Beach reads and poolside paperbacks are back in season. Though these summertime sizzlers are delightful, those who prefer to sulk indoors deserve their own curated summer reading list. Here are the titles best fit for a little summertime sadness.
A woman granted magic powers turns her abusive husband into a dinosaur. Another woman is impregnated by an alien. Young girls hatch a murder plot. A rock n’ roll fan is stranded between alternate timelines. "Hit Parade of Tears" is a short story collection that shifts through bizarre and lonely landscapes, following some of the saddest, most violent characters you’ll ever encounter. Great for armchair-traveling to different dimensions. Click to Buy
Poets are the best at writing prose. For proof, read "The Copenhagen Trilogy." Composed of three autobiographical works, it traces the life of Danish poet Tove Ditlevsen from girlhood to adolescence to a series of marriages. Her words are clear, sad, true. She’s a lonely kid with a harsh family, then a woman coming of age under the shadow of WWII, then a wife with ill-fitting husbands. A section featuring her third husband, a manipulative doctor, scared me more than most horror books. Reading this is like reminiscing with your most clear-eyed, intelligent, and sensitive friend, perhaps on a summer evening after the solstice has passed and daylight is only bound to get shorter. Click to Buy
In "The Invention of Morel," a man on the lam is stranded on an overgrown island. He struggles for sanity, his routines controlled by ocean tides. Sad enough? Then a woman appears daily near his resting place, reading and ignoring our hapless protagonist as he falls in love from afar. Turns out, there’s a whole merry band of partiers on the island. They have a grand old time picnicking, conversing in French, and generally hanging out, all without him. The island is a bizarre choice for tourism, given old rumors of residents succumbing to radiation sickness. Our protagonist eventually learns the bitter truth behind these people’s presence. All I can say, you might reconsider your relationship to media and all those Tik-Toks summer leaves you free to consume after you read this 1940 novel. Click to Buy
Recommending classics feels redundant, but "Frankenstein" is (literally) ever-green. Christopher Nolan is a smart little guy for coming up with “Inception” but unfortunately Mary Shelley beat him to the plot-within-a-plot-within-a-plot structure by a few years. The loneliness the creature feels is unparalleled by anyone, except perhaps those of us facing a free summer day with no plans. With the open time vacation creates, why not contemplate the horrors of existence, grapple with the hypocrisy of exclusion, and debate the morality of violence with the world's first sci-fi novel? Click to Buy
She’s an artist who’s made no art in years, a forger who got caught, and a disappointment to her family. He’s a detested professor, a genius mathematician, and a bee fanatic. In "Alone With You in the Ether," their jagged paths collide in the Art Institute of Chicago. Though they are both pathologically antisocial, they agree to six conversations to figure each other out. This launches a doomed love affair that will help you feel better about your own failed summer fling. Click to Buy
