100 Books Like Summer of '79

This is perhaps the best-known and most obvious choice illustrating Nature’s healing powers. Mary, an orphaned girl, moves in with an estranged, reclusive uncle on his isolated English estate. Lonely and bereaved, Mary spends her days exploring both the house and extensive gardens, when one day she discovers a secret garden, locked away behind a wall.

This garden, tucked away and neglected for many years, is the key to Mary’s healing. Through quiet deliberation, she begins to bring the garden back to life and, in turn, finds new life in herself. The healing of the uncle is perhaps the most mystical scene in the book for me, brought about by a quiet moment beside a trickling stream, where he has an epiphany of heart healing. I find the book’s mixture of nature and mystery beguiling.

So, this book was made into two movies, the first in 1981 and the other in 2002, but I first experienced this story by reading the book when I was a young girl in sixth grade in 1978. I remember reading the epilogue over and over again—it broke my heart to think how the greed of one man could ruin something so magical. I pondered whether it was a blessing or a curse to live forever, and the town of Treegap felt like it could exist in any wooded place. Whenever I find myself in a thick forest, I still search for springs that bubble up from the ground, taking me right back to those emotions when reading this great classic.

Going through anxiety can be tough and lonesome. I know most of us are stubborn and want to go things alone, just like Autumn does in this book. West paints a picture of how keeping our trials to ourselves can hold us back and keep us from growing. It can damage friendships and relationships. By giving your close friends and family a chance to see the world through your eyes, you’re giving them a way to truly and deeply understand you, which is all anyone really wants.

Beautifully conceived and timeless, this is a touchstone book for me. The two kids at the center feel so real to me: 10-year-old Jess, a farm kid and aspiring artist who is lonely, closed off, and feeling misunderstood, and the new kid, Leslie, who has moved with her family from the city.

The kids’ friendship is authentic, with some childhood magic grounded in the real world. This book is about the sudden death of a friend, and I admire that Paterson does not talk down to kids or try to comfort them with unrealistically simple answers.

As a boy, I also found strength in seeing Jess empowered, taking steps that moved him forward despite his grief over Leslie’s death.

Every prep/boarding school has a Phineas, a campus alpha-dog and star athlete best not to anger, and a Gene, a brainy loner unsure how to navigate a treacherous ecosystem away from loved ones.

The tension is in their intersection – are they friends-of-necessity or adversaries on a collision course? – and what unfolds initially as a tragic accident hardens into a murder mystery that tests one’s conscience and memory.

It remains a stunning, unforgettable book that suggests adolescent history is our real Grim Reaper. 

I spend hours listening to my favorite songs on repeat until they feel like a part of me. Musicians take this obsession even further, practicing a song until muscle memory takes over—their hands instinctively shaping the melody. Dylan Woods, the novel’s protagonist, is a devoted violinist, and there are many excellent passages in this book about what music means to her.

When her childhood friend Langston—now an R&B chart-topper—comes back into her life, the blend of music and budding romance keeps me turning pages. But this book ultimately made my list because of Dylan’s exploration of identity. Like Dylan, I was adopted and resonated with Davis’s portrayal of the struggle to belong. 

Some first person voices are just so naturally nostalgic, like you’re sitting around a campfire listening to someone telling you a story.

“The year my mother started hearing voices from her dead brother Clyde,” or “But Gigi was the first to fly.” So many moments to hold onto in this novel, each an introduction to another tale, or a memory you can’t wait to listen to and run off down the street to share it for yourself.

The voice of August is so real and clear and poetic that one forgets there’s even a writer behind it. This close first-person voice lets us in, welcomes us into the secrets of the street. “Everywhere we looked we saw the people trying to dream themselves out.” And dream I did, along every glorious page, only I never wanted out.

When Bob Dugoni learned I was interested in inspirational thrillers, he suggested I read this book, thinking I might enjoy it. He was right.

The author’s protagonist, Sam, who is born with a rare ocular albinism and sheltered by a loving mother, is unusual as the main character. It was easy for me to engage with his struggles of guilt, acceptance, and finding meaning in this coming-of-age story. I could identify with Sam’s experiences of being bullied and found his determination to be an overcomer inspiring. 

Lorrie Moore is another one of my favorite writers and someone I’ve been lucky enough to write about on multiple occasions. Her first novel, Anagrams, is smart, fun, and resolutely—even defiantly—weird. Her second novel, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? is all those things and more.

Berie, the narrator, is on a bad vacation in Paris, where her marriage is teetering on the brink of collapse. Instead of dealing with her obnoxious husband, she thinks back to the summer she turned fifteen and the profound friendship she forged with a girl she worked with at a Disney-knockoff theme park in upstate New York.

Like Home Land, this novel has its cultists, and I’m happy to count myself among them. Moore, like Lipsyte, is a stylist as unmistakable as she is unprecedented, someone whose sentences I would recognize anywhere. This slim coming-of-age novel bears all her hallmarks—comic timing, gimlet… show more.

Tin Man weaves the beauty and meaning of Van Gogh’s oeuvre into a background for a story that is written like poetry. Time is a main character who is sometimes kind, but mostly cruel. Separation, loss, and longing are themes that all people can relate to but when seen through the perspective of a character who identifies as LGBTQ+ it heightens and clarifies those human experiences in a way that draws a reader from any background deeper into an exploration of what the passing of time means and the consequences of ignoring the herald of each minute that ticks by.