Top Ten Tuesday May 31: Beach Reads Week

 

May 31: Beach Reads Week — top ten great beach reads, ten books I plan to read on the beach, ten beach reads for those who don’t like typical ~beach reads~, ten authors who are my go-to for beach reads, etc.

You had me at “beach” and “read”. When I think of beach reads, I think of books that are engrossing and have me turning the pages quickly. Here is my list….

1. On the Island by Tracey Garvis-Graves is contemporary romance set on a beach, and I think it is a great summertime read.

When thirty-year-old English teacher Anna Emerson is offered a job tutoring T.J. Callahan at his family’s summer rental in the Maldives, she accepts without hesitation; a working vacation on a tropical island trumps the library any day….

 

2. The Siren by Tiffany Reisz  became an instant favorite. This is juicy erotic fiction that makes for a great beachy read.

Notorious Nora Sutherlin is famous for her delicious works of erotica, each one more popular with readers than the last. But her latest manuscript is different—more serious, more personal—and she’s sure it’ll be her breakout book…if it ever sees the light of day.

3. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez is another good one for a hot summer day.
This author’s writing is rich, vivid and set in Latin American cities and I find his works the perfect beach reads. I tend to read him during summer months.

In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs–yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.

 

4. I haven’t read Where’d You Go, Bernadette, but I want to. Doesn’t it sounds like a fun beach read? Love the cover too.

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she’s a disgrace; to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.

Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica…

 

5. Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King is a book I read while on vacation one summer. It is a short story/novella collection perfect for the beach because you can just read one story a day and spend the rest of your time splashing in the water.

A new collection of four never-before-published stories from Stephen King.

 

6. This Is How I’d Love You: A Novel by Hazel Woods is really nice wartime romance that you can sink your teeth into while soaking up the sun.

As the Great War rages, an independent young woman struggles to sustain love—and life—through the power of words.

 

7. I can end my list here and just recommend bringing Nicholas Sparks to the beach/lake anytime you go. Nights in Rodanthe remains my favorite of his.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Nicholas Sparks comes a tender story of hope and joy; of sacrifice and forgiveness — a moving reminder that love is possible at any age, at any time, and often comes when we least expect it.

 

8. I think Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf is a great beach read because it is short and beautiful in its dreamlike quality.

Created from two short stories, “Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street” and the unfinished “The Prime Minister”, the novel’s story is of Clarissa’s preparations for a party of which she is to be hostess. With the interior perspective of the novel, the story travels forwards and back in time, and in and out of the characters’ minds, to construct a complete image of Clarissa’s life and of the inter-war social structure.

 

9. The Prophet  by Kahlil Gibran is one of my favorite books. I have brought my well read copy to the lake while on vacation and read from it on early summer mornings by the water. I found it to be a meditative experience and a wonderful way to have started my mornings.

The Prophet is a collection of poetic essays that are philosophical, spiritual, and, above all, inspirational. Gibran’s musings are divided into twenty-eight chapters covering such sprawling topics as love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, housing, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.

 

10. Sometimes you want to get swept into a nice, thrilling, roller coaster of a book and Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz is just that. I have to pick this author up again as it has been a while and he was always a favorite. He autographed a book for me once 🙂

Jimmy Tock comes into the world on the very night his grandfather leaves it. As a violent storm rages outside the hospital, Rudy Tock spends long hours walking the corridors between the expectant fathers’ waiting room and his dying father’s bedside. It’s a strange vigil made all the stranger when, at the very height of the storm’s fury, Josef Tock suddenly sits up in bed and speaks coherently for the first and last time since his stroke.

What he says before he dies is that there will be five dark days in the life of his grandson—five dates whose terrible events Jimmy will have to prepare himself to face….

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That concludes my list of beachy reads. Have you read any of these? Which books would be on your list?
Enjoy your week!

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disclaimer: Nothing in this post is available for download. The photo above is my own.