{"id":213859,"date":"2025-06-09T17:01:29","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T21:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/?post_type=list&p=213859"},"modified":"2025-06-11T10:00:58","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T14:00:58","slug":"the-great-big-summer-reading-list","status":"publish","type":"list","link":"https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/list\/the-great-big-summer-reading-list\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Big Summer Reading List"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Mark Twain<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Ron Chernow<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ron Chernow has always been drawn to larger-than-life emblems of Americana: Washington, Rockefeller, Ulysses S. Grant, Alexander Hamilton (his bio of whom laid the foundation for Lin-Manuel Miranda\u2019s musical). Reviewers tend to call his books \u201cmagisterial\u201d because they are. With Mark Twain<\/em>, Chernow set his sights on, in his words, \u201cthe biggest literary personality that America has produced,\u201d with one of the most eventful, hurly-burly lives of any American author. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Jonathan Miles in his G&G review<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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An Exercis<\/a><\/em><\/strong>e in Uncertainty<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Jonathan Gluck and Rivers Always Reach the Sea<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Monte Burke <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love a good fish story, and two G&G<\/em> contributors have delivered a couple of whoppers this summer. In An Exercise in Uncertainty<\/em>, Jonathan Gluck recalls how he got on with life after receiving a typically fatal diagnosis. Gluck not only defies the odds as he faces cancer head on, he also goes fly fishing. Meanwhile, the stories in Monte Burke\u2019s collection Rivers Always Reach the Sea<\/em> take you from the Florida flats with arguably the world\u2019s greatest tarpon guide to a Russian outpost where the salmon are thick and the oligarch elusive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Dave DiBenedetto, editor in chief<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by <\/em><\/strong>Stephen Starring Grant<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019ve ever fantasized about ditching your corporate job for a quieter life in the country, Mailman<\/em> could be the memoir for you. Except that for author Stephen Starring Grant, it wasn\u2019t really a choice. He got laid off from his job as a marketing consultant (\u201cthe grease in the global capitalist machine\u201d) at the start of the pandemic and had recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer. So he needed health insurance and took a job delivering the mail in rural Virginia. I\u2019m only a few chapters in, but Grant\u2019s honesty and humor already have me hooked\u2014not to mention the opening scene, which finds him barreling down a dirt road to deliver a two-handed sword and trading Lord of the Rings<\/em> quotes with its recipient. As he writes of his time as a rural mail carrier, \u201cIt was the deepest trip into the heart of the American experience that I have ever had the grace to take.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Dave Mezz, deputy editor<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Three Days in June<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Anne Tyler<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the novelist Anne Tyler\u2019s latest, <\/em>the central family is small: mom, dad, and adult daughter, or three people in June. The emotional terrain the eighty-three-year-old Tyler covers, however, is anything but small. Beneath the tidy crust of her plainsong sentences, as ever, seethes the lava of familial and marital relations: regret, fear, resentment, surrender, wounds healed and unhealed with more, inevitably, yet to come.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Jonathan Miles in his G&G review<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Beneath the Moon and Long Dead Stars<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Daniel Wallace<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never sat down ever and said, Let\u2019s write a novel!<\/em>\u201d the North Carolina author and G&G<\/em> contributor Daniel Wallace said in a recent interview<\/a>. <\/em>\u201cI have no idea how to write a novel. Or a story, really. I sit down and type and see what happens, see where it goes. Sometimes the story stops after a paragraph; sometimes after a few hundred pages. I\u2019m always surprised.\u201d Wallace readers would give him a bit more credit\u2014he\u2019s the author of six stellar novels, including the cherished Big Fish<\/em>, which became a film starring Ewan McGregor. In his new collection of \u201cflash fiction,\u201d Wallace proves he\u2019s just as zany and heartfelt in short story format. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014CJ Lotz Diego<\/em>, senior editor<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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They Will Tell You the World Is Yours<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Anna Mitchael<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has been a big year of growth and change for me, and a new favorite habit is waking up in the morning and fighting the urge for the morning social media scroll by flipping to a random page in the Texas-based writer Anna Mitchael\u2019s collection of short essays, They Will Tell You the World Is Yours. <\/em>I like to think the particular page I land on will set a precedent for the day\u2014sometimes it\u2019s funny, sometimes it\u2019s serious, oftentimes it\u2019s nostalgic. No matter the day, no matter the passage, it always resonates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Ally Sloway, social media director<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Don\u2019t Forget Me, Little Bessie<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by James Lee Burke<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lucky for us, the master of Southern thrillers James Lee Burke<\/a> just released a new rip-through-it-read, set in early 1900s Texas. The Holland family at the center of Don\u2019t Forget Me, Little Bessie<\/em> will be familiar to regular Burke readers, but this story two-steps away from the tough-guy detectives usually at the heart of Burke\u2019s stories. With deftness and delightful details, Burke introduces a daughter of the Texas soil, the strong-willed Bessie Holland. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014CJ Lotz Diego<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a><\/em>Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Kevin Sack<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning journalist Kevin Sack spent the ten years since a white supremacist shot and killed nine people at Charleston, South Carolina\u2019s Mother Emanuel AME church interviewing more than two hundred people and writing this book. It not only aims to chronicle the lives of survivors and church members in the wake of that tragedy but the larger history of the AME denomination and South Carolina\u2019s outsize role in it. This is my must-read of the summer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Amanda Heckert, executive editor<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a><\/em>Lay Your Armor Down<\/a><\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>by Michael Farris Smith<\/p>\n\n\n\n

G&G<\/em>\u00a0readers are familiar with the Mississippi-based Michael\u00a0Farris\u00a0Smith\u2019s stories, including his stellar\u00a0writing for the magazine<\/a>. His new novel opens with an old woman lost in the woods who stumbles upon two men scheming around a campfire. The great Southern noir writer S.A. Cosby called this book \u201can exceptional exploration of the existential malaise that drives us to find our paths in a cruel and indifferent world. Not to be missed.\u201d We won\u2019t. \u2014CJ Lotz Diego<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Where the Rivers Merge<\/em><\/strong><\/a> <\/em><\/strong>by Mary Alice Monroe<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the author of more than thirty titles and a recipient of the Southern Book Prize for Fiction, Mary Alice Monroe is no stranger to writing about the contemporary American South. But her new novel marks her first foray deep into the region\u2019s past, and her penchant for strong female protagonists and sweeping Lowcountry landscapes guarantee this novel a spot in the South\u2019s ever-growing canon of historical fiction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Grace Roberts, print editorial intern<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Run for the Hills<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Kevin Wilson<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The father at the center of this novel about family lost and found is a serial deserter, who has made four families and ghosted four sensitive and insightful children in four different states. On a road trip from Tennessee to California, in search of the man who left them, these half-sisters and half-brothers make a whole. Do they find their father in California? Do they reconcile? I don\u2019t know yet. I\u2019m on page 172, with 50 pages to go. What I do know is that I\u2019d follow Kevin Wilson, our bard of odd and beautiful humans, anywhere he wants to take me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014John T. Edge, author and contributing editor<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Misbehaving at the Crossroads<\/em><\/strong><\/a> <\/em>by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jeffers\u2019s The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois<\/em> is one of my favorite books I picked up in 2024. She has such an incredible poetic voice and ability to move through memory and time, gifts that will no doubt shine in her new collection of essays, which she calls \u201ca love letter to Black women.\u201d I am constantly in awe of the way she grabs your hand to take you through a story in all its different forms, and I\u2019m looking forward to learning more from her blend of personal experience and historical and cultural explorations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Gabriela Gomez-Misserian, digital producer<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Narrow the Road<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by James Wade<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A poignant, lyrical, often funny coming-of-age odyssey set in the East Texas wilds of a century ago. This is a tale of Dust Bowl grit and adolescent discovery from one of the Lone Star State\u2019s best young novelists\u2014a must-read for fans of Cormac McCarthy, Charles Portis, or Paulette Jiles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Taylor Brown, author and contributor<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Forget Me Not<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Stacy Willingham<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year my husband and I put on our own \u201cchillers and thrillers<\/a>\u201d summer-long movie marathon. Now I\u2019m also seeking books that send the spine tingling, and crime novelist Stacy Willingham\u2019s newest tops the list. In an essay for our forthcoming August\/September 2025 issue, Willingham explains how a muscadine vineyard on Wadmalaw Island, just outside of Charleston, South Carolina, inspired this sinister twists-and-turns tale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Amanda Heckert<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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King of Ashes<\/em><\/strong><\/a> <\/em>by S.A. Cosby<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Cynthia R. Greenlee\u2019s profile of S.A. Cosby<\/a> for G&G<\/em>\u2019s June\/July 2025 issue, she notes the Shakespearean influences on the Virginia-raised author\u2019s work, where \u201cpreventable tragedies” make for books nearly impossible to put down. Cosby\u2019s latest thriller is full of messy family dynamics, Lear-like father figures, and characters of dubious morality, inclusive of the breakneck pace and ruthless conflict that has cemented Cosby as one of the greats. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Grace Roberts<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The Antidote<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Karen Russell<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been waiting for a follow-up to Karen Russell\u2019s debut novel, Swamplandia!, <\/em>since I first picked up the electrifying, haunting gem of a novel in college. Her Dust Bowl\u2013era second novel promises to be just as beautiful, bizarre, funny, and profound. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Caroline Sanders Clements, associate editor<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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House of Smoke: A Southerner Goes Searching for Home<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by John T. Edge<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John T. Edge has proven to be a deft and insightful chronicler of Southern ways and foodways, often in this magazine<\/a>. Now he turns his probing eye on his own life in a moving memoir that sees him reckoning with growing up in a fascinating but difficult (and sometimes violent) environment, in a fraught South. He journeys away from home and back again in order to better understand where he came from\u2014and better understand himself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Beth Ann Fennelly, author and contributor<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Bless Your Heart: A Field Guide to All Things Southern<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Landon Bryant<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When interviewing internet sensation and Mississippi native Landon Bryant<\/a>, G&G<\/em> writer Kinsey Gidick asked, \u201cWhat\u2019s your signature Southern saying?\u201d <\/strong>\u201cMight could,\u201d Bryant replied. \u201cI love might could. I think it\u2019s so fun because it means so much: You might; you could; you have the option to, and you might.\u201d Find more of Bryant\u2019s anthropological commentary\u2014delivered with humor, heart, and plenty of Southern charm\u2014in this self-described field guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Grace Roberts<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The Man No One Believed: The Untold Story of the Georgia Church Murders<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Joshua Sharpe<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sharpe, a native of Waycross, Georgia, practices Journalism with a capital J<\/em>. Among other crucial print and audio stories, the investigative reporter\u2019s work has played a pivotal part in freeing two innocent people from prison. Here, he dives deep into the story of one of them, Dennis Perry, a Georgia man wrongly accused of walking into a church in 1985 and shooting and killing a Black couple\u2014while the real murderer remained at large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Amanda Heckert<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Braided Heritage: Recipes and Stories on the Origin of American Cuisine<\/a><\/em><\/strong> by Jessica B. Harris<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three is a magic number for the food historian Jessica B. Harris. In her gorgeous new cookbook, she weaves together a trio of major culinary influences: Native American, European, and African, plus many subgroups within them. \u201cEach brought much to the bubbling cauldron of cultures that would spawn the nation\u2019s food,\u201d she writes. \u201cThe result, as we all know, is savory and varied indeed.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014CJ Lotz Diego<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Murder Takes a Vacation<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Laura Lippman<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I prefer my summertime novels to be a heaping main course of murder mystery, with a side of suspense and a dash of humor\u2014all of which seem to be on the menu in Laura Lippman\u2019s new novel, Murder Takes a Vacation<\/em>. The Baltimore-based <\/em>best-selling author\u2019s new mystery follows a widow (and former detective\u2019s assistant) who books a spontaneous Parisian getaway, only to be caught in the middle of mayhem when a man she befriends on her cruise is found murdered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Danielle Wallace, editorial assistant<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The New Book: Poems, Letters, Blurbs, and Things<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Nikki Giovanni<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nikki Giovanni\u2019s The New Book<\/em> promises to be a powerful send-off from one of the world\u2019s most celebrated poets. Blending poems, letters, and reflections, it draws on her family history, her fierce political voice, and a life richly lived. Giovanni, who passed away last December, spent thirty-five years teaching in the English department at Virginia Tech, where I had the privilege of studying under her. I can\u2019t wait to read this final work from a true literary giant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Emily Daily, newsletter editor<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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I Regret Almost Everything<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Keith McNally<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a flight back to New York from Nashville, where the restaurateur Keith McNally is opening a location of his brasserie Pastis this summer, he snapped and shared a picture of a passenger reading his superb new memoir. \u201cSeriously, what are the chances?\u201d McNally wrote in the Instagram caption. \u201cThough I affected indifference to this (minor miracle) on the OUTSIDE, I was dancing naked on all of Manhattan\u2019s restaurant tables on the INSIDE.\u201d Someone you know is likely also reading\u2014and talking about\u2014I Regret Almost Everything<\/em>, McNally\u2019s life-story-so-far that ambles from the East End of London into the worlds of theater, art, love, his heralded restaurants (such as Pastis and Balthazar in New York), celebrity gossip, and the stroke that upended everything. Genuine and wryly funny, this book is one to tear through and then share with a friend so you can talk about it over dinner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014CJ Lotz Diego<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Seth Wickersham<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Catnip for any football fan: ESPN senior writer Seth Wickersham goes long on the most revered position in sports, chronicling what it takes to go from kiddie pads in Pop Warner to the NFL Hall of Fame, thanks to access to college standouts like Arch Manning and best-of-all-timers like John Elway, Johnny Unitas, and Arch\u2019s uncle Peyton. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Amanda Heckert<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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People Like Us<\/em><\/strong><\/a> <\/em>by Jason Mott<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Occupying the no-man\u2019s-land between fiction and memoir is Jason Mott, who writes about familiar realities and dreamscapes with equal dexterity. His latest novel follows the intersecting storylines of two Black writers, and the back cover copy leads me to believe that tears will be involved\u2014though from laughter or heartbreak I have yet to find out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Grace Roberts<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The Wanderer\u2019s Curse<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Jennifer Hope Choi<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While it\u2019s technically a memoir, that label barely scratches the surface of Jennifer Hope Choi\u2019s debut, The Wanderer\u2019s Curse<\/a><\/em>. This sweeping, genre-blurring narrative is part personal history, part cultural archaeology as Choi traces the parallel lives of herself and her mother\u2014two Korean-American women marked by yeokmasal<\/em>, a so-called inherited affliction compelling them to wander far from home (including to South Carolina). The result is a propulsive, deeply touching book that had me in tears while flying home myself on a recent trip. Ugly crying on an airplane? That\u2019s the mark of a good book in, well, my book. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Kinsey Gidick, contributor<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Hot Wax<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by M.L. Rio<\/p>\n\n\n\n

M.L. Rio\u2019s debut, If We Were Villians<\/em>, a murder mystery surrounding a Shakespeare conservatory, has enjoyed a prolonged state of fame, but I\u2019m eager to see how her upcoming novel trades villainous theater students for gritty eighties rockstars. Promising a high-octane road trip shot through with hazy dives and vintage cars, this feels like the kind of book where it\u2019s appropriate to listen to Aerosmith while reading. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Grace Roberts<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Sing Me<\/a><\/em><\/strong> Home to Carolina<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Joy Callaway<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a piece for G&G<\/em><\/a> that\u2019s an ode to both a North Carolina hardware store and the unlikely spaces that foster friendship, Callaway writes that her \u201cheart\u2019s always yearned for a smaller place, a slower pace, and a community that feels like family.\u201d It\u2019s no surprise, then, that her upcoming novel centers on all the ways a small town fights to win back one of its own\u2014now a big-city businesswoman\u2014aided by an eccentric cast of characters and a good old-fashioned love triangle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Grace Roberts<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The Jackal\u2019s Mistress<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Chris Bohjalian<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A real-life Civil War friendship inspired this powerful novel, told in gorgeous prose by Bohjalian. A Virginia woman missing her soldier husband befriends, against all odds, Captain Jonathan Weybridge of the Vermont Brigade in the Union army. The Jackal\u2019s Mistress<\/em> is a sure-bet for fans of Cold Mountain<\/em> and The Red Badge of Courage<\/em>, both of which Bohjalian cites as influences in his author\u2019s note. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014CJ Lotz Diego<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Dominion<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Addie Citchens<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been hankering for this novel since I first read Addie Citchens in the Paris Review\u2014a new voice as fierce and lucid as the Delta sun in August. A family saga about love and violence by this searing talent? Yes, please. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014C. Morgan Babst, author and contributor<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Hothouse Bloom<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Austyn Wohlers<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This debut novel about a young painter who inherits her late grandfather\u2019s apple orchard has some serious buzz, and I\u2019m excited about it for a few reasons. One, Wohlers is a musician and a novelist, like me, and I\u2019m interested in musician novelists. Two, I like her music (she\u2019s in the band Tomato Flower, but I like her solo stuff even better, especially the super beautiful music video for her song \u201cBodymelt in the Garden of Death,\u201d which is basically a showcase for different flowers in radical lighting). And three, the novel is being published by Hub City<\/a>, out of Spartanburg, the best little press going these days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Nic Brown, author and contributor<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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World Without End<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Martha Park<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A master class on how sharing the most particular and personal details can have the ironic effect of revealing universal truths. Martha Park does so through beautiful essays and illustrations: a pastor father; a Tennessee upbringing; a Kentucky husband; a fascination with the powers of water, electricity, growth, and loss. By narrowing in on her childhood memories and questions about motherhood and then zooming out to gorgeous observations of the South\u2019s mountains and coasts, she asks, as perhaps we all do, how to find a foothold in the wilds of life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014CJ Lotz Diego<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Mississippi Blue 42<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Eli Cranor<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eli Cranor, who made his bones writing crime fiction about Arkansas, takes aim at the folks next door in this romp of a book, set in Waffle Houses and college bars, on football fields and lonely blacktops. If you\u2019ve followed the volleyball stadium funding scandal in Mississippi, or the political career of a certain former football coach in Alabama, you\u2019ll recognize some of the plot lines that Cranor sets in motion to tell a story of sports payola in the years before NIL money began to flow, a novel that reads as funny as it does true. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014John T. Edge<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Lullaby for the Grieving<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Ashley M. Jones<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jones is just coming off serving her four-year term as Alabama\u2019s poet laureate. Her term was vibrant and energetic, just like her poetry. Lullaby for the Grieving<\/em>, her fourth book of poetry, will be published in September, and I eagerly anticipate it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Beth Ann Fennelly<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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With Her Own Hands: Women Weaving Their Stories<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Nicole Nehrig <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During my time at G&G<\/em>, I\u2019ve learned so much about the rich traditions of fiber and textile art in the South, and as an artist, this has cracked my world open. I admire and often look to the work of women in Gee\u2019s Bend<\/a>, Alabama, and Kentucky<\/a> for visual inspiration, and I\u2019m excited to discover more communities and stories in Nehrig\u2019s book on global textile makers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Gabriela Gomez-Misserian<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>
\n

An American Girl Anthology<\/em><\/strong><\/a> edited by Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler and KC Hysmith<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loving the American Girl<\/a> brand was one of my core personality traits as a child (I played with the dolls, read the books and magazine, had an AG-themed birthday party when I was seven, \u201cperformed\u201d the Samantha play on repeat with my best friend in her basement, you get it). So I\u2019ve been loving reading through the new American Girl Anthology<\/em>, which compiles thoughtful, nostalgic, and often critical essays on what the brand means to a generation of women, covering topics like food history, consumerism, and the question of who gets to be called an American Girl. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Caroline Sanders Clements<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>
\n

Shedding Season<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Jane Morton<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My favorite mornings are those when I make the time to read outside on the porch with a poetry book and a mug of coffee. Jane Morton is a new-to-me poet whose lyrical rhythms draw from Southern landscapes and the cycles of nature\u2014even the ugly and hard parts. I\u2019m planning on starting the day with Shedding Season <\/em>when it comes out in late summer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Gabriela Gomez-Misserian<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>
\n

Gabba Gabba We Accept You, The Wondrous Tale of Joey Ramone<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Jay Ruttenberg, illustrated by Lucinda Schreiber<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best children\u2019s books can be enjoyed just as thoroughly by the adults. Ruttenberg\u2019s fantastic tale of Joey Ramone describes his path to punk, and the bravery required to be oneself, with equal parts wisdom and humor. Schreiber\u2019s impressive illustrations complement the book\u2019s gently subversive vibe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Hunter Kennedy, contributing editor<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Garden & Gun has an affiliate partnership with <\/em>bookshop.org<\/em><\/a> and may receive a portion of sales when a reader clicks to buy a book.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

G&G<\/i> editors and contributors shared so many stellar new novels, memoirs, and cookbooks that we lost count. But here are thirty-something selections at the top of our lazy-summer book stacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":213858,"template":"","categories":[1784,2399],"tags":[29653,74,30280],"authors":[30376],"issue":[],"class_list":["post-213859","list","type-list","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-books","tag-art","tag-books","tag-whats-new","authors-compiled-by-cj-lotz-diego"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Great Big Summer Reading List – Garden & Gun<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"G&G editors and contributors shared so many stellar new novels, memoirs, and cookbooks that we lost count. 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