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cbabe

(5,155 posts)
Sat Jun 21, 2025, 12:56 PM Saturday

Summer reading: the 50 hottest books to read now

https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2025/jun/21/summer-reading-the-50-hottest-books-to-read-now

Summer reading: the 50 hottest books to read now

From dazzling debuts to unmissable memoirs, prize-winning novels to page-turning histories … Plus our pick of paperbacks and children’s fiction

Justine Jordan, David Shariatmadari, Imogen Russell Williams and Guardian staff

Sat 21 Jun 2025 04.01

My picks:

Fiction

Dream State by Eric Puchner
In this big, bittersweet American family saga, golden couple Cece and Charlie are preparing to marry – and then she meets his difficult, unhappy best friend … Mistakes are made and decades sweep by in an immersive panorama of friendship and rivalry, marriages and children, tragedy and love. Meanwhile, the climate crisis bites, and the sands of time are only running in one direction. A book to lose yourself in, but one that doesn’t duck the big issues.

Nonfiction
Already read some of these so next up:

The CIA Book Club by Charlie English
Can literature bring down totalitarian governments? The CIA thought so, covertly funnelling Orwell, Solzhenitsyn and the occasional Agatha Christie to hungry readers in the Eastern Bloc. English’s spy-inflected history makes the case for the political power of literature.



Your picks?
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Summer reading: the 50 hottest books to read now (Original Post) cbabe Saturday OP
Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global Jim__ Saturday #1
Fascinating. Have to put on my list. cbabe Saturday #3
Thanks. My Library system ordered several copes of The CIA Book Club and I'm on the hold list. txwhitedove Saturday #2
Ice sorcrow Saturday #4

Jim__

(14,784 posts)
1. Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global
Sat Jun 21, 2025, 02:16 PM
Saturday

This is the one I picked off that list.

Amazon's description:

"The story of how one language left the steppes of Ukraine and became the earth's dominant language family has become clearer and more exciting than ever before. Hooray for a book where the author's curiosity, diligence, and literary craft gets it all down in what will stand as the go-to source for a generation.” - John McWhorter, author of The Language Hoax

Daughter. Duhitár-. Dustr. Dukte. Listen to these English, Sanskrit, Armenian and Lithuanian words, all meaning the same thing, and you hear echoes of one of history's most unlikely journeys. All four languages-along with hundreds of others, from French and Gaelic, to Persian and Polish-trace their origins to an ancient tongue spoken as the last ice age receded. This language, which we call Proto-Indo-European, was born between Europe and Asia and exploded out of its cradle, fragmenting as it spread east and west. Its last speaker died thousands of years ago, yet Proto-Indo-European lives on in its myriad linguistic offspring and in some of our best loved works of literature, including Dante's Inferno and the Rig Veda, The Lord of the Rings and the love poetry of Rumi. How did this happen?

Acclaimed journalist Laura Spinney set out to answer that question, retracing the Indo-European odyssey across continents and millennia. With her we travel the length of the steppe, navigating the Caucasus, the silk roads and the Hindu Kush. We retrace the epic journeys of nomads and monks, warriors and kings – the ancient peoples who carried these languages far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the scientists on a thrilling mission to retrieve the lost languages and their speakers: the linguists, archaeologists and geneticists who have reconstructed that ancient diaspora. What they have learned has profound implications for our modern world, because people and their languages are on the move again. Proto is a revelatory portrait of world history in its own words.

txwhitedove

(4,127 posts)
2. Thanks. My Library system ordered several copes of The CIA Book Club and I'm on the hold list.
Sat Jun 21, 2025, 02:48 PM
Saturday

sorcrow

(594 posts)
4. Ice
Sat Jun 21, 2025, 06:57 PM
Saturday

Ice -- Non-fiction by Amy Brady
This book is about the good cold stuff, not the bad actors.
A great overview and history of ice. Ice cutting and delivery. Ice cream. Cocktails (a proper gin fizz needs 12 minutes of shaking!). Skating, figure, hockey, and speed. Ice making technology. Etc. Etc

A nice palate cleanser in these chaotic times.

Best regards,
Sorghum Crow

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