My High Concept, Wholly Idiosyncratic Summer Reading List

Top to bottom:

1. The Poisoned Chocolates Case (by Anthony Berkeley)
2. Sandwich: A Novel (by Catherine Newman)
3. Butter Honey Pig Bread (by Francesca Ekwuyasi)
4. Blood Sugar (by Sascha Rothchild)
5. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store (by James McBride)
6. The Spinach King (by John Seabrook)

We almost always go to Cape Cod for a week at the beach in the summer, and I always plan to read a lot - like five, six, seven books.

Last month, I started thinking about the book list. I knew I wanted to read Catherine Newman's Sandwich; it's set on the Cape and she's a wonderful writer. Perusing my list of books "to read", a theme emerged. And so, the summer 2025 list snapped into place.

The first five are all fiction; The Spinach King ended up on the list because it got a great review in the NYT book review (and for the title, natch). The five fiction books were all great in different ways; The Spinach King was kind of unreadable and I didn't finish it. (And it was the only book I bought new, everything else was a used book.) 

The Poisoned Chocolates Case is a delight. Instead of a "normal" mystery, in which something happens and then gets solved, this one gets solved EIGHT different ways. (Six ways in the original, and two more in later addenda by contemporary writers.) Excellent concept, and the book is snarky/witty. I loved it. 

Sandwich is the perfect book to read on the first day of a Cape Cod vacation in the kind of rented house that you have to bring your own sheets and towels to. I love Catherine Newman. I love that she brings Vienna Fingers to the beach. I think she would appreciate that my daughter has a pair of flip-flops that we bought in an emergency (read, left hers home) at a surf shop that were rather more expensive than the usual Old Navy flip-flops and henceforth and still are known as “luxury town“ because yes, she still has them lo these years later. I love how Newman describes “our” beach with the sand ramp. I want to know which is the “good” take out place. I love the way her Cape week is larded with the same kinds of traditions that ours is. And her writing about the sandwich place between aging parents and young adult children is spot on. 

Butter Honey Pig Bread is tasty and so well written. It’s a love story, a redemption tale, and a story of twins whose mother is … complicated. And it’s full of food. Like, there are almost usable recipes embedded in the text. It's glorious (and I want to go to her Nigeria). 

Blood Sugar is totally a beach read (like, I read it in a day on the beach.) The protagonist is def a little sketch, and her lawyer is too, but it's a fun nuanced read. Were the actions of the protagonist and the lawyer justified? Is it okay that we're rooting for some flawed humans? Yes! We're on the beach and we're stretching our brains!

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is a shaggy sprawling intricate yarn. So many threads and so many characters, and yet, snap, they come together. 

The Spinach King is a total slog. I wanted to like it, but I couldn’t finish it: it veers all over the place from horses to farming to politics to greed to frozen vegetables to clothing to vanity to social climbing to union busting. When I found myself idly turning pages, I decided it was time to put it aside.

So - five and a half books in a week. What's on your list?