What will you be reading this summer? We asked 6 avid readers
- Written by Jo Case, Deputy editor, Books & Ideas, The Conversation
Summer reads are often advertised as fat paperback page-turners: romance, adventure or crime fiction. But everyone has their own definition of the summer read.
It might be catching up on a classic that felt too heavy for the end of a work day. It might be a big biography, or a sports or music book. Or even just spending quality time with your to-read pile, whatever is on it – with no distractions, and a cool drink nearby.
We asked six of our writers to share their reading plans this summer.
Renegade artists’ lives
When summer hits, I’m often in need of a make-believe detox. After spending most of the year caught in an advice loop on other people’s fictional ideas (occupational hazard), I’ll reach for non-fiction. The wayward or renegade lives of other artists have always intrigued me. It’s a kind of boho box of chocolates, feeling so pleasurably distant from a routine or ordinary life.
Born in 1902, Yokomizo writes what are called “honkaku” mysteries, featuring Kosuke Kindaichi. A young man when he first appears in The Honjin Murders (Pushkin Vertigo, 2020), Kindaichi stands out in a westernising Japan for his poorly worn and wrinkled traditional garments, and his fierce intellect. “Honkaku” are Japanese variations on classic detective fiction à la Agatha Christie. However, unlike the rather anodyne murders of British Golden Age crime stories, killing in Yokomizo’s novels can be gruesome, including the use of Samurai swords and mass shootings.
I first read Yokomizo’s The Village of Eight Graves (Pushkin Vertigo, 2021) in Spanish translation and was delighted when Pushkin Press began translating the series and Japanese classic detective fiction by other writers into English in 2019.
Stewart King is Associate Professor, School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, Monash University.
A cycling graphic novel and music memoirs
My ambition for my summer reading is that it should be fragmented and diverse. I’m a huge fan of the Finnish graphic novelist Tiitu Takalo and I was lucky enough to pick up a copy of her book Polkimilla (Suuri Kurpitsa, 2023), written with the historian Tiina Männisto-Funk and published this year. It’s about cycling, and alternates between personal memoir and broader history, but unlike many Takalo books it’s only available in Finnish (the title means “On the Pedals”), so I’m going to have to use Google translate as I go. I think it’ll be worth it.
I am also looking forward to getting stuck into Richard Dudanski’s Squat City Rocks (CreateSpace, 2014). He’s a great drummer, so probably a really good writer. And I have Andrew Ridgeley’s Wham! George and Me (Penguin, 2019) on audiobook, for walking and household chores. With these, and a couple of books from the 1950s I found at Savers and online, I think I’m sorted.
David Nichols is Professor of Urban Planning, The University of Melbourne.
British folk horror stories
After spending the last few years researching and writing psychological suspense, I’m about to take a sideways step into British folk horror. Daisy Johnson and Andrew Michael Hurley are masters of this genre, which situates traditional English folklore, with its supernatural overtones, within the context of contemporary psychological horror.
Johnson’s The Hotel (Jonathan Cape, 2024) is a ghost story collection with a feminist twist. Built on cursed land in the Fens of east England, tainted with a history of violent death, the hotel exerts a magnetic hold on all who come to stay. Women are particularly affected.
Hurley’s short-story volume, Barrowbeck (John Murray, 2024), tracks 2,000 years of horror-filled history for the inhabitants of a remote valley in northern England. As successive generations do their best to work the land in the name of progress, ancient mysterious forces rise up in protest, visiting tragedy and horror on the families, reminding them of humanity’s tenuous hold on the valley.
Liz Evans is Adjunct Researcher, English and Writing, University of Tasmania, and the author of Catherine Wheel (Ultimo).
Dostoyevsky and a Churchill biography
My summer reading list is, to a large part, curated by my lovely, thoughtful wife. A voracious podcast listener, she keeps a running catalogue of interesting speakers throughout the year. I receive their books for Christmas in one big bundle.
Last year’s haul included Why Not Moderation?: Letters to Young Radicals (Cambridge University Press, 2023) by Aurelian Craiutu, Margaret Macmillan’s War: How Conflict Shaped Us (Profile, 2021), and This Is Pleasure (Serpent’s Tail, 2022), a novella by American author Mary Gaitskill. It’s a beaut way of introducing me to authors and ideas I probably wouldn’t have encountered on my own!
I also have a couple of titles I plan to tick off my own list. The first is Fydor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which I’ve never read. I took on The Brothers Karamazov earlier this year and am still haunted by Ivan’s nightmarish, guilt-ridden encounter with the Devil. So, I reckon Raskolnikov – the impoverished law student plagued by his own murderous misconduct – might just be my kind of guy.
The second is the biography Churchill: Walking with Destiny (Penguin, 2019), by historian Andrew Roberts. At 1,100-odd pages, it looks like a thorough primer on one of the 20th century’s most interesting and important political figures.
Luke Johnson is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of Wollongong.
Reading novels and poetry outdoors
I love the promise of summer reading, my favourite outdoor pursuit. Tais Rose Wae is a poet and weaver; her poetry collection Riverbed Sky Songs (Vagabond Press, 2024), about motherhood, culture and kinship, won the Kenneth Slessor award in 2024, and looks like a perfect riverside companion.
The yoga swing in the backyard seems apt for reading The Burrow (Text, 2024), Melanie Cheng’s novel about a mini-lop bunny who becomes an emotional catalyst for a grieving family during Melbourne lockdown. I’ve been saving it up to read in one sitting. And maybe I’ll read Kylie Mirmohamadi’s Diving, Falling (Scribe, 2024), about a wife and mother liberated when her bad art husband dies, in the gardens at Heide Museum of Modern Art.
I now work at the university where I did my undergrad degree during the 90s, a deeply surreal experience. So I must read Michelle de Kretser’s campus novel Theory and Practice (set a decade before I went to uni), just to see if I can conjure the ghost of my younger self under the lemon-scented gums.
Penni Russon is Senior Lecturer, School of Communication, Monash University.
Authors: Jo Case, Deputy editor, Books & Ideas, The ConversationRead more https://theconversation.com/what-will-you-be-reading-this-summer-we-asked-6-avid-readers-244299
