recommended to me by a good friend, and I’m glad I read it. I’m a better person for reading it. Scotty Smiley lost his vision after surviving an explosion while serving in Iraq in 2005. However, instead of getting out of the military after the tragic injury that almost took his life, once he recovered, he continued serving in the Army and became the first blind active-duty Army Officer.
After he heroically saved his unit from a suicide bomber in Iraq, Smiley spent months in the hospital with half of his body paralyzed, his vision completely gone, uncertain if he’d survive. However, through it all, Smiley and his wife, Tiffany, never gave up hope. The couple never gave up on their faith and Smiley recovered. Today, Smiley now lives a fuller life than most. He and Tiffany have three sons. They travel. Sky dive. Surf. Climb mountains. Smiley recently completed an Iron Man. He won an ESPY for Best Outdoor Athlete and earned an MBA from Duke. He's absolutely amazing and the true definition of an American hero.
This book was the most inspirational book I read all summer - I highly recommend it.
You can check out more about Scotty through the Hope Unseen Website, or learn more about the family through Tiffany's blog, Joy Uncovered.
This was my personal favorite of all the books I read this summer. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon did a phenomenal job in her research and interviews, and really made this book come to life. Ashley's War shares the journey of the first all-female team of soldier to serve alongside U.S. Army and Navy Special Operations teams. Known as the Cultural Support Team, these women were able to gather valuable information that was, with out them, unable to be accessed. As women, they were able to build relationships with and gather information from native women that their male soldier counterparts in these traditional countries could not.
I dare you to read this book and not appreciate the United States military - men and women. It's impossible. A proud Army brat and Gold Star daughter, I didn't think I could appreciate the brave men and women who serve our country any more than I already did, but this book opened my eyes to so much more.
This book kept me hooked with every page, every sentence, every word. I couldn’t put it down.
Ashley's War is my most highly recommended book on this summer reading list. Grab some kleenex (a lot, a lot of kleenex) and read it.
This book made me laugh and was exactly the light, easy reading I needed after reading To the Lighthouse, Hope Unseen and Ashley’s War (quite the emotional trio). I picked up this book randomly in Strand Bookstore while looking for a new memoir to read.
Kristin Newman, writer for TV shows like That 70’s Show and How I Met Your Mother, records her hilarious, risqué, exciting travels and romances around the world as a single 30-something. Sex, drugs and rock & roll, she spills it all - from Paris to Sydney to Rio de Janeiro. (Note: there's a lot of language and adult situations in this book...take note before reading that it's a little more PG-13 than the rest of the books on this summer reading list)
Newman described the places she visits with so much color and vividness, that her book had me looking up plane tickets to destinations all over the world. I wanted to go to Argentina, Israel, Iceland too. I wanted to fall in love with beautiful places and “do the thing you’re supposed to do in the place you’re supposed to do it” - her life theme, and she lives it well.
Okay, I know. After this best seller hit the shelves Greg Mortensen was investigated and, turns out, this book isn't completely true. He's a fraud who didn't help as many Pakistani children as he claimed. However, despite the scandal, this was one of the last book recommendations my dad made to me before he passed away. I’ve had it on my bookshelf since I was a freshman in college and, this summer, with time on my hands, I finally cracked it open.
Despite the fact it's only half true, it was a good read. It was inspirational and very educational on Central Asia if you don't know a lot about this region of the world.
This book is a required reading for one of my MFA classes. I decided to get ahead a bit on the reading and picked it up at Strand Bookstore earlier this summer. It was interesting. It’s not a book I would have chosen to read on my own, but it's very well written and a good read for anyone interested in memoir writing.
For example, read a bit on how Ackerley describes his father:
"Upon these shoulders was set a large head, which may be called grand, with a wide, intelligent forehead, a prominent supraciliary ridge and the strong features of an elder English statesman...his nose and chin were both strong but there was nothing nut-crackery about them. His face was fleshy and venous, becoming rather jowly; his complexion ruddy."
This book is another good read for writers.
Get this book. Read this book. Love this book. The winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, it’s written so cleverly, so captivatingly, that you won’t want to put it down. Not only is it brave and brilliant, but it’s gut wrenching, beautiful and heart breaking as well.
Taking place during World War II, Doerr orchestrates the stories of two children - a blind French girl and an orphaned german boy - whose two stories, through a series of events, are interwoven and eventually become one in the same.
This is one of those books you want to read again and again. I highly, highly recommend it.
I put this book on my reading list this summer because its a fun read for the artistic minded - especially writers. I’ve owned this book for quite a while and have read it numerous times, but I wanted to read it again and take in its good advice before beginning this new chapter of my life.
Through his “10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative,” chapter by chapter Kleon shares tips on unlocking creativity. Steal Like an Artist is filled with motivating quotes from people like Mark Twain, Kobe Bryant and Steve Jobs, and offers tons of good advice to help you steal creative ideas from the best and make them your own.
One of my favorite quotes:
“A wonderful flaw about human beings is that we’re incapable of making perfect copies. Our failure to copy our heroes is where we discover where our own thing lives. That is how we evolve. So: Copy your heroes. Examine where you fall short. What’s in there that makes you different? That’s where you should simplify and transform in your own work.”
Well, that’s what I read this summer. I’m excited for this fall because, through my Creative Writing MFA program at The New School my upcoming reading list is just as good!
Questions or comments about any of the books I read this summer? Send them my way! Comment below or email littleappletobigapple@gmail.com.
Comments