#20BooksofSummer23 Reading List
- Cathy @746books (sign-up here) has made dit official:
- 20 Books of Summer is back for another year and this is the time to start planning!
- Hashtag: #20BooksOfSummer23
- I use this cover of The New Yorker often to start the #20-BooksofSummer.
- It not only inspires me…but makes me laugh every time I see it.
- So now for the fun part….making my list.
- I’m going to select books from my 2023 challenges:
- French Reading Challenge
- Pulitzer Prize Fiction Challenge
- Nobel Prize Challenge
Noble Prize:
- 1952 – Le baiser au lépreux – François Maurice (1922) – REVIEW
- 2020 – Faithful and Virtuous Night (24 poems) – Louise Glück (USA) – READING
- 1957 – L’étranger – Albert Camus (1942) – REVIEW
- 1937 – Les Thibault – R.M. du Gard (1922) – READING
Pulitzer Prize:
- 2023 – Freedom’s Dominion – Jefferson Cowie (history) Audible
- 2023 – G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover – Beverly Gage (biography) – Audible
- 2023 – Stay True – Hua Hsu (memoir)
- 2023 – Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020 – Carl Phillips (poetry)
- 2023 – His Name Is George Floyd – R. Samuels and T. Olorunnipa – Audible
- 2021 – The Night Watchman – Karen Louise Erdrich – REVIEW
- 2023 – Demon Copperhead – Barbara Kingsolver – REVIEW
- 2022 -The Netanyahus – J.Cohen
Non-Fiction: (Audible books)
- Arthur Miller: American Witness – John Lahr
- The Divider: Trump 2017-2021 – P. Bakker and S. Glaser
- Unthinkable Trauma, Truth’- Jamie Raskin
- The Code Breaker – W. Isaacson.
- Red Comet – H. Clark
- Midnight in Washington – A. Schiff
- Chip War – C. Miller
- Freedom’s Dominion – J. Cowie
French:
- Les mains du miracle – J. Kessel, 1960 – REVIEW
- Georges Perec – Claude Burgelin (2023) – REVIEW
- Berlin Requiem – Xavier-Marie Bonnot (2023) – REVIEW
- La carte postale – A. Berest (2021) – REVIEW
- Le baiser au lépreux – François Maurice (1922) – REVIEW
- L’étranger – Albert Camus (1942) – REVIEW
- Les Thibault – R.M. du Gard (1922) – READING
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NancyElin 
Sounds like FUN and I love that cartoon.
Great list Nancy – I should make mine before I discard all my books 😀
Jinjer, The New Yorker covers never disappoints….but I find the cartoons inside the magazine are not as funny as they used to be.
Brona, at the beginning of each year I’m full of reading plans…but have noticed I’ve not read any Nobels, Pulitzers of Modern Library books! Time is now to correct the situation.
This is a great list Nancy! I enjoyed Demon Copperhead – good to see it win the Pulitzer over the weekend. Good luck and happy reading.
Thanks so much for hosting this challenge for another year! Yes, there are some classics from the 1950s…some books about adventures is other countries….and of course some books that demand concentration, the Nobels!
Demon Copperhead was interesting to compare with a reread of David Copperfield, even darker than Dickens, if you can imagine. It also made me notice how brilliant Dickens is at conveying characters through they way they talk – in Kingsolver’s book, everyone’s speech is filtered through Demon’s vernacular, and it becomes a bit monotonous. However, I do still recommend it!
Just in case you’d be tempted to add one more French book to your list (or switch one out), Emma of Words and Peace and I are doing a readalong of Voyage au centre de la Terre, starting June 15. There’s a Discord group all are welcome to join, I posted the link on my blog today. On y va!
Thanks for you comments and also for the “invite” to join the read-a-long.
I’ve read Jules Verne’s book in French…you can find my review via link “Monthly Planning” August 2021. I cannot say I was a “fan” of the book…but to each his own!
Oh well – another year we may choose something more to your liking. I’m curious to read Verne, even so, and I think my French will be up to it. Enjoy your picks!
Thanks…
We both have The Heart is a Lonely Hunter on our lists. I hope I like it more than The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty, also set in the South, which I finished recently.
I like your list, I look forward to your reviews. I think I have also read Slaughterhouse Five, but it would have been years ago.
The New Yorker cover is perfect.
Check in every so often, Tracy, because my reading list is fluid!
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter are on every high-school reading list. Time to make my English teacher in Connecticut after all these years “happy” and read the damn books!
Tracy, I found this link for Grand Prix Litteraire Policière that selects each year the best INTERNATIONAL and FRENCH crime/detective writer! I had to think of you. I can use some of the French winners for my French Reading Challenge. Have a look…maybe you know some of the authors…or can discover some new French writers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Prix_de_Littérature_Policière