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6 Books to Leave Behind in Your Summer Vacation Rental
Several summers ago, I rented a cabin in the Catskills for a weekend. It was perched on a hill in middle of nowhere—the nearest grocery store was 15 miles away and staffed by very suspicious locals—and decorated in high rustic style, with musty wool blankets and lamps made out of antlers. Best of all, it had a record player, along with a pile of surprising and delightful albums that had apparently been sitting in the same spot for the last 30 years. There’s little better than coming across treasures in unexpected locations—and that’s certainly true for books.
But what if we all agreed to game the system? What if instead of relegating vacation bookshelves across the country to a lifetime of housing the same four thrillers dating from the early 1990s, we starting leaving good books behind—fizzy, fun, engaging books, perfect for a long, hot afternoon with a cold, sweating drink? Here are six to start with.
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The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, by E. Lockhart
Something about YA and summer go well together—maybe it’s all those memories of the last day of school, with the hottest days in front of you. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks is tippity-top YA, with a brilliant, funny protagonist, an elite prep school, and an all-male secret society actually called the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds. Frankie is a shy, geeky girl when she starts school at Alabaster, a fancy boarding school. But it doesn’t take long before she starts to wonder why the boys get all the glory while the girls have to just sit back and watch…and then she decides to do something about it.
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To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis
I read this on a gloriously sunny afternoon, so I can attest that this hilarious, charming book is 100 percent summer vacation certified. Willis—winner of a truly astonishing number of Hugo and Nebula Awards—has created a universe in which time travel is a rather mundane thing, conducted entirely by academics. One historian has been sent back in time to 1889, where a series of mishaps and misunderstandings puts him in a boat, undertaking a lengthy trip on the river Thames, among countless other misadventures. Peak relaxation really is sitting outside in the sun while reading a comic account of a boating trip.
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The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
In this version of 1985, everybody has a cloned dodo and literature reigns supreme. Like, really supreme. Enter Thursday Next, special operative in literary detection, who gets embroiled in a dastardly scheme to kidnap literary characters from the original manuscripts of famous books—and then ends up actually inside Jane Eyre. Well, the book. not Jane herself. The first entry in an absolutely delightful series, The Eyre Affair has been compared to works and authors as wildly diverse as Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Stephen Hawking, Lewis Carroll, and Umberto Eco. A light-hearted romp that never insults the reader’s intelligence—perfect for the beach or the pool.
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Funny Girl, by Nick Hornby
The latest from Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About a Boy), follows a young comic actress in the 1960s as she climbs the ranks of the BBC. Warmly written and sharply funny, Funny Girl is a great read for anyone interested in the early days of television (and especially for fans of Lucille Ball). It’s also the sort of book you want to inhale in an afternoon, so a vacation is the perfect time to start it.
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Attachments, by Rainbow Rowell
Rowell’s sweet, highly entertaining debut takes the form of a modern-day epistolary novel, but with emails instead of letters. Film critic Beth and copy-editor Jennifer spend a lot of time at work emailing each other, talking about men, children, coworkers, and anything else that catches their interest. What they don’t know is that their emails are being monitored by a tech geek named Lincoln who is slowly but surely falling in love with Beth. A charming and light-hearted novel.
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The Burning Sky, by Sherry Thomas
One of my favorite reads so far this year, The Burning Sky is the first novel in Thomas’s Elemental Trilogy, a young adult magical saga about a girl who’s the best elemental mage her world has seen in decades, and a prince who’s spent most of his life playing a dangerous and terrifying political game. It’s romantic, funny, and action-packed (oh, and the first one’s set largely at an English boarding school, so if you’re a sucker for that setting, check this out immediately). It’s a great way to spend your time while you’re chilling at your cabin or getting your tan on at the beach.
What books would you gift the next guest?