This Summer’s Essential Reading

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.

A Wealth of Summer Releases From the NYT

Between our own list of the best beach reads of all time (more on that below) and the New York Times lists of novels and nonfiction out this summer, it’s apparent that we all want you to have a great upcoming reading season. Highlights from the list of novels include a new Taylor Jenkins Reid because what’s a summer without a TJR novel, the highly anticipated Flashlight by Susan Choi and King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby and Katabasis by R.F. Kuang. And on the nonfiction list, we’ve got How to Lose Your Mother by Molly Jong-Fast, daughter of feminist icon Erica Jong, Blessings and Disasters by Alexis Okeowo, and The Dry Season by Melissa Febos. The good books can’t stop won’t stop and I’m pleased as punch about it. Check out the full list of novels out this summer and nonfiction out this summer.

Another Epic Fantasy Adaption Bites the Dust

Wheel of Time is saying goodbye after three seasons. Amazon’s big-budget fantasy epic based on the Robert Jordan high fantasy series saw success with high viewership in its first season, but those numbers declined while the show remained high cost. I watched part of the first season when the series was well underway and while I ultimately transferred that TV time to my favorite recent SF/F adaptation, Silo, I enjoyed the stunning visuals and was warming up to the story as a whole. It just didn’t grip me the way Silo did, perhaps because the story and characters felt too familiar. So far, nothing has seen as much success as Game of Thrones when it comes to big budget, big viewership SF/F adaptions, but we’ve got a whole host of works in the catalog to continue making attempts.

A Summer Reading List…for the Wealthy?

In this age of oligarchs where I deeply wish wealthy tech bros would stop subjecting us to their sociopathy, I kinda don’t know what to say about this summer reading list for the wealthy. To be fair, JP Morgan simply published a summer reading list with no mention of it being for the wealthy–that’s the media’s doing. But CNBC notes that the list has “become the go-to selection of beach books for the wealthy,” so here we are. I decided to share the list because I actually don’t hate it. In fact, Book Riot’s own Jeff O’Neal was in conversation with Professor Shigehiro Oishi, author of Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life, about his book, which is a JP Morgan selection. I’m not interested in reading most of these books myself, but there’s a memoir about buried childhood trauma I’ve heard good things about and a book of photos from the NASA archives that includes essays and commentaries by interesting people like Nikki Giovanni.

The Best Beach Reads of All Time

Need a beachy read for the summer? Our whole team of editorial staff and contributors got together to curate a list of 50 of the best beach reads of all time for your summer reading list. We considered not only our personal favorites, but also the beach reads canon. We also used the broadness of the category to gather a list that, we hope, has books for just about every kind of reader. So take a gander and get your summer reading list a glow up.