Our Adult Summer Reading challenge is live through August 10, 2023! Along with our reading challenges for children, our theme this summer is to Read Around the World!
You may have seen our previous blog post written by Eileen Smith stressing the importance of Summer Reading for Everyone, including adults!
It was a wise teacher at a back to school night that stressed the importance of modeling reading to our children. What better way to encourage our children to read at least 20 minutes a day, then to do it ourselves!
To participate in our Adult Summer Reading Challenge, simply fill in the titles of books you’ve read (or listened to) over the summer that fulfill the challenge in the box on the bingo sheet (available here to print, or at the library), of check off activities you’ve completed. One book may fill multiple squares! Score five in a row in any direction and score BINGO! Each five-in-a-row completed on your bingo sheet is another entry into our drawing for a chance to win our main prize. A bingo sheet with each box completed equals twelve entries. Each participant may submit one bingo sheet.
Not only does summer reading set a good example for the young ones in your life, but it can pay off. Each entry is an opportunity to win a $50 gift card to Hotels.com, courtesy of the Friends of the Topsfield Town Library!
This reading list will make some suggestions for titles that will help you check off boxes on your bingo sheet!
Key Links
• Our Award Winners Reading List, which highlights books that have been awarded some of the most prestigious prizes in book publishing over the most recent several years.
• Our Library of Things collection offers yard games, technology, board games, and more to borrow from the library- for absolutely free.
• The Global Road Warrior database is an extensive country-by-country resource for learning about culture, customs, history, and language worldwide. Currently covers 174 countries. Great for school reports as well as business, leisure, and armchair travel.
• Our AAPI Reading List highlights awesome books by AAPI authors available in our library!
• Our LGBTQIA Reading List is available here!
• Check out our discount museum passes and visit institutions like the New England Aquarium for half off.
• Visit Little Free Libraries! Here’s a handy map of Little Free Libraries around the world.
• Get adventurous in the kitchen using the NYT Cooking database, an inspiring cooking guide, innovative and interactive kitchen tool, and diverse recipe collection that helps home cooks of every level!
• Learn over 110 languages using any Internet-connected device with Transparent Languages, available through the library.
• Check out our recent reading list highlight some great selections by Black authors in our collection.
• Our Sci-Fi/Fantasy Reading List offers some out of this world suggestions!
Search for Books by Setting in Novelist
Did you know you search for books by setting using Novelist (available to library card holders?) Here’s how:
Step 1: Click on the Novelist link on the bottom of our website, and log in with your library card account information, if prompted.
Step 2: In the search bar, type SD and the location you wish to search in quotation marks. For example, SD “Massachusetts.” Then hit “Search.”
Step 3: Refine your results further using the Refine Results menu on the left. Click “Update Results” to update your list. When done, search for the items you find in our library catalog!
Summer in Paris
Read a book with “Paris” in the title
The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles
Based on the true World War II story of the American Library in Paris, an unforgettable novel about the power of books and the bonds of friendship, and the ordinary heroes who can be found in the most perilous times and the quietest places.
The Paris Daughter by Kristin Harmel
A gripping historical novel about two mothers who must make unthinkable choices in the face of the Nazi occupation.
Private Paris by James Patterson and Mark Sullivan
When Jack Morgan stops by Private’s Paris office, he envisions a quick hello during an otherwise relaxing trip filled with fine food and sightseeing. But Jack is quickly pressed into duty after a call from his client Sherman Wilkerson, asking Jack to track down his young granddaughter who is on the run from a brutal drug dealer.
Jacqueline in Paris by Ann Mah
A rare and dazzling portrait of Jacqueline Bouvier’s college year abroad in postwar Paris, an intimate and electrifying story of love and betrayal, and the coming-of-age of an American icon.
Not Lost In Translation
Read a book that was not originally published in English
The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk
In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas – and a new unrest – begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following.
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Wrongfully imprisoned for 14 years, Edmond Dantès escapes to the island of Monte Cristo. What awaits him there is a fortune in gold–and a new identity with which to pursue his revenge.
Hakim’s Odyssey by Fabien
Toulmé
In exile and far from his homeland, Hakim finds a bit of hope in the birth of his son. But between unstable jobs and selling what he can in the streets, it’s hard to survive–and impossible for the family to stay together.
The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende
Traces the ripple effects of war and immigration on two children– five-year-old Samuel, whose mother puts him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England in 1938, and seven-year-old Anita, who boards another train eight decades later to the U.S. where she’s separated from her mother.
Personal Exploration
Read a “coming of age” story
Chlorine by Jade Song
A novel that blurs the line between a literary coming-of-age narrative and a dark unsettling horror tale, told from an adult perspective on the trials and tribulations of growing up in a society that puts pressure on young women and their bodies
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
A retelling of David Copperfield. The son of an Appalachian teenager uses his good looks, wit and instincts to survive foster care, child labor, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
Maame by Jessica George
A young British Ghanaian woman navigates her 20s and finds her place in the world.
True Biz by Sara Novic
This revelatory novel plunges readers into the halls of a residential school for the deaf. As a series of crises both personal and political threaten to unravel each of them, Charlie, Austin, and February find their lives inextricable from one another-and changed forever.
On the Road
Read a book where the main characters take a road trip.
Less is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer
Arthur Less, after the death of an old lover and a sudden financial crisis, sets out on a literary adventure across the United States, during which he must finally face his personal demons.
The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise by Coleen Oakley
A wildly entertaining road trip novel featuring a college dropout and an eighty-four-year-old woman off on the adventure of their lives.
She’s Up To No Good by Sara Goodman Confino
When her husband asks for a divorce after only four years of marriage, Jenna, with her life in flux, accompanies her eccentric grandmother on a road trip to the seaside Massachusetts town of her youth where she finds the confidence and distance she needs to start over.
Mrs. Nash’s Ashes by Sarah Adler
A heart-warming romantic comedy. After her elderly landlady/best friend Rose Nash dies, Millie sets out to deliver her ashes to her long-lost love, Elsie Brown, who is in hospice care. The book flashes back to the blossoming of Rose and Elsie’s romance, and teaches Millie about love on the way.
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Read a book with one of the 3 above modes of transportation on the cover.
The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
In June of 1954, 18-year-old Emmett Watson, released after serving 15 months for involuntary manslaughter, discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car and have hatched a different plan for Emmett’s future.
Confessions on the 7:45 by Lisa Unger
Befriending a stranger in an accompanying seat when their commuter train stalls, Selena confesses a personal grievance before her life is upended by her nanny’s disappearance and growing fractures in her marriage.
Falling by T.J. Newman
Thirty minutes before a flight to New York, the family of the pilot is kidnapped and in order for them to live, all 143 passengers onboard must die.
The Disappeared by C.J. Box
Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett tackles two parallel cases involving the disappearance of a prominent British executive and a group of falconers who are being harassed by the feds, a double assignment that catches the attentions of a dangerous adversary.
Beach Read
Book that takes place at the shore, an island, or beach.
We’ll Always Have Nantucket by Doreen Burliss
LOCAL AUTHOR! We’ll Always Have Nantucket is a compelling novel that celebrates friendships, both new and everlasting, the abiding pull of family and traditions, and the enduring effort of reconciling the past and understanding that the future always contains the present.
Every Summer After by Carley Fortune
Persephone, a magazine writer, returns to her lake hometown for a funeral and lands straight in to the orbit of her ex- best friend and lover, Sam, and must reconcile the choices she made since their breakup.
The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller
While staying at “The Paper Palace” — the family summer place she has visited every summer of her life, 50-year-old Elle must decide between the life she has built with her husband and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love.
One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle
When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn’t just Katy’s mom, but her best friend and first phone call. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: two weeks in Positano, the magical town Carol spent the summer right before she met Katy’s father. But as soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother’s spirit. And then Carol appears-in the flesh, healthy, sun-tanned, and thirty years old.
