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“Beach reads” is perhaps the most maligned and gendered literary category. We’ve been conned into thinking that candy-colored books with uncomplicated storylines should be reserved for the days when our brains have been so addled by the sun and the spiked seltzer that we couldn’t possibly process something more worthwhile—that enjoying a beach read is a feminine activity and thus kind of dumb.
It’s time for that to change.
At this point in the iPhone-based attention economy, if you have a beach read rather than a “beach phone” or a “beach stare into the distance until you fall asleep with your mouth open,” you are an intellectual and a credit to your community. Books of all genres are an analog form of entertainment, forced to compete with the instant dopamine dispenser that is the internet. They possess an ancient magic, unlike a machine that’s designed to be addictive. If you’re reading at all, you’re defying the—very understandable—easy slide into eternal screen staring.
A beach read is delightfully unserious—it’s funny, soothing, and illuminating. Which is why we suggest reaching for one anytime you need a lighthearted distraction: It could be the antidote to the dread of a dentist office waiting room, provide a calm respite in the parking lot before after-school pick-up, or turn a gloomy Sunday into a cozy Sunday. No matter where you find yourself, the key is: Don’t let anyone shame you.
Here are 11 any-time-of-year beach reads to proudly enjoy, regardless of your proximity to the beach.
It is impossible not to feel chic while reading this novel about 20-somethings Isa and Gala taking New York City one summer, with no currency except for charm. Vaguely European and often drunk, Isa reports on her adventures in the form of pithy diary entries, like newsy texts from your most glamorous friend. This is a book for the girlies: It will make you want to sit alone at a bar drinking French 75s sent over by a stranger.
Really Good, Actually has the laughs-per-minute rate of the funniest TV comedies, probably because it’s written by Monica Heisey, a TV writer who’s written for Schitt’s Creek. This book is wildly relatable in the way that so many books try to be and fall short of: “The only activity that has ever really interested me is sitting around with my friends in flattering lighting, eating food and talking about our feelings,” says Maggie, our heroine, early on. This is a novel about divorce written with the humor of a standup comic; it’s moving and transporting and portrays single, straight women with refreshing nuance. The heroine cries about once every other page, but you will laugh.
Joan Is Okay is kind of like Bridget Jones’s Diary, if Bridget Jones was a Chinese-American ICU doctor living in New York City. On second thought, the main characters are nothing alike—Joan is an antisocial, romance-averse scientist—but the books have a similar hilarity and sharp social critique. Wang, who studied public health before becoming a novelist, aims a lot of her dry comedy at the medical industry. “Studying so much had its consequences. It caused me to wonder if I might be a genius,” the narrator reflects. Fair warning, this book has an honest interest in death, but Joan would tell you that just means it’s really interested in life.
This book is about a damn male mermaid. It is literary—it was nominated for the Women’s Prize for Fiction—but with a healthy dose of interspecies romance. Broder, the sick genius behind the Twitter account So Sad Today and the novel Milk Fed, invites the reader to a summer of self-loathing and erotics in Venice Beach. This is the consummate 2020s answer to the beach read genre.
A sensible rule for modern life: You should never leave your house without your phone, keys, wallet, and a Samantha Irby book. Irby is a humorist whose hotly anticipated next collection of essays, Quietly Hostile (May 16), features more of what we love about her: laugh-until-you-choke confessional writing about her porn preferences, her tips on “how to look cool in front of teens,” and memories of March 2020 that will actually help you process what happened.
Olga Dies Dreaming is considered literary fiction but manages to be delightfully escapist. (Don’t let the reference to death in the title throw you!) Our protagonist is a superintelligent, highly motivated wedding planner with a full bench of hookups and a low-key mob connection. This book is part romance, part yearning exploration of immigrant families. Can a book that takes on colonialism be called a beach read? Yes, if you’re open to sex scenes and political debates and wedding tablescape descriptions sharing the space between two book covers.
With the 2016 essay collection You’ll Grow Out Of It, Jessi Klein—head writer for Inside Amy Schumer—wrote a laugh-out-loud triumph of a book about awkward girlhood. It was a massive bestseller. How do you top that? With her 2022 follow-up, I’ll Show Myself Out, an equally hilarious, surprisingly transcendent take on motherhood as an epic hero’s journey. Klein argues persuasively that the adventure of motherhood is as fantastic a saga as those of the Greek heroes and the men of Middle Earth. This is in turn funny, poignant, and mournful. “No one wants to know that as she rocked you and sang you the tenth lullaby of the night, she was fantasizing about putting you down, walking out the door, and never coming back,” Klein writes. “A mother’s heroic journey is not about how she leaves, but about how she stays.”
What if you fell in love with a hot, rich tech guy who turned out to be a maniac who had your brain chipped and trapped you in a virtual reality mansion from which you had to escape? Made for Love blends sci-fi and tech satire in a darkly funny, provocative page-turner that will make you want to delete your dating apps. This story treads into the future, but feels chillingly current. There are dolphins, there are scammers, there is absurd comedy and painful tragedy. Made for Love was also made into a TV show by HBO in 2021, starring Cristin Milioti.
There is a particular pleasure to reading about the languid rich: people with names like Poppy and Georgiana, who quake under the pressure of owning too many properties and whose biggest problems involve accidentally leaving their Cartier bracelet in the BMW of a friend who’s about to leave for Southampton. In her debut novel Jenny Jackson delivers a very funny domestic drama of a family drowning in their own excess and over-education. You will heartily enjoy judging them.
Robinson is a comedian philosopher whose essays can be enjoyed like a bag of pick-and-mix candy. In her latest collection the former Glamour and beloved podcaster, who has a talent for perfectly capturing everyday absurdity, takes on the importance of Google Calendar to modern relationships, and asks the hard questions, like: Is the excess of Swell water bottles worth the exhaustion of girl-bossery?
The Kiss Quotient is even more titillating if you read it knowing that Hoang says the story is loosely based on her own experiences. The romance novel follows Stella, the beautiful, brilliant econometrician with autism who decides to take on her sense of social awkwardness by hiring a sex worker to teach her to get better at sex. Does it surprise you to learn that the sensitive, devastatingly handsome Michael immediately falls for her? This book is a delightful mix of spicy scenes, intrigue, and family drama.
Jenny Singer is a contributing writer at Glamour. Her work has also been seen in Time Out New York and San Francisco Weekly. She loves skin care, lattes, novels, secrets, crop tops, and wildly rationalizing about why “basic” things are actually manifestations of cutting-edge feminism.
