The summertime, for most, is when they take a break from studies and reading. Tanning on the beach, slow mornings, sitting with a hot drink at a cafe, one can waste the day away, but wouldn’t it be better with a book? Keep it in your bag to read when you get the chance, or just read from morning till night if you like. Here are some recommendations for your summer reading whims.
Sunrise on the Reaping – Susanne Collins
The latest prequel from the Hunger Games series, Sunrise on the Reaping, tells the story of Katniss’s mentor Haymitch Abernathy and his experience with the games. We follow Haymitch through his teenage years, where he’s selected for the 50th Hunger Games, we read as his life is then turned upside down. When the annual Hunger Games comes around, twice the number of applicants are selected for the 50th anniversary edition of the Games. He learns how the people of the Districts are treated inhumanely by the dystopian Capitol state. The book opens the reader”s eye to how long rebellion has been brewing in the world of Panem, and makes the Hunger Games trilogy a more satisfying conclusion. Watch out for the movie version coming out later this year.
Cloud Cuckoo Land – Anthony Doerr
This is one for the book lovers. If you’re a reader searching for a deep and well-meaning book this summer, Cloud Cuckoo Land is the perfect book to get lost in. Dense and filled with meaning, three timelines cover the journeys of multiple characters whose lives center around a lost text, Cloud Cuckoo Land. The old myth, lost to time but revived again and again, by people who value the text, who recognize the importance of preserving stories. One story from the far past about a girl who fights for her literacy in a world not so kind to her, and a shunned Shepard who can serve his king only by his cattle. Both leave everything they’ve known during the war between their people and set out for the unknown, the girl taking with her a text that tells of an old myth. The more present timeline follows one man, an old teacher putting on a play of this myth with his few students in a library. They run into disaster as a dangerous kid, radicalized by the state of the world, threatens them. In the future timeline, a little girl on a spaceship is born to the colony set to land on a far-off planet years in the future. As she grows, she finds she cares little about the unknown of space, and is wistful of the history of the earth they left behind. In a recorded Atlas of the planet, hidden in the generated world, she finds a copy of the myth, Cloud Cuckoo Land, and copies it down in her ship. But the more she sees on the Atlas, the more she questions her world, and the more she wishes for home, just like within the myth. If you read any book, any work of fiction ever, let it be this one. It is my favorite book I have ever read, and I hope it will be yours too.
Babel – R.F. Kuang
For those of you graduating to higher education, or simply the reader who reads to learn, a book for those who are perhaps going into college or will miss learning during the summer. Robin Swift is taken away from Canton, China, a young boy, and brought to London by a strange patron, who has him study nothing but language, and expects him to get into Oxford, so he can study Silverworking. Silverworking is magic imbued into Silver bars, activated by saying a phrase and its translation into another language. This is only possible through the nexus of Silverworking, the top floor of the Tower of Babel, an established Oxford building on the campus. Robin is placed with three other students studying multiple languages, all with the goal of utilizing the magic of Silver. As they continue their studies, they agonize further over the role of Silverworking and how England utilizes it for colonization, and how they play their role in that reality. Should such an advantage exist? The further they go, the less confident they become in their studies, in the written reality, compared to real life. Is a peaceful revolution possible? Is any revolution possible in a system so long established that it is just ‘Life’ as is? This book becomes more relevant all the time; despite being fiction, it takes much from our own history.
The Way of Kings – Brandon Sanderson
If you want to get lost in a different world this summer, The Way of Kings is the perfect book for you. Anyone who’s ever watched or read Game of Thrones will love this world. It’s deep fantasy, and admittedly confusing sometimes, but it’s very worth the wait for an explanation. Following multiple characters, The Way of Kings is the story of an old world, a country losing itself to war, and characters rediscovering old magic. Full of crab-creatures, kings and queens, magical warriors, cultures so far from our own they seem alien. Are they? Brandon Sanderson, for the uninitiated, crafts vast worlds far beyond our own, interconnected through his larger universe, the Cosmere. For a less daunting introduction to his works, Mistborn is more approachable. Its world is less Medieval and more Victorian era, following a young thief. She’s quickly caught up in a larger scheme to steal a much larger bounty from the immortal ruler of the land.
