My Summer TBR: Books I’m Reading This August

It’s crazy to think that summer break is already halfway over for us Calgarians! In order to get my mind off of the rapidly-arriving school year, I made a mini Summer TBR (“To Be Read”) list. This list contains three books I’m looking forward to starting during the second half of summer.

Back-to-school season is beginning soon, meaning a lot of my favourite books may go on sale, so I’m hoping to keep my book purchases this summer wallet-friendly. Other than purchasing books, you can find me at the Calgary public library, or the many secondhand bookstores throughout the city. My Kobo makes a frequent appearance in my reading endeavours as well!

Recently, I’ve been reading a lot of books from the same few genres. These genres include historical fiction, literary fiction, and classics. My TBR list below mainly features these genres as I continue to explore them. If you’re not into these genres, these books may be new to you, and I highly recommend trying some of them out.

☀️ Suha’s Summer TBR ☀️

1. Free Food for Millionares by Min Jin Lee

“Set in a city where millionaires scramble for the free lunches the poor are too proud to accept, this sharp-eyed epic of love, greed, and ambition offers a compelling portrait of intergenerational strife, immigrant struggle, and social and economic mobility. It exposes the intricate layers of a community clinging to its old ways in a city packed with haves and have-nots.” – Min Jin Lee

After devouring Lee’s award-winning and arguably most famous novel, Pachinko, I’m excited to read her debut. I admire this author’s storytelling abilities. Her writing style resembles Victorian prose, which is one of my favourites. If she can make me stay invested in a 500-page, three-part saga spanning generations of the same family, Min Jin Lee can make me read anything.

Free Food for Millionaires is a literary fiction novel that explores the life of Casey Han, a Princeton-graduate and daughter of working-class Korean immigrants. Set in 1990s New York City, the novel is said to portray the challenges of the class system, cultural identity, and the struggles that come with upward mobility. It features the complex family dynamics within immigrant households and delves into themes such as capitalism, consumerism, misogyny, and the struggle for monetary wealth. It’s definitely a page-turner! I’ll be occupied with this massive novel this August.

2. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

“Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate.” – Shirley Jackson

First published in 1962, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a classic for fans of both gothic literature and horror fiction. This novel is known to be one of Shirley Jackson’s most famous works, a book one must read at least once in their lives. Main character Mary “Merricat” Katherine Blackwood takes readers through a haunting tale featuring themes of isolation, family loyalty, the complexities of mental illness, and more. Short and anything but sweet, I’ll be reading this one at past midnight during the final weeks of my curfew-free summer break.

Reading horror books and watching horror movies in the summertime is an underrated experience. We Have Always Lived in This Castle isn’t exactly horror, but it’ll definitely make you feel all those Halloween vibes in the middle of August. This book has been on my TBR List ever since my best friend recommended it, so she’ll be proud of me for finally getting to it.

3. The Secret History by Donna Tartt

“Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last—inexorably—into evil.” – Donna Tartt

There’s no way I could’ve made this post without including a BookTok-influenced novel in here. The Secret History has had its own share of the spotlight and went viral on multiple social media platforms. When you search up the hashtag “#darkacademia”, this novel makes a recurring appearance in many of these posts.

More than just aesthetics, this novel follows the gripping tale of a group of elite intellectuals who become entangled in a murder plot- with the victim being one of their own. Containing strong themes of corruption, the blurred line between good and evil, secrecy, and the dangers that come with intellectualism, this book is considered to be a newer classic. With its haunting prose and morally complex characters, it’s a chilling tale depicting the dark side of academia.

TL;DR

With one month of summer break left, I made myself a mini TBR list of books I want to read before school starts and I get busy again. My TBR consists of three books, because unlike some of the impressive 15-book-a-month readers on Instagram, I’ll be proud of myself if I manage to finish two of these. These are the books I’ll be reading:

1. Free Food for Millionares – Min Jin Lee
2. We Have Always Lived in The Castle – Shirley Jackson
3. The Secret History – Donna Tartt

I encourage you all to check some of these out as well, and let me know if you would like book recommendations from other genres! Happy reading!

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4