Late summer reading – the best kind of reading? Whether you’re after fly-through-them page-turners or immersive long-reads, or perhaps you’re after a challenge, or the perfect discussion book, we’ve got the list for you. Find out our expert picks from indie-bookshop Bookbar’s Chrissy Ryan, a woman at the centre of a hub of reading recommendations from authors, customers and booksellers alike. Kate is swapping notes and sharing her own summer reading pile. Plus just to pack in even more book tips we’ve got a few extra recommendations from Chrissy’s Bookbar team. And so sit back and let us give you books to inspire, inform, amuse and entertain as we see out the summer and anticipate our Autumn reads.
Listen via the media player above, or your favourite podcast app with this Podfollow link.
Booklist for Late Summer Reading
The Guest by Emma Cline
Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang
The Centre, by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqui,
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson,
Time’s Shelter by Gyorgi Gospodinov,
Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan
How to Read Now and America is not the Heart by Elaine Castillo
Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford
The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Tom Lake, and These Precious Days by Ann Patchett
Read This: Handpicked Favourites from America’s Indie Bookstores, compiled by Hans Weyandt (Coffee House Press)
Roman Stories and Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri
Good Material by Dolly Alderton
Notes on Late Summer Reading
Visit Bookbar online
The indie publishing mavericks shaking up the UK book world (The Guardian)
The Book Club Review’s Fitzcarraldo episode
Transcript of Late Summer Reading
[coming soon]


4 Comments
S glad you remembered your listeners in New Zealand
Thanks
Julia
*Message
Sorry would love link to the FT podcast you mentioned.
Another great episode! I’m a pretty new listener but have been enjoying the podcast so much and have found lots of great recommendations. The podcast makes me laugh and is always so interesting and thought-provoking. Love your newsletter too, Kate.
I’m already really looking forward to your Booker Prize episode for this year. I’ve listened to all of your past Booker episodes, they’re some of my favorites. It will be so interesting to see what you have to say about this year. It seems like there have been several really good Booker years in a row, but I’ve just finished The Bee Sting and while it was very readable and kept the pages turning, overall it was just incredibly bleak, and bleak in a way I found really annoying – hard to explain but to me it seems depressing and dark in a way intended to win prizes more than in a way that really tells us something true about the world. I ended the book feeling angry at the author, especially over the fact I’d just read over 600 pages of a book I now wish I hadn’t read. I was going to try Prophet Song next but I’ve just read the most annoying writing quoted on Goodreads with the very true comment by the Goodreads reviewer, “Does this not sound a bit like pretentious drivel?” So anyway I’m thrilled that I can now wait till you and Kate (and hopefully Phil) have read some of these to read any more 🙂