July is made for reading the way winter is made for soup: the two seem biologically destined for one another. It is the month when reading can happen anywhere: under a striped beach umbrella, in the stifling cocoon of a tent, on a rickety porch swing, or simply sprawled across the cool floorboards.
Unlike the frantic lists of “New Year’s reading resolutions,” July’s books ask nothing of you but attention. They don’t care if you finish them. They only ask to be carried along—dog-eared, sun-warmed, cat-chewed, maybe a little sandy? In that spirit of gentle adventure, here are six books that feel particularly right for July’s slow, golden hours.
1. The Aliens by Annie Baker
A play may seem an unusual choice for summer, but The Aliens is the kind of quiet, exquisite work that fits perfectly into the languor of July. Set behind a Vermont coffee shop, it revolves around two aimless but endearing friends who spend their days talking about music, Bukowski, and nothing at all—until a high school student enters their orbit. Baker’s dialogue hums with the rhythms of real life: silences, false starts, digressions. It’s a play about not much, and yet it glows with the ache of being young, lost, and alive in the sticky warmth of early summer. Read it on a porch with a sweating glass of something cold, and let its gentle melancholy wash over you.
2. Travels With Charley by John Steinbeck
There may be no better companion for a July road trip—real or imaginary—than Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. In 1960, the great American author set off across the country with his poodle Charley, searching for the soul of a nation on the brink of seismic change. The result is part travelogue, part meditation, part love letter to the vast, strange beauty of America. Steinbeck’s observations are sharp but generous; his affection for people and landscapes alike makes every dusty roadside café, mountain pass, and highway motel glow with literary grace. Even if you’re only traveling as far as your backyard, this book makes you feel like you’re in motion.
3. John Adams by David McCullough
For those craving something weightier amidst July’s breezy distractions, David McCullough’s magisterial biography of John Adams is a feast. History in McCullough’s hands is not dry; it is alive, intricate, and vividly human. Adams—brilliant, irascible, deeply principled—emerges not just as a Founding Father, but as a fully-fleshed character with passions, flaws, and profound loneliness. The Revolutionary War crackles in the background, but it’s the private letters between Adams and his beloved Abigail that linger. "Sit down, John" and read it in the stillness of a July afternoon, when the echoes of America’s birth feel especially poignant in the summer air.
4. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
No July reading list would be complete without this fizzy, restless anthem to freedom. On the Road is a book for hot nights, for dusty highways, for the perpetual ache of wanderlust. Kerouac’s prose is alive with speed, jazz, poetry, and desperation—the desire to find something, anything, that makes life burn brighter. Even if you’re not setting off cross-country in a beat-up car, reading this in July stirs up the feeling that you could. The open road is always waiting, just over the next hill.
5. SWAMPLANDIA! by Karen Russell
If July is for humidity, weirdness, and family legends, then Swamplandia! is the perfect literary match. Set in the swamps of Florida, this novel follows thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree, whose family runs a run-down alligator-wrestling theme park. After her mother’s death, Ava embarks on a surreal odyssey through mangroves and the underworld, crossing paths with ghosts, birdmen, and con artists. Russell’s language is lush and playful, but the heart of the book is tender: it’s about grief, growing up, and the mythologies we build to survive. Best read on a summer night when the air feels thick with stories.
6. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
A jewel of stillness and light, The Summer Book is composed of small vignettes set on a tiny island off the coast of Finland, where a six-year-old girl and her grandmother spend the summer together. Nothing much happens—except, of course, everything. Jansson captures the quiet miracles of the natural world and the tender negotiations of family love in prose so clear it feels like sea glass. This is the kind of book you can read in fragments, setting it aside and picking it back up without losing the thread. It is a perfect July companion: gentle, wise, and suffused with the hush of long, golden evenings.
July is a month made for reading that isn’t hurried, strategic, or guilt-ridden. These are books to be savored in slowness, to accompany you through afternoons when the only plan is to follow your curiosity wherever it wanders. Whether you’re stretched out under a tree, half-awake in a hammock, or traveling across states with a paperback in your bag, let these stories keep you company. July, after all, is one of literature’s favorite months: expansive, sun-drenched, and gloriously unhurried.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment