Librarian Summer reading recommendations 2026
So, as it’s summer, we have asked the lovely librarians here at Edinburgh Napier University to share some of their favourite reads of the year so far. Most of us are avid readers, as you would expect, so be sure to add these to your own reading plans this Summer.
Why not join one of your local libraries and support your local community by borrowing books for FREE! Alternatively, Edinburgh has some of the best independent bookshops in the world, so see this as an excuse to buy yourself a wee treat and support an independent bookshop too.
Rachel
The Girl On the 88 Bus by Freya Sampson
A heartwarming and uplifting story about a woman named Libby Nicholls who moves in with her sister in London after being broken up with and left broken-hearted by her now-ex-boyfriend Simon. On a bus ride through town, she meets an elderly pensioner named Frank and becomes invested in his story of a girl he met on the same 88 bus service many years ago. She inspired him to pursue his dreams, and he had planned to go on a date with her, but tragically lost the bus ticket she had written her number on for him. Ever since, he has ridden the same 88 bus in the hope of finding her again. Libby decides to help him on this mission – and in this journey, finding love and happiness again may be just around the corner…
This was truly one of my favourite books that we recently read for my book club – if you are looking for a wholesome and uplifting read for the summer, certainly add this one to your reading list!
Alannah
Here are some of Alannah’s top reads:
- The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy
- She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
- Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World by Anne-Laure Le Cunff
- There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness by Carlo Rovelli
- Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind the Food That Isn’t Food by Chris van Tulken (You can borrow this one from us!)
Alison
The pull of the stars by Emma Donoghue
“In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city centre, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia’s regimented world step two outsiders—Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumoured Rebel on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.
In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other’s lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.
In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.” (Description from Goodreads)
Adeline
Lots of wonderful recommendations from Adeline:
- Heatwave, Victor Jestin
- My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante
- The Glassmaker, Tracy Chevalier
- Strangerland, Monika Radojevic
- Queenie, Candice Carty-Williams
- Birnam Wood, Eleanor Catton
- Four Seasons in Japan, Nick Bradley
- Malibu Rising, Taylor Jenkins Reid
Maya
Fancy something a bit more political? Maya recommends:
Political order and political decay from the industrial revolution to the globalisation of democracy by Francis Fukuyama
This is the story of how state, law and democracy developed after these cataclysmic events, how the modern landscape – with its uneasy tension between dictatorships and liberal democracies – evolved and how in the United States and in other developed democracies, unmistakable signs of decay have emerged.
If we want to understand the political systems that dominate and order our lives, we must first address their origins – in our own recent past as well as in the earliest systems of human government. Fukuyama argues that the key to successful government can be reduced to three key elements: a strong state, the rule of law, and institutions of democratic accountability.
This magisterial account is required reading for anyone wishing to know more about mankind’s greatest achievements.
Sharon
The Giver of Stars by JoJo Moyes
Based on a true story rooted in America’s past, The Giver of Stars is unparalleled in its scope and epic in its storytelling. Funny, heartbreaking, enthralling, it is destined to become a modern classic–a richly rewarding novel of women’s friendship, of true love, and of what happens when we reach beyond our grasp for the great beyond. (description from Goodreads)
Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
I’ve been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.
Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life’s challenges – how to get relative with the inevitable – you can enjoy a state of success I call “catching greenlights.” (description from Goodreads)
Alastair
Every One Still Here by Liadan Ní Chuinn
I finally got round to reading this after being stuck in library waitlist purgatory for months. And no wonder: this is one of those books that seemingly everyone and their mother has been talking about since it came out in 2025. Having now read it, I can see why people are saying it would make fine mandatory reading for people in the North of Ireland, or for anyone who wants to learn about what life is really like in the North, how it feels to come from there.
Every One Still Here is a collection of short stories that revolve around the legacy of conflict and the persistence of a history that refuses to loosen its grip on the land and its people. Written by a (deliberately) mysterious, invisible, genderless author, the collection came swiftly out of nowhere, making a name for the author and sitting somewhere in amongst the existing triumvirate of post-Troubles fiction (Michael Magee, Colin Barrett, Wendy Erskine).
You get an array of perspectives, situations and choices made by all kinds of different characters, floating about in a world of ineradicable grey areas, a world which still finds itself governed by a polemical “one or the other” type of ideology. The stories are captivating, ranging from the banal to the enigmatic, from introspective to urbane; the characters are mostly enchanting antiheroes with hyperrealistic faults and flaws. And the last few pages are a sickening, spellbinding coda to the collection – a whiplash-tug back to the reality of the world which produced this work.
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
This is my favourite book of all time. I could talk about it forever (that was pretty much all I did for my MA). Funny and warm, with a vibrant cast of characters and dripping with dramatic irony, this book is as poignant today as it was in 1959.
I first encountered The Sirens of Titan as a tattered old copy jutting out from the totemic stacks of Keats & Chapman (Belfast’s answer to Paris’s Shakespeare & Company). I was attracted to its age-faded aqua cover with the retro sci-fi drawings of a spaceship, a big dog, and an alien-robot-thing sitting neatly atop the surface of Saturn’s moon.
The story follows Malachi Constant, “a victim of a series of accidents,” as we observe his journey from riches to rags, through love and loss, friendship and fatherhood, from messianic status to persecution, all while he is buffeted between the planets and moons of the solar system. He is at the whim of the universe – or is he at the mercy of the prophetic Winston Niles Rumfoord, who questionably predicts all this right as the action starts?
Some memorable moments include an enduring friendship with a character called Boaz, an “Alice-in-Wonderland door,” and several very funny instances of mob mentality.
It may not sound like your typical Summer read. But it’s short, and it’s fun. And it has a way of sticking with you – sure, here I am years later, still going on about it.
You can access loads of articles on this book through Librarysearch.napier.ac.uk, such as Science and Parody in Kurt Vonnegut’s “The Sirens of Titan”
Emi
Talking to My Daughter About the Economy, by the Greek activist and former politician Yanis Varoufakis.
In Talking to My Daughter About the Economy, activist Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former finance minister and the author of the international bestseller Adults in the Room, pens a series of letters to his young daughter, educating her about the business, politics, and corruption of world economics.
You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson (Available at the Library)
You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson is a queer, political, and feminist collection guided by self-reflection. The poems range from close examination of the deeply personal to the vastness of the world, exploring the expansiveness of the human experience from love to illness, from space to climate change, and so much more in between. One of the most celebrated poets and performers of the last two decades, Andrea Gibson’s trademark honesty and vulnerability are on full display in You Better Be Lightning, welcoming and inviting readers to be just as they are.
At Certain Points We Touch, by Lauren John Joseph (Available at the Library)
“It’s four in the morning, and our narrator is walking home from the club when they realise that it’s February 29th – the birthday of the man who was something like their first love. Piecing together art, letters and memory, they set about trying to write the story of a doomed affair that first sparked and burned a decade ago. Ten years earlier, and our young narrator and a boy named Thomas James fall into bed with one another over the summer of their graduation. Their ensuing affair, with its violent, animal intensity and its intoxicating and toxic power play will initiate a dance of repulsion and attraction that will cross years, span continents, drag in countless victims – and culminate in terrible betrayal. At Certain Points We Touch is a story of first love and last rites, conjured against a vivid backdrop of London, San Francisco and New York – a riotous, razor-sharp coming-of-age story that marks the arrival of an extraordinary new talent.”– Provided by publisher
Juliet
The story of art without men by Katy Hessel
This is a fantastic read by such an engaging author. As someone who studied art history, this kind of book is wildly overdue and much needed. I recommend this for anyone with an interest in art. Plus, you can read the eBook through the Library here.
The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo
I loved this book! It’s dark, nefarious and rich like an old-fashioned fairytale.
“In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family’s social position.
What begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain’s king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England’s heretic queen—and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king’s favour.
Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the line between magic, science, and fraud is never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition’s wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive—even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santangel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.” (description from Goodreads)
Crescent City by Sarah J Mass
Just finished re-reading this and am diving back into the series. If you haven’t read her books, you should. Women’s fantasy fiction is having a moment, and there’s a reason that Sarah J Mass is the Queen. This is the third series of hers and builds on her Throne of Glass and ACOTAR series. If you want enthralling, inspiring, incredible, complex stories with some of the best characters I have ever known, these books are a perfect summer, probably autumn, and then cosy by the fire winter read.
Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative?
And if you need something a little more serious, this is a thought-provoking book on Capitalism and our current situation. If you feel like you’ve had quite enough of cocktails by the beach and would like to soak in the misery of the current capitalist nightmare we inhabit…this is the book for you! It’s actually very good, I promise. It was written in 2009 but still feels very relevant.
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That’s the roundup of our favourite reads so far this year. If you have any recommendations yourself, please pop them in the comments!
You can read other recommendations from us here
By Juliet Kinsey
Photo by freestocks on Unsplash
