Summertime for most is sunny and slow, with plenty of time to tackle that pile of books that you’ve been buying throughout the year but haven’t had time to read. Well – forget about your pile of unread books because listed here are the books you should be reading this summer. Mostly fiction, one not, these books are a collection of genuine, earnest, and profoundly delving novels. One is based on a true story; one is an in-depth look at the progression of America, and almost all of them are about going back to your roots and understanding where you live, where you’re from, and the people who came before you play integral parts of who we are as people today.

CLAUDIA BUTTERWORTH

Breath: The New Science Of A Lost Art
James Nestor

Although you would think it innate, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly – with dire consequences. Award-winning science journalist James Nestor takes a deep dive into his own health and meets ahead-of-the-curve scientists delving into our life-dependent necessity. The author transforms what we thought we knew into a revelation of health and science.

The answers aren’t just found in science labs; no – he looks to ancient burial sites, choir schools, religion, and alternative experts to find out why changing the way we breathe can stop snoring, improve your fitness, fix your teeth, improve autoimmune disease, and even straighten scoliotic spines. What you have been told about health is all about to change – and it all starts with just one breath.

To Paradise
Hanya Yanagihara

In a three-part book spanning centuries, Hanya Yanagihara is back with a novel detailing an alternate reality of America. Written chronologically, the first book follows a young man named David in his quest to break away from the family name and the life already set out for him. The second details a young prince having already broken away from his family in the search of romantic love and dealing with the grief of being estranged from his father. The third follows a young woman named Charlie, set far in the future, where pandemics rage and society looks quite different because of it.

In a novel that seems to be, at first glance, three separate stories, it comes together in a majestic novel of parallel narratives that make you re-evaluate family heritage, following your heart, loneliness and love, the weak and the strong, doing what’s right, and the idea of Paradise – does it exist? Is it worth trying to find out?

The Island Of The Missing Trees
Elif Shafak

In the centre of this novel lies a fig tree. The fig tree has witnessed many a stolen moment in its long life in Cyprus, but this story follows the story of two teenagers in 1974 from across the vast divide between culture and religion. Kostas, a Greek and Christian boy, meets Defne, a Turkish and Muslim girl, in a tavern that seems separate from the world.

The fig tree will live through their secret meetings, their sorrow, and their laughter, and it will witness war rip through the land, tearing down the city and breaking apart Kostas and Defne, who disappear into the unknown.

Decades later, in Northern London, a teenage Ada Kazantzakis endeavours to untangle her family’s unspoken history and discover her identity, and all that makes sense is a fig tree growing in her back garden.

A novel that transcends time, culture, and species – the natural world witnesses us all.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Ocean Vuong

This is a letter from a son, named Little Dog, to his mother – who is illiterate. Full of all the things he could not say, his letter is written long after his family moved to America and covers his family's history, from even before he was born. It follows his mother and his grandmother, who lived through the Vietnam War, and the burdens they carry from their experiences. The huge feats they achieved, trying to grasp a better life for both them and Little Dog, who was to come.

In a novel of fear, confusion, loss, comradery, stubbornness, love, and hope, we find out what families will do for each other when human cruelty is at its apex, how we can look to the future with a dream and leave the pain of the past behind.

Great Circle
Maggie Shipstead

A visceral and compelling novel, ‘Great Circle’ follows the life and dream of pilot Marian Graves in her mission to fly across the world from pole to pole. The story was inspired by Amelia Earheart, and we follow Marian as she grows up and watches her as she becomes propelled by her need for freedom, adrenaline, and ambition to complete this unprecedented journey.

Ultimately, she disappears in 1950, on the last leg of her mission from Antarctica to New Zealand, where she plunges into the South Pacific, never to be seen again, so close to achieving her goal but doomed to be forever unfulfilled.

But this is not a historical story – it’s a contemporary one. Told side by side, we meet actress Hadley Baxter who is drawn to play Marian Graves on screen half a century later. Hadley has her own troubles with aviation, as her parents also crash-landed in a plane in Lake Superior. It is Hadley’s role and research that causes her to discover something extraordinary about the life and mission of Marian, changing her story forever.