Even English Majors Can Add Without AI
It’s been an uneasy start to summer. Ticks are legion. The weather is unpredictable. The Iran war drags ludicrously on. Inflation is rising faster than ever. SpaceX, Anthropic, and Open A.I. are about to go public, which will cause . . . something. The most corrupt possible (don’t quote me though) version of the World Cup is underway. Screwworm is among us.Article continues after advertisement
But tradition is tradition, and so in an effort to find out which books everyone is reading and recommending this season, I read through 25 summer reading lists, which recommended a total of 419 individual books. 60 books were mentioned 3 or more times, and these I have organized for you below, in descending order of popularity.
I must note that the summer book lists are relatively thin on the ground (or possibly just late) this year. At this time in 2025, I counted 540 individual books from 35 summer reading lists; 85 of those appeared on at least 3; the most recommended book was on 19 lists. (To be fair, 2024 looked a lot like this year, but I thought we’d bounced back!) Some notable big lists from trusted publications are missing (or again, late), and the algorithm keeps sending me to random Substacks. The internet as we knew it continues to implode, but we soldier on, counting.
