When we have to stay where we are, reading gives us some place to be. It began to rain in my neck of the woods last Thursday, May 21st. As I write on Tuesday morning, May 26th, it is still raining. A major drought now covers 70 percent of the West, so I can’t complain. I also can’t complain because I got in a lot of reading. Following are four books to consider for your own summer reading. I have read all of them and each one is an accessible, fascinating and inspiring read.

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

This novel is about a prickly, sharp-witted 73-year-old, Sybil Van Antwerp [not Sharon J. Anderson] whose story revolves around Sybil’s daily ritual of writing letters. Recipients include family, friends, famous authors, and a troubled young mentee. An excerpt:

“Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle, or, a better metaphor, if dated, the links of a long chain, and even if those links are never put back together, which they will certainly never be, even if they remain for the rest of time dispersed across the earth like the fragile blown seeds of a dying dandelion, isn’t there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one’s life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it is a very small thing, to someone?”

Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

This novel is a sweeping, decades-spinning novel about Erica and Laure, two women who meet in Paris in the 1970s. It is beautifully written and completely heartbreaking. Some excerpts:

On the finality of their connection:

“Some relationships do not resolve. They become part of how you understand yourself, not unfinished, just permanently present.”

On the nature of heartbreak:

“And don’t think my pain wasn’t real, or as bad as yours. It is the condition of the heartbroken to believe no one has felt as they have, ever in the history of the world.”

You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson

Andrea Gibson was a queer poet who’s been called a “rock star of poetry slams.” They died at 49 on July 15, 2025 after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer four years earlier. It is very likely that no poet has been more honest and vulnerable. Some excerpts:

A poem entitled, “Instead of Depression”:

“Instead of depression try calling it hibernation. Imagine darkness as a nurturing cave in which you will be nurtured by doing absolutely nothing. Hibernating animals do not even dream. It’s okay if you can’t imagine spring. Sleep through the alarm of the world. Name your hopelessness a quiet hollow, a place you go to heal, a den you dug, Sweetheart, instead of a grave.”

A short poem entitled, “Good Grief”:

Let your heart break/so your spirit doesn’t.

Angel Down by Daniel Kraus

I never in a MILLION years thought that this World War I novel would enrapture me. Winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, it follows a soldier who encounters a celestial being on the battlefield. Take this in: the whole thing is a SINGLE LONG SENTENCE, rambling through 285 blood-soaked pages. The only punctuation in this novel are commas. There are no periods. The first page:

And the last page:

Hear me loud and hear me clear: this is a tough read. Kraus doesn’t pull any punches describing injuries from howitzers and mortar shells in excruciating detail (blood, viscera and body parts). In the midst of all the mayhem, however, Kraus explores various versions of the angel in literature, art and the Bible. Reading this book is an experience I won’t soon forget. I could not put it down.

What’s on your summer reading list?