It’s my ninth year participating in the 20 Books of Summer challenge, hosted this year by Annabel. #20BOS26 starts on 1 June and runs through 31 August.

Some years I have chosen a theme (colours, foodie, flora or fauna) or other criterion (all hardbacks by women), but the danger in limiting my options, let alone pre-selecting particular books, is that I tend to lose interest as soon as I list them. Most times I only read 7–10 of the 20 books I earmark, so what’s the point! My only firm rule this year is that all 20 books must be from my own shelves. Beyond that? I’d love to make progress towards various low-key goals:

• My long-neglected Four in a Row and Journey through the Day projects
• Review catch-up books or part-read books, many dating back to 2022 or earlier
• My ongoing quest to read books published in my birth year of 1983
• Chipping away at the list of authors I own two or more (Michael Crummey, Sigrid Nunez, Jeet Thayil) or even three or more (Jenny Diski, Wendy Perriam, Jane Urquhart) unread books by

I also like to achieve a good balance between new acquisitions and long-term shelf sitters; doorstoppers and slim volumes (novellas or poetry collections). Ideally at least 5 of my choices would be by BIPOC. Overlapping with other summer challenges such as June’s Reading the Meow, Paris in July and August’s Women in Translation, would be handy.

And then there’s this year’s Bingo card to consider. I’m pondering the 4-book diagonal consisting of:

• Summer in the title
• A classic you’ve been meaning to read
• Features a family holiday
• Published in summer (any year)

Or column 4, which is:

• With a vacation setting
• With a journey by air/sea/rail
• Features ice cream or cocktails
• Published in summer (any year)

I tend to skew towards fiction in the summers, so I’m guessing I’ll manage 15 works of fiction (one short story collection would be good), a few memoirs or other nonfiction, and a couple of poetry collections.

Unread poetry books from my bedside table

Here are a few specific books I currently have my eye on…

Ongoing project:

Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates – Marcie (Buried in Print) and I are doing a mini Oates buddy reading project and I made the mistake of starting with Blonde, which is over 700 pages, all of them crammed full of tiny type. So it may well take me the entire summer.

Review copies:

Homework by Geoff Dyer – The paperback has just arrived for me and I’m eager to get stuck in, having sampled it on my Kindle earlier in the year. Dyer is an annoyingly versatile author whose writing always feels effortless. This is his memoir of growing up in typical English suburbia in the 1960s and 70s.

George by Frieda Hughes – Having recently read a novel about Sylvia Plath (the excellent The Daffodil Days by Helen Bain), I fancy picking up this memoir by her daughter about raising a fledgling magpie as a pet.

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai – This is a proof copy from (gulp) 2018! I only got about 60 pages into it at that time, but I love Makkai and would like to try again. It’s the story of a group of arty friends in Chicago at the start of the AIDS crisis.

Recent acquisitions:

(Elkin for Paris in July; Powers for 1983 challenge)

The new Emily St. John Mandel novel coming out in September, Exit Party, is a sequel of sorts to The Singer’s Gun, I’ve heard, so I will definitely read it ahead.

Tying into other challenges:

Reading the Meow; Paris in July; Women in Translation options

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov would be for Reading the Meow but would also cross off “A classic you’ve been meaning to read.”

Left over from last year:

I fancy a reread of Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver – “From her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. She is caught off-guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces and confounds her self-assured, solitary life.”

How I Won a Nobel Prize by Julius Taranto – I believe it was Susan’s review that put this on my radar, though the title and the fact that it’s an academic satire would have been enough to get it onto my TBR.

Just because…

What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell – Small Rain was my book of 2024, and I keep meaning to read something else by him. It’s his debut’s 10th anniversary, so why not now?

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim – I got this from my wish list for Christmas. I loved her second novel, Happiness Falls, and this one looks right up my street, too, with its theme of experimental treatment for autistic children and gentle thriller plot.

All Over Creation by Ruth Ozeki – Her only novel I’ve not yet read. An environmentalist novel set in the northwest sounds like a good follow-up to our latest book club read, The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich.

So I’m not committing to a particular set of 20, but you can see from this and my recent library reorganization photos that I have plenty on the shelves to choose from!

See anything here that I should prioritize?