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
- How to Get Smarter, One Breath at a Time
- The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting
- Obama's 'Mistakes': Way Too Early to Judge
- In Italy, A Sex Scandal to Rival Berlusconi's
- Satyam Computer Fraud Grows to $2.5 Billion
- Black Friday
- Germany's Doubts About Afghanistan Grow After Revelations About Air Strike
- Pie
- Will Dubai's Financial Problems Spread Around the Globe?
- The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting
- The '00s: Goodbye (at Last) to the Decade From Hell
- How to Get Smarter, One Breath at a Time
- Is Gene Therapy Finally Ready for Prime Time?
- The Gospel of Glee: Is It Anti-Christian?
- Workers of the World vs. China Inc.
- Obama's 'Mistakes': Way Too Early to Judge
- In Italy, A Sex Scandal to Rival Berlusconi's
- Dearborn's Muslims Fear a Fort Hood Backlash
- Satyam Computer Fraud Grows to $2.5 Billion
RSS