Summer Books MEGA List

EVERY book EVER recommended in Heretic Hereafter up to now!!

me, hopefully soon. Photo by Kalen Emsley on Unsplash

It’s July. I’m tired, you’re tired. All I want to do is sit next to a large body of water, staring into the middle distance, while someone periodically hands me hunks of watermelon.

Maybe you’re in a similar place, needing time to rest. Reading can be a good way to do this. I like to sit by the aforementioned water, watching my kids shove each other off a paddleboard, earbuds playing something interesting enough to make me occasionally reach for my notebook and jot down a line.

In pursuit of peak lake+book bliss, I’ve gone back through the archives and compiled a list of all the books that I’ve recommended, along with recommendations from our wonderful commenters. I hope one will strike your fancy.

And let me know in the comments: what’s the last thing you read and loved? Especially I’d love some juicy fiction to read in the shade.

FICTION:

-Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

-Book Lovers by Emily Henry

-The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz

-Little Rabbit by Alyssa Songsiridej

-Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

-Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko

GENERAL NON-FICTION:

-Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

-Emily Nagoski’s Come As You Are and Burnout

-Esther Perel’s Mating in Captivity

-Angela Garbes’ Essential Labor

-Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

-Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

-High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out by Amanda Ripley

-Unmask Alice by Rick Emerson

-How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis

-Bittersweet by Susan Cain

-David M. Buerge’s Chief Seattle and the Town that Took His Name

-The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Morgan Schafler

-Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke

-Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum’s Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

-Sex and the Soul by Donna Freitas

-God: A Human History by Reza Aslan

-How to Be Perfect by Michael Schur

-The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

-Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s On Repentance and Repair

-Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering by Dr. Scott Samuelson

CHRISTIAN-ISH NON-FICTION:

-Freeing Jesus by Diana Butler Bass

-Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free by Linda Kay Klein

-Allison Barr’s The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

-Sarah Stankorb’s Disobedient Women: How a Small Group of Faithful Women Exposed Abuse, Brought Down Powerful Pastors, and Ignited an Evangelical Reckoning

-Shameless: A Case for Not Feeling Bad About Feeling Good (About Sex) by Nadia Bolz-Weber

-Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion by Dr. Marlene Winell

-Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life and The Universal Christ

-Attached to God by Krispin Mayfield

-Searching for Sunday and A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans

-Kristin Kobes Du Mez’ Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

-White Evangelical Racism by Dr. Anthea Butler

-John Fea’s Believe Me

-When Religion Hurts You by Laura E. Anderson

-Brian McLaren’s Do I Stay Christian? and Faith After Doubt

POETRY/ESSAYS/MEMOIR

-Let the Moon Wobble by Ally Ang (preorders available)

-Another Way to Say Enter by Amanda Johnston

-The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

-Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

-David Sedaris’ Calypso and Happy-Go-Lucky

-Maggie Smith’s You Could Make This Place Beautiful

COMMENTER RECOMMENDATIONS (I’m sure there are others I missed, please lemme know in the comments!)

-Religion of Tomorrow by Ken Wilber

-Joseph Stiglitz’s People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent

-Simon Sinek’s Infinite Game

BONUS MATERIALS:

• more book recs, OH YEAH!!

• and EVEN MORE!!