Top Ten Tuesday - Beach Reads

It’s time for another Top Ten Tuesday! Up this week: top 10 beach reads

(original feature courtesy of The Broke and the Bookish)!

1. A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L’Engel

Swim with the dolphins and fall asleep to the waves along with 16-year old Vicky Austin who is spending the summer at her dying grandfather’s house on an island off the coast of New England.  Don’t judge this book by the Disney Channel Original Movie; this novel claims my highest number of re-reads and never fails to transport me to the smell of salt air and barbeques on the beach.

  

2. The Secret Within by Theresa Golding

Carly sneaks out each night to find solace from her controlling and overbearing father on the empty boardwalk during the summer her family spends on the Jersey Shore.  There’s no comfort like the sound of the waves on a night so dark you can’t even see the water-- or an unexpected friend to share it with.

 3. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

The sea becomes a character of its own in this dark and passionate tale of a young woman caught up in a whirlwind romance and marriage with a much older and much wealthier man who suspiciously never talks about the sudden death of his former wife.

4. Delirium by Lauren Oliver

This is the last summer before Lena enters adulthood and has her emotions surgically removed forever.  Set in dystopian Portland, Maine, Lena finds herself afflicted with amor deliria nervosa- the highly communicable and deadly disease of love.  Lena’s oceanside race with Alex at sunset tops my favorite moments in this novel.

5. My Name Is Memory by Ann Brashares

With the rare ability to recall past lives, Daniel has spent each one looking for the love of his lives, Sophia, who remembers only the present.  Alternating between this life and past existences, this is a unique love story culminating in a frantic chase and difficult choice that ends in the ocean.

6. Love Poems by Pablo Neruda 

This pocket-sized book of poetry packs a surprising amount of passion for it’s thin volume, containing poems as sultry as the night sea air such as La Noche en La Isla, El Viento En La Isla, and Epitalamio.

7. Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

Winnie Foster is suffocating with summer boredom under her mother’s strict upbringing.  When she ventures outside of her fence into the wilderness beyond, she is kidnapped by a well-meaning family that teach her in those hot days of summer what it means to live life.

8. Whirligig by Paul Fleischman

Brent wants to die.  It takes a night of drunken driving, a tragedy, a bus pass, a trip to the four corners of the United States and a pile of wood to restore his passion for life.

9. The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Edna Pontellier is spending the summer with her husband and children at a resort in the Gulf of Mexico.  When she falls in love for the first time - and with a man who is not her husband- Edna questions the roles of women in the turn of the century South and her own identity.

10. The Princess Bride by William Goldman

Take this book with you to the beach for a fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek, “wait, wait, you’ve got to hear this” adventure of love conquering all: torture! villains! arranged marriages!  piracy! mistaken identities! ROUSes! If you like the movie, you’ll love the book.

I’d love to see YOUR top 10 beach reads!

-Kate