Summer Reading List
Summer is a bracingly honest season for readers: it's too hot to pretend to be clever, so you just read books you actually like. TIME asked some of its favorite writers what they read when they read for fun
Glen David Gold picks Scott Pilgrim series by Bryan Lee O'Malley
Scott Pilgrim is the best 23-year-old ever. Like Proust's Swann, he has a story that takes multiple volumes to unfold, except Pilgrim is even more awesome because he's in a comic book. In love with the exquisite Ramona Flowers, he must win her heart by fighting her seven evil ex-boyfriends. Scott is lazy, self-centered, immature and ultimately a winning hero. Drawing on manga, Bollywood, video games, rock music — and probably things that went over my head because I'm 45 — the series is wildly enjoyable for its absurdist humor, its indelible characters and its growing, inevitable sense of melancholy as Pilgrim becomes that most terrifying of things: 24 years old.
Gold is the author of the novels Carter Beats the Devil and Sunnyside, which was published this spring
View the full list for "Summer Reading List"Latest Lists
Most Popular »
- The '00s: Goodbye (at Last) to the Decade From Hell
- Workers of the World vs. China Inc.
- Scientology : The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power
- The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting
- Why Ireland Is Running Out of Priests
- Backing Up Files Online: It's Good to Mozy Along
- Germany's Doubts About Afghanistan Grow After Revelations About Air Strike
- Energizer Bunnies: Turning Rabbits into Green Fuel
- Awaking From a Coma: What Did the Doctors Miss?
- Obama's 'Mistakes': Way Too Early to Judge
- The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting
- Workers of the World vs. China Inc.
- Backing Up Files Online: It's Good to Mozy Along
- The '00s: Goodbye (at Last) to the Decade From Hell
- Why Ireland Is Running Out of Priests
- Scientology : The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power
- Awaking From a Coma: What Did the Doctors Miss?
- Will Dubai's Financial Problems Spread?
- Sex, Television and Berlusconi's Path to Power
- How Guatemala's Most Beautiful Lake Turned Ugly
RSS