What’s on eight local authors’ summer reading lists

Planning to haul a beach bag full of books on vacation? (Who can ever choose just one?) Or maybe you’re still looking for one good read to beat the heat. Don’t sweat those decisions. We asked eight local authors what they are reading this summer for a list to last through Labor Day. May you keep your nose in a book and your toes in the sand this summer.

DAVID W. BROWN
Author of One Inch From Earth

“This summer I am reading The Fall of Gondolin by J.R.R. Tolkien—his final work of fiction, culled from his manuscripts and painstakingly edited by his son, Christopher.”

EMILY BECK COGBURN
Author of Ava’s Place

“I’m planning to read Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser because my daughter has reignited my interest in Laura Ingalls Wilder, and I’m dying to learn more about what she left out of her books.”

JENNIFER S. DAVIS
Author of Our Former Lives in Art

“This summer I can’t wait to read LSU professor Joshua Wheeler’s Acid West, a collection of essays described by publisher FSG as a ‘rollicking debut book of essays that takes readers on a trip through the muck of American myths that have settled in the desert of our country’s underbelly.’”

ROD DREHER
Author of The Benedict Option

“I’ll be reading The Aviator, the latest novel by the contemporary Russian Orthodox writer Eugene Vodolazkin, who has a real gift for writing about weighty spiritual matters with gorgeous lightness.”

LORI L. MARTIN
Author of South Baton Rouge

“I plan to read Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge in preparation for a shared reading with LSU students in the Ogden Honors College.”

JEFFREY MARX
Author of Season of Life

“As a native New Yorker who now considers Louisiana my adopted homeland, I’m always interested in learning more about the South. So I’m going to read All the King’s Men, an old book—first published in 1946—but one that will be new to me.”

M.O. WALSH
Author of My Sunshine Away

“I’ll probably spend this summer catching up on books I already should have read, like John Prine’s Beyond Words, Kirstin Valdez Quade’s Night at the Fiestas, Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Thomas Pierce’s The Afterlives and Michael Farris Smith’s The Fighter.”

ASHLEY MICHEL
Author of The Girl in Grey

“I will be reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. It was recommended to me by a coworker at the Main Library who facilitates the RENEW book club, which reads inspiring and self-development selections. As an introvert, I thought it looked interesting, since many authors tend to be introverts, but are often also not valued for our quiet contributions to our communities in favor of extrovert qualities, which are more valued.”

This article was originally published in the July 2018 issue of 225 Magazine.