Looking for a book to bring on your summer vacation? Below is the official 2018 The Sound of Ideas Summer Reading List comprised of smart, fun and suspenseful recommendations from our team, our listeners and a panel of book lovers. Add your own recommendations in the comments!
The Sound of Ideas Summer Reading List
Books The Sound of Ideas team recommends:
-Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly *2017 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner
-First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung
-Mike Belkin: Socks, Sports, Rock and Art by Carlo Wolff
-No One Cares About Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America by Ron Powers
-Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America by Peter Edelman
-Mr. Chairman: The Life and Times of Ray C. Bliss by John Green, & William Hershey
-Furnishing Eternity by David Giffels
-The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
-Evicted: Poverty & Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
-When: Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink
-The Escape Artist by Brad Meltzer
-Blood Pages by George Bilgere
-Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home by Lara Lillibridge
Books our panel of book lovers recommends:
SAM ALLARD
- The Nix by Nathan Hill
- Eastman was Here by Alex Gilvarry
- Made for Love by Alissa Nutting
- O Pioneers by Willa Cather
- Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
- Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
- Sticky Fingers by Joe Hagan
- Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy by Gabriella Coleman
- The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight by Marc Weingarten
KACIE ARMSTRONG
- I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
- The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
- The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
- I Can't Make This Up: Life Lessons by Kevin Hart
- Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Are by Seth Stephens- Davidowitz
- Born A Crime by Trevor Noah
- An American Marriage by Taraya Jones
- Sing Unburied Sing by Jessmyn Ward
- Savage the Bones by Jessmyn Ward
- Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston
- Allegedly by Tiffany D. Jackson
LYDIA MUNNELL
- Ill Will by Dan Chaon
- The Waters and the Wild by DeSales Harrison
- Love and Ruin by Paula McLain
- The Secrets Between Us by Thrity Umrigar
- The Wal Mart Book of the Dead by Lucy Biederman
- What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia by Elizabeth Catte
DAVID GIFFELS
- Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
- All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Books our listeners recommend:
- A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- Amelia Peabody Series by Barbara Mertz and John Hess
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- Bluebeard by Max Frisch
- Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
- Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
- Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
- Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
- Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
- Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
- East of Eden by John Steinbeck
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
- Flavia De Lice series by Alan Bradley
- How the García Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
- King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard
- Life of Pi by Yann Martel
- Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
- Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
- Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- On the Road by Jack Kerouac
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
- Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
- Royal Spyness series by Rhys Bowen
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
- The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy
- The House on the Lagoon by Rosario Ferré
- The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
- The Prophet by Michael Koryta (Note: Book set in Northeast Ohio)
- The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
- Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
- Watership Down by Richard Adams
