Plenty of reading recommendations appear in newspapers and magazines around this time, generally accompanied by some kind of drawing that transforms a book into a swimming pool (really, let designers come up with a few other options). There’s the lists by CEOs, and by presidents, celebrities, critics, then the thematic lists and the meant-for-the-kids ones, plus a bit of this and that and anything else we might want.
I’m adding an extra one. Admittedly a bit late, and not necessarily one light in weight or themes, yet I still somehow tend to associate these books with the warm months. Maybe simply because of the settings or character length.
This time around, the blog’s English and Portuguese versions differ a bit, mainly to ensure all books are published in the post’s respective language. But really, there are far too many great Portuguese books without an English translation. Or even any translation at all. Portugal seriously needs to become better at promoting more of its authors.
Fiction
And then there were none (Agatha Christie)
Annihilation (Jeff VanderMeer)
Girl, Woman, Other (Bernardine Evaristo)
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)
Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov)
The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy)
The prodigious physician (Jorge de Sena)
The return (Dulce Maria Cardoso)
The word tree (Teolinda Gersão)
Wide sargasso sea (Jean Rhys)
Nonfiction
All the living and the dead (Kyley Campbell)
Entangled life (Merlin Sheldrake)
Femina (Janina Ramirez)
Raising demons (Shirley Jackson)
The dawn of everything (David Graeber and David Wengrow)
The eloquence of the sardine (Bill François)
The Sadeian Woman (Angela Carter)
The secret history of Wonder Woman (Jill Lepore)
Voices from Chernobyl (Svetlana Alexievich)
Wild swans (Jung Chang)
Graphic novels
Ballad for Sophie (Filipe Melo and Juan Cavia)
Black hole (Charles Burns)
Ducks (Kate Beaton)
Fun Home (Alison Bechdel)
Locke & Key (Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez)
Nimona (Noella Stevenson)
Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi)
The arrival (Shaun Tan)
Through the woods (Emily Carroll)
Watchmen (Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons)