Last week I shared my Summer Bucket List – my quest to make the summer of 2014 just a little extra special. Topping my list was to read more, specifically, eight books between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Here’s what I have planned:
1. Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter – “The story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962…and is rekindled in Hollywood fifty years later.” 
I’m about halfway through this and really enjoying it so far. Take me to Italy, please.
2. A Place at the Table by Susan Rebecca White – “A breathtaking story of three richly nuanced outcasts whose paths converge in a chic Manhattan café as they realize they must give up everything they thought they knew to find a home at last.”
3. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt – “A mesmerizing, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.”
4. The One & Only by Emily Giffin – “An extraordinary story of love and loyalty—and an unconventional heroine struggling to reconcile both.”
… Sidenote: I’m a huge Emily Giffin fan!
5. Delancey: A Man, a Woman, a Restaurant, a Marriage by Molly Wizenberg – “A moving and honest account of two young people learning to give in and let go in order to grow together.”
6. The Vacationers by Emma Straub – “An irresistible, deftly observed novel about the secrets, joys, and jealousies that rise to the surface over the course of an American family’s two-week stay in Mallorca.”
7. Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple – “A compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter’s role in an absurd world.”
8. Cutting Teeth by Julia Fierro – “One of the most anticipated debut novels of 2014, Cutting Teeth takes place one late-summer weekend as a group of thirty-something couples gather at a shabby beach house on Long Island, their young children in tow.”
Bonus Read: The Awakening by Kate Chopin – “Set in New Orleans and the Southern Louisiana coast at the end of the nineteenth century, the plot centers on Edna Pontellier and her struggle to reconcile her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century South.”
A classic, I read The Awakening when I was in high school and really felt a deep connection to it. I’m long overdue for a re-read, and I’m really interested to see how my emotions have changed about the book now that I’m older and (a little) wiser.
Any recommendations/reviews? What will you be reading this summer?
Love in a Little Nest 