Spoiled for choice

The fine people at Publishers Weekly recently posted a list of recommended summer reading, and, as usual, a number of tearjerkers made the cut. Book critics always think they're being so original and daring when they recommend bleak summertime reading, but this list alone includes books about a divorced astronaut mourning his dead kid, the teenage son of a serial killer, and the unhappy life of John Kennedy Toole (the dude who wrote A Confederacy of Dunces). However, it also includes some books I'd actually like to read (particularly the nonfiction one about sleep, although I'm always on the lookout for good historical romance novelists, so I might check out the Sherry Thomas book as well), which means it's better than most lists, which tend to be even gloomier. I've never gotten over this one recommended-reading list that described a book about a woman recovering from a miscarriage as "beach reading".

I mean... I'd rather read Jaws.