2023 Summer Read

Hello, Radio Readers! I’m Jane Holwerda for High Plains Public Radio. About our 2023 Summer Read. You know, every week in June and through most of July, Radio Readers have talked about books worthy of sharing, and now we have an incredible book list. Do you have time for one more recommendation?

Hello, my name is Andrea Elise and I live in Amarillo, Texas. I just finished reading the excellent short story “Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield, published in the author’s 1922 collection of stories called The Garden Party.

Hi, I am Holly Mercer, Library Director at Dodge City Community College. I selected the book Poverty, By America written by Matthew Desmond because I read his first book Evicted when it was published in 2016 and found it to be intriguing.

Hi! I’m Calliope from Wichita and I’ve been reading a lot this summer between Scout camp, jazz classes, and – well, regular reading!

My summer reading recommendation is not a book, but a magazine—which is also, in so many ways, a community. The New Territory calls itself “an autobiography of the Lower Midwest,”—the Lower Midwest being Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Northwest Arkansas, Southern Illinois, and Iowa. But in their words, quote, “When it feels right, we color outside those border lines.”

Hello, I’m Sara Crow, co-owner of Crow & Co. Books in Hutchinson. I’ll be talking about The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, by Michael Finkel, a true crime story about one of the world’s most successfully notorious art thieves in history, Stéphane Breitwieser.

Hello, HPPR Book Club members. My name is Andrea Elise and I live in Amarillo, TX.I just finished reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s extraordinary memoir, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith.

Hello, my name is Andrea Elise and I live in Amarillo, TX. I just finished reading Rosemary Brown’s compelling memoir, Unfinished Symphonies, published in 1971.

I’m Pat Tyrer from Canyon, Texas for the High-Plains-Public-Radio-Readers Book Club. Over the past few years, I’ve noticed that some of the most provocative and enjoyable writing is being published in the genre of young adult novels. Such is the case with Daniel Nayeri’s Everything Sad is Untrue (A True Story). In fact, I was so affected by this book that I have bought and given away several copies.

Let’s turn to the book that is the subject of this review: Ann Nepolitano’s Hello Beautiful. I read – or rather devoured – this book shortly after it was released in March of this year due to an ordering error.