What constitutes a true Beach Read book? Light and fluffy? Adventure and thrills? Passion and romance? Or books from your school summer reading list? Do you save your heavy reading for poolside, or sneak in those embarrassing chick-lit titles while on vacation?

Help us create a shelf of 100 Beachy Reads. Give us your list of 10 perfect summer books!

Rules: To make compiling and determining the final list without stressing the responsible moderator (aka, ME), please:

1) Post ONLY 10 books.
2)Don't worry if your list repeats books from other folks' lists -- that's called popularity and helps!
3) DO NOT USE LINKS OR HTML. I just have to take it out and it's a pain.
4) List Title - Author.

Also, save discussion for the Discussion thread in this folder. Any discussion posted here will be moved over there via copy-paste, and I'll shake my finger at you for not reading the rules.

Voting will be collected until August 4th, with any run offs posted after that.

Fledgling Jason Steed By Mark A Cooper
The best book I have read, ideal for the beach, fast, fun and sooooo original.

I tried for self-contained and not too deep, but good writing (to me, anyway).

Lord Darcy, Randall Garrett (The Omnibus is best);
Small Vices, Robert B. Parker
Fer-de-Lance, Rex Stout
All Creatures Great and Small, James Herriot
Pyramids, Terry Pratchett
The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, Lilian Jackson Braun
The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
God Knows, Joseph Heller;
Shogun, James Clavell
Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl (#1, if you're actually on a beach)

On the Beach by Nevil Shute

Little Brother - Cory Doctorow
Half Magic - Edward Eager
A Room With a View - E. M. Forster
Born Standing Up - Steve Martin
The White Dragon - Anne McCaffrey
The Blue Sword - Robin McKinley
The Host - Stephenie Meyer
Criss-Cross - Lynne Rae Perkins
The Moonspinners - Mary Stewart
Assassination Vacation - Sarah Vowell

Honorable Mention:
Our Dumb World: The Onion's Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd edition

Fledgling Jason Steed By Mark A Cooper

Stormbreaker Alex Rider By Anthony Horowitz

Two great books by brilliant authors.

Definitely add Beach Music by Pat Conroy even though it is not really about the beach

The Lords of Discipline by Conroy is also good for non stop can't put down reading.

A Gift from The Sea by Anne Morrow Lindberg is a good one for a beach state of mind.

Anything written by Silas House if you like Appalachia and simple basics. Clay's Quilt or Parchment of Leaves are good.

Personally, I like any and all books set in the Outer Banks of North Carolina or Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket in Massachusetts. I like reading books set at a beach or on the ocean when I'm reading at the beach

Outside of that, sometimes, I like total fantasy, fluff or adventure reading at the beach.

This summer I got hooked on J. D. Robb's series of female cop books. (they were the only books in the house I rented) Tough Cinderella, female Jason Bourne type heroine, a change of pace.

For touching base with the miraculous in reality, read Apollo 13

Last year I read Portrait of a Lady and Moby Dick at the beach, this year, J. D. Robb and Dean Koontz. What does that say about my state of mind. I needed mindless fantasy.

1. Flashman Series by George MacDonald Fraser

2. Life of Pi by Yann Martel

3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

...

Connor, Nick, Jeremy the instructions for this thread clearly state do not use links or HTML. Please edit your posts accordingly. Thank you.

goin with 9 oldies i know i would enjoy re-reading:
a variety of lengths & weights, some i can just open to any page,
& one nearly unforgiveable not-read-yet

Engine Summer - John Crowley
Love & Sleep - John Crowley
Ridley Walker - Russell Hoban
Welcome to Hard Times - E.L. Doctorow
The Eros of Everyday Life - Susan Griffin
Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner
Two or Three Things I Know for Sure - Dorothy Allison
The Alphabet Versus the Goddess - Leonard Shlain
The Collected Stories - Amy Hempel
One Writer's Beginnings - Eudora Welty

1. Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis
2. American Heroes by Edmund S. Morgan
3. The Real History Of The American Revolution
4. His Excellency George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis
5. The Real George Washington by Andrew M. Allison\
6. Mary Poppins Comes Back
7. Weird Pennsylvania by Matt Lake
8. The Essential Wisdom Of The Founding Fathers edited by Carol Kelly-Gangi
9.The Perks Of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
10. John Adams by David McCullough

a good beach read - this ideal book for the beach (or what have you) will be not overly long, it will be amusing and have excellent passages to read aloud. preferably it will also be easily set down and picked up again without worry that something has been forgotten or missed.

the first that come to mind are:

-small bachelor - wodehouse (however, i would argue that all of wodehouse is the PERFECT beach read)

-dr. no - fleming (and here again, this suggestion encompasses many more books, any bond really but the spy genre is great for the summer- spy thrillers are diverting, not consuming, easily put down or finished and i am partial to fleming)

-quo vadimus or the case for the bicycle - e.b. white (essays reprinted from new yorker or harpers that are hilarious and a great aloud read, however its oop status makes me rec white essays in general. there must be another collection of them out there.)

-pure clear light - madeleine st. john (again, this lady wrote four books which i find somewhat interchangeable, but still worth reading, and they could all be on this list. they are something of a psychological exploration, but very light.)

-how proust can change your life - alain de botton (light, self-exploratory, and hilarious. well, i suppose if you wanted this book to be heavy, it could, but you could do that later after you'd read it at the beach, falling asleep at intervals.)

-twilight - meyer (this is one of the best beach reads for an active person, diverting AND you can skip whole paragraphs or pages while you watch your boyfriend play volleyball and you haven't missed much)

-flaubert's parrot - julian barnes (not as light as the others on my list, but for a serious reader this is a nice vacation and very amusing to read to read aloud!)

the loved one - waugh (humorous, light, whatever i said above for the others i am sure will fit here too)

The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, Edward Rice
Blue Meridian, Peter Matthiessen

Decline & Fall - E. Waugh
Brideshead Revisited - E. Waugh
Our Man in Havana - G. Greene
Far Tortuga - P. Matthiessen
Any of Truman Capote (except In Cold Blood), Gore Vidal, W.F.Buckley, Ian Fleming, some of Anthony Burgess lighter works.
War & Peace - because you won't read it any other time either, right?
Any of the Anne Perry, Martha Grimes, Tony Hillerman, Reginald Hill, Henning Mankell, Raymond Chandler, Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, Mickey Spillane & other assorted crime/police procedural/hard-boiled detective writers.
Most Sci-Fi, J.R.R. Tolkien Lord of Rings series
Any book written on a TV series, ie: Star-Trek, CSI.
JAWS! - Peter Benchley. What better book to read on the ocean beach, eh? HE HEH HEH!
Forgive me for colouring outside the lines, please.

The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The Stories of John Cheever
Anthem - Ayn Rand
Collected Poems of Phillip Larkin
The Stories of Anton Checkov
New & Selected Poems Mary Oliver
National Audubon Society, The Sibley Guide to Birds
A Sand County Almanac - Aldo Leopold
The Man Who Planted Trees - Jean Giono
COllected Poems of Donald Justice

The Journeyer – Gary Jennings
Carioca Fletch - Gregory McDonald
Island – Thomas Perry
Flashman in the Great Game – George MacDonald Fraser
Faking It – Jennifer Crusie
The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat – Oliver Sacks
The Mismeasure of Man – Stephen Jay Gould
Shadow of the Moon – MM Kaye
Carpe Jugulum – Terry Pratchett
Flowers for the Judge – Margery Allingham

Well, I can’t get to any of my custom shelves, such as favorites and top-100, etc. so off the top of my head:

1. The Arm of the Starfish by Madeleine L’Engle
2. The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
3. Housekeeping vs. the Dirt by Nick Hornby
4. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (Thursday Next series)
5. A Long Way to Go by Borden Deal
6. The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart
7. Contact by Carl Sagan
8. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
9. The Object of My Affection by Stephen McCauley
10. Flotsam by David Wiesner

Beach reads. I would say what your looking is for entertaining books, not books where you have to do a lot of thinking abou things. The book of the moment. I like popular fiction a lot. My list would be:

1. The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum (a truely great read)
2. Poet by Matthew Connelly (serial killer)
3. Charm School by Nelson DeMille (spy book)
4. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (this book is more popular than the bible)
5. The Valley of the Horses (prehistoric man, sex and a woman who befriends a horse)
6. The Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett(a perfect historical spy book with Nazis)
7. The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy (unbelievably popular)
8. Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer
9. Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
10. The Firm by John Grisham

Honorable Mention to

A simple Plan by Scott Smith
All Creatures Great and Small by Jim Herriot (tales of a vet in England)
Absolute Power by David Baldacci
Along Came a Spider by James Patterson
The Stand by Stephen King
Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
Enders Game by Orson Scott (immensely popular sf
Snow crash by Neil Stevenson (fun cyberpunk novel)

It's a hard questions as there are so many:

1) Fledgling Jason Steed By Mark A Cooper

2) Sookie Stackhouse series By Charlene Harris

3) Twilight Series By Stephenie Meyers

Vey, very difficult, but so much fun---love lists, love salt water, love books: who could ask for anything more?

1. African Lives by Denis Boyles (gossip from the Veldt)

2. Book by Book by Michael Dirda (it's BOOKS)

3. Gods, Graves, and Scholars by C.W. Ceram (digging stuff up)

4. In the Ghost Country by ? Hillary (opposites attract)

5. Clubbed to Death by Ruth Dudley Edwards (wickedly funny mystery)

6. The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford (great writing)

7. A Death in the Family by James Agee (great writing)

8. The Flame Trees of Thika by Elspeth Huxley (sweet but not cloying)

9. A House for Mr. Biswas (funny and bizarre)

10. The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy (the beach)

1. The Book Thief by Zusak
2. The Big Sleep by Chandler
3. Kitchen by Yoshimoto
4. Wild Sheep Chase by Murakami
5. The Alchemist by Coelho
6. Stargirl by Spinelli
7. The Return of the King by Tolkien
8. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Smith
9. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Hosseini
10. Interview with the Vampire by Rice

This was so difficult! To narrow it down, I eliminated anything for kids (which left out a ton of great stuff) and nonfiction. I interpreted "beach reads" to be something just thoroughly enjoyable to read, fun (or scary!), fairly easy, and difficult to put down. In alphabetical order:

Bad Monkeys - Matt Ruff
Bag of Bones - Stephen King
Blind Descent (An Anna Pigeon Mystery) - Nevada Barr
Expendable - James Alan Gardner
Jennifer Government - Max Barry
Moo - Jane Smiley
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Princess Bride - William Goldman
To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis
Whit, or Isis Amongst the Unsaved - Iain M. Banks

Okay, fun, well-written books that you zip through:

1) The Queen Lucia and Miss Mapp books (six titles) by E. F. Benson

2) The Psmith books ("Psmith -- the P is silent.") by Wodehouse

3) The Master Planets by my husband, Donald Gallinger (no no, it really is good! Thomas Perry called it "magnificent," "mysterious," and "unforgettable")

4) A Girl Named Zippy and She Got Up Off the Couch by Haven Kimmel

Ice Hunt - James Rollins
Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash
Summer Sisters - Judy Blume
Whiteout - Greg Rucka/Steve Lieber (a graphic novel)
The Last Town On Earth - Thomas Mullen
Deep Survival - Laurence Gonzales
Endless Love - Scott Spencer
trash sex magic - Jennifer Stevenson

Salty Piece of Land- Jimmy Buffett
Where Is Joe Merchant - Jimmy Buffett
Tales From Margaritaville - Jimmy Buffett
Swine Not- Jimmy Buffett
Don't Stop The Carnival - Herman Wouk
Monkey Love - Brenda Scott Royce
Any thing by Janet Evanovich

All light reading, perfect for the beach!

Okie dokie, here are mine. A mix of some classics I will always love reading and newer ones that are just some of my favs. I guess my biggest criteria for reading at the beach is to have a book I love from cover to cover and can get totally lost in.

1. To Kill a Mockingbird - Lee, Harper
2. The I Chong: Meditations from the Joint - Chong, Tommy
3. Les Misérables - Hugo, Victor
4. Dandelion Wine - Bradbury, Ray
5. Stranger in a Strange Land - Heinlein, Robert A.
6. The Princess Bride - Goldman, William
7. Imajica - Barker, Clive
8. Chocolat - Harris, Joanne
9. A Wrinkle in Time - L'Engle, Madeleine
10. Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch - Pratchett, Terry

And, in the spirit of this thread, I've actually created my own beach favs shelf which has more than the 10 listed here. http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/163...

Sir Apropos of Nothing - Peter David
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
The Hobbit - J R R Tolkein
Harry Potter series J K Rowling
The Bourne Identity - Robert Ludlum
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
A Light in the Attic - Shel Silverstein

Just curious: Am I the only one who had no idea that Jimmy Buffet wrote books?!

Amazing but true. Of course they are very light reading.

It was late last night when I posted my list.
I'd also add anything by Carl Hiasin.

Its also possible that Jimmy Buffet doesnt actually write the books but they are ghost written by someone else, ala William Shatner's Tek sf series which was written by another person. I don't know this for sure of course. I am merely speculating.

I think he actually does write them. It seems that I remember him doing an interview where he talks about how he's written since he was young, had all these beach-loving, adventurer characters in his head. They aren't the best written books ever, but I love his imagination.

Taking this conversation to the Discussion thread.

Ohhhh, I get it! Vote here, discuss there! That's why there are two threads!

(You can't hide anything from me, try though you might.)

We're sneaky like that, but you have penetrated our clever plan.

Nine stories by JBS
To Kill a mocking Bird
Man of La Mancha
Stargirl
Sherlock Holmes--orginials stories
Harriet The Spy
Fruits Basket--Manga series
God as a Verb
Einstein's Dream's--good anytime of year!
Emily Dickerson--have to have some poetry too! :)

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
His Dark Materials, by Phillip Pullman
Atonement, by Ian McEwan
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, by Joan Didion
Possession, by AS Byatt
Once and Always, by Judith McNaught

1. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge
2. Excession, by Iain M. Banks
3. Fields of Fire, by James Webb
4. Neuromancer, by William Gibson
5. Carlucci 3-in-1, by Richard Paul Russo
6. The Years of Rice and Salt, by Kim Stanley Robinson
7. Terminal Cafe, by Ian McDonald
8. Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel García Márquez
9. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
10. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, by Barbara W. Tuchman

Welcome to True North, George! You are invited to explain your picks over in the Beachy Reading Discussion thread. :D