header image for Bestselling Author Lauren Hough Shares Books for Reading Outdoors (Cocktails Optional)
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By Bookshop.org

Among the things I’ve missed most over the last year is the simple joy of sitting outside with a book. I miss the strangers on a cafe patio. The overheard snippets of conversation. The dogs napping in the shade. The runaway toddler. I miss reading in front of a sweating cocktail on a wobbly table outside a bar. I miss reading on a hammock at the creek. The happy calls of grasshoppers and birds, the whoop and splash of kids on a rope swing. I miss sitting on park benches, on beaches, on tree stumps, on tailgates, on lounge chairs, lost in a book, soaking in the hum of humanity and nature around me. 

 

As I write this, the sun’s coming out for the first time in days. The forecast says today might be warm enough to sit outside and enjoy a book. I’ve been lucky enough to get a vaccine. The CDC says we can sit outside now. I think I’ll find a bar patio, order a cocktail, and absorb the chatter and rustle and scraping, the reminder, though I’m lost in a book, that I’m not alone. 

 

We’re not past this yet. But I think it’ll help, that we can be together again, even when we’re alone. So here’s a list of books for reading outdoors, cocktails optional...

 

—Lauren Hough

bookcover for Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing: Essays

Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing: Essays

Lauren Hough 

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Paperback

$16.95

$15.76

"This is one of those rare books that will instantly become part of the literary canon and the world of letters will be better for it."—Roxane Gay, author of Difficult Women

bookcover for American Harvest: God, Country, and Farming in the Heartland

American Harvest: God, Country, and Farming in the Heartland

Marie Mutsuki Mockett 

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Hardback

$28.00

$26.04

I love reading about the Great Plains. Mockett delivers with this sweeping travelogue a portrait of lives we too often ignore. The sort of perspective we could use a lot more of these days.

bookcover for The Innocent

The Innocent

Taylor Stevens 

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Paperback

$14.00

$13.02

Another thriller for this list because I do love a thriller. And I love Taylor Stevens. The Innocent is her most personal work, the enemy loosely based on the cult in which we were both raised. Steven’s Vanessa Michael Munroe is the heroine we needed, still do.

bookcover for Heaven, My Home

Heaven, My Home

Attica Locke 

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Paperback

$16.99

$15.80

Another Texas writer, and another thriller. You breathe the atmosphere and feel the characters and know you’re in the hands of a master storyteller.

bookcover for The Souvenir Museum: Stories

The Souvenir Museum: Stories

Elizabeth McCracken 

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Hardback

$26.99

$25.10

One of the coolest things about this job is sometimes you get to meet your heroes. Long before I could call her my friend, Elizabeth McCracken was the virtuoso of the short story. Her latest collection is as crackling, witty, warm, and surprising as she is.

bookcover for Somebody's Daughter: A Memoir

Somebody's Daughter: A Memoir

Ashley C. Ford 

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Hardback

$27.99

$26.03

There’s a reason everyone’s talking about this memoir. Ashley’s story is deeply moving, wrenching, surprisingly hopeful, and absolutely beautiful.

bookcover for Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York

Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York

Elon Green 

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Hardback

$27.00

$25.11

Elon turns the true crime genre on its head with this harrowing account of a serial killer who terrorized the queer community of New York in the early nineties. His narrative traces the lives of the victims, the history of queer life in a nearly forgotten era, and he treats those victims with such tenderness and empathy often lost in the true crime genre.