Build your summer reading list
Did you miss last week’s “What’s everyone reading?” Community Zoom event but would like some suggestions for building your summer reading list? Here are some of the books that were discussed by Ward Tefft of Chop Suey Books, VCU Libraries staff, and Richmond community members. Titles include new releases by VCU alumni, 14th century pandemic reading, contemporary graphic novels, non-fiction, locally-based historical fiction, and cozy mysteries. Take a look at this list and let us know what you’ve been reading!
Recommendations from Ward at Chop Suey Books
Upcoming releases:
- Nine Shiny Objects by Brian Castleberry (VCU alumnus)
- Windswept by Gwen Cole
- Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland (VCU alumnus)
- Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford
- The Organ Thieves: The Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South by Chip Jones (non-fiction account of the first heart transplant at MCV
Popular Social Justice books purchased from Chop Suey in the last week
Some of these titles might be sold out. If you are interested in educating yourself on social justice reform and the local issues, the Chop Suey team can recommend other titles for you (or check out the VCU Libraries resource guide on anti-racism)
- Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
- White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
- Me & White Supremacy Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F Saad
- Beyond Survival Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement edited by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ejeris Dixon
Suggested by VCU Libraries community and staff
- Walk the Wire by David Baldacci
- The Order by Daniel Silva
- Ghosts of Harvard by Francesca Serritello
- Bloomland by John Englehardt (VCU Cabell First Novelist Award finalist)
- Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (VCU Cabell First Novelist Award finalist)
- On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (VCU Cabell First Novelist Award finalist)
- The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
- Flowers in the Gutter by K.R. Gaddy
- Citizen Reporters: S.S. McClure, Ida Tarbell, and the Magazine That Rewrote America by Stephanie Gorton
- The Beantown Girls by Jane Healy
- Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession by Rachel Monroe (FOL book club selection earlier this year)
- Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom (former VCU professor)
- When they call you a Terrorist: A Black Lives Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele
- Jamestown Women and Children series by Connie Lapallo
- Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis
- The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio (100 days of Decameron group reading project)
- Mossflower from the Redwall series by Brian Jacques
- The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
- Outdoors by Yuichi Yokoyama (abstract graphic novel by a Japanese pop artist)
- Stages of Rot by Linnea Sterte (impressionistic sci-fi/fantasy graphic novel with an ecological/naturalist angle)
- Red Winter by Anelli Furmark (graphic novel)
- The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Mattias Ripa (graphic novel)
- A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld (graphic novel)
- Understanding Comics by Scott McLeod
- Homesick for Another World by Ottesa Moshfeg
- 1177: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline