Summer Reading: What's on My TBR 'List'

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Summer reading is fraught with peril.

Choose the wrong books and you've wasted your summer reading bad books. Choose nothing at all, and you may read nothing.

Choose too many books and you could be paralyzed with fear at the tide of books you face, and the possibility that you may not finish. Choose only a handful of books and so many are left unread.

Choose books, then risk not reading those particular tomes because you stumbled across other books.

Okay, "peril" is a strong word — but you get my drift. With choice comes limitation, or responsibility, or paralysis. Or, in my case, failure.

Last year, I listed 45 books I wanted to read. Of the 26 books I read last summer, eight were on the original list. Some books have been on the list for years. Some books are pies in the sky. Some books will always be on my TBR shelf.

However, this year, I decided to take a different approach. Instead of rustling up gobs of books from my bookshelves, scouring my library and my wish lists, I simply looked at what was on my nightstand.

Well, "nightstand" isn't quite accurate: In March, my husband David installed the floating shelves my stepson Phil gave me for Christmas (pictured above). That has lightened the load on the nightstand itself, but I keep a few there anyway so I can reach them for reading in bed.

More importantly, it gave me the opportunity to prune the books teetering on my nightstand. There are two ways to look at TBR stacks: opportunity or oppression. By thinning the stack awaiting me for nighttime reading, I could see them as the former, and enjoy them more.

So, here are my Upstairs TBR Bedroom books, in no particular order:


  • Less
  • Small Great Things
  • The Divine Comedy
  • A Man Called Ove


  • Hamilton
  • The Book of the Unknown
  • The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu
  • Being Mortal
  • Reading Dante
  • Standard Deviation
  • The Bear and the Nightingale
  • The Lilac Girls
  • The Fall of the House of Cabal
  • March (books 1, 2, 3)
  • Educated
  • We Were Eight Years in Power
  • The Keeper of Lost Things
  • 4 3 2 1
  • The Art of War Visualized


I have a few more books in the home library that I will include on this list — but only once I clear these books from my upstairs shelves.

This does not include the multitude of books on my Kindle and in Audible, which often (but not always) duplicate what I have on my shelves. Among those is:

  • Norse Mythology
  • Lady Cop Makes Trouble
  • The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
  • Differently Morphous
  • The Power
  • Welcome to Night Vale


Some of these books intersect with those to be featured this autumn at Fall for the Book, and the serendipity makes me smile. Others that have not yet been read will be, if not this summer, then at least before the October festival.

Those sentiments — home library, multiple books on multiple platforms, attending a major book festival — are steeped in privilege, and trust me, I know full well the privilege of purchasing and reading books. I share my good fortune when I can, and I hope those folks whose share my good fortune also spread the love of books and reading.

So, in a nutshell, that is what I hope to read this summer. I have heard from another reader, Karen,  whose reading list we will see in the coming days  — and yes, for ideas as well as for support.

What's on your nightstand or bookshelves that you plan to read this summer? Share your summer reading list in the comments below, or send it to me and I will share it with our fellow book lovers!

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