If you live in Seattle, you’ve probably been disturbingly ADHD since the sun came out a few weeks ago. Running around with your shirt off, juggling on unicycles, singing along with the [Duckmobile](http://www.ridetheducksofseattle.com/).
All fine and good, but I still believe in cooling it indoors, despite the sun (I know, blaspheme!). If you decide to relax, read one of these incredible books, which I’ve chosen based on one criterion alone: that at some point during my reading of them, I cried.
Short Stories
- Anything by George Saunders, but especially Pastoralia, In Persuasion Nation, and The Braindead Megaphone
- The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley
- A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Conner
- What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
Newer Fiction
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
- The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Older Fiction
- Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence
- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Total Non-Fiction
- On Toleration by Michael Walzer
Other
- Olgilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy. Oh my god! I’m just kidding.
Better to cry in summer than winter.
4 Comments
extremely loud and incredibly close and the corrections are two of the best books I’ve ever read. I also second your vote for grace paley. not on your list, but I found them beautiful: all the pretty horses by cormac mccarthy, and angle of repose by wallace stegner.
Michelle, thank you! I’ll definitely check out the mccarthy and stegner books.
My addition to your list is The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. It’s amazing…there are dogs in it…and I totally cried.
Olivia,
Checking out the review of it now…
Is this Olivia of Blizzard and Olivia?