What You’re Reading This Summer — and Where

In our last Houzz Call, we asked you to tell us about your summer reading list and the best place to enjoy a good book in your home. You Houzzers weren’t shy in responding. Your comments flooded in — with photos, titles, author names, extensive synopses and literary analyses. “This reading nook post looks like a morph between Houzz and Goodreads,” Rita Seymour writes. Here are some of your photos, along with stories about your spaces and your recommended summer reading lists.

Houzz pro Alison Kandler of Alison Kandler Interior Design created this colorful space for her client, Joan, who’s drawn to bright colors and bold prints. “My client asked for a super reading spot in her girly office, and I have to say, she spends hours in this chair,” Kandler writes.

Suggested reading: The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild, by Lawrence Anthony and Graham Spence


“There’s some fancy trash in my hood,” Elise Miller says, referring to the wingback chair, found on a curb, that now sits on her porch. Inspired by an online DIY tutorial she found by Houzz pro Kristy Swain of Hypen Interiors, she hand painted the Union Jack on what is now the best seat in the house. “I’ve used the Internet to install toilets and a bathroom sink, tuft sofa cushions and paint this chair. I’m doing open-heart surgery next!” she writes.

Suggested reading: Star Craving Mad, by Elise A. Miller


Lacey Wallace of BA Wygant Studio says even though she has art shows almost every weekend this summer, she’s sure to make time to sit beachside in Southampton, New York, with her best friend, poodle Lucy. She’s currently learning about the “real X-Files,” as she calls them, and she promises to update us when she finds her next interesting read.

Suggested reading: The FBI-CIA-UFO Connection: The Hidden UFO Activities of USA Intelligence Agencies, by Dr. Bruce Maccabee and Mr. Stanton T. Friedman


“This ugly old couch is the best reading spot I’ve ever had — and I’ve tried many,” writes Deb Brennan about her favorite place to curl up with a book. With its chenille-like slipcover and deep, thick cushions, she sinks right in. That couch, coupled with the warm western sun that comes through the window, frequently turns reading time into nap time. But, she says, “this perfect spot on this ugly old sofa is where I’ve read John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, John Irving and Alice Hoffman, among many others, and where I’ll read Harper Lee’s newly published novel as soon as it’s released in July.”

Suggested reading: Luckiest Girl Alive, by Jessica Knoll; The Rocks, by Peter Nichols; and The Nightingale, by Kristin Hannah



Denna Jones went to great lengths to find her perfect reading spot: “I bought the daybed in 2002 on the Netherlands site of eBay. I used to do a lot of country-specific eBay searches to find what I wanted.” What she wanted was an early-model Hans Wegner daybed that can be converted from sofa to bed with a simple lift of a backboard.

Modeling her daybed find is Earl the cat, whose company is appreciated, though he challenges the page-turning process.

Suggested reading: Down the Garden Path, by Beverley Nichols


If you can’t get to the beach this summer, why not bring the beach to you? It looks like that’s what Myra Garcia did when she set up her lawn chair and umbrella next to her little pool. “My favorite reading place is on a terrace overlooking a small river in a mango orchard in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. Nothing but the sound of the river and the birds. And lots of sun!”

Suggested reading: Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese


Sal Ortega confesses to taking up the whole sofa when enjoying a good piece of literature, writing that he finds “reading horizontally is a treat.” This particular room is adjacent to a sunroom, giving him and his family the perfect environment for listening to music, enjoying a home-cooked meal and reading.

He says, “I’ll leave you with what at my age I find to be profound and reassuring: ‘The problem of self-identity is not just a problem for the young. It is a problem all the time. Perhaps the problem. It should haunt old age, and when it no longer does it should tell you that you are dead.’” (Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire)

Suggested reading: Young Men and Fire, by Norman Maclean and Through a Glass Darkly, by Donna Leon


Laura Beaver says she’s revisiting the classics this summer in a classic reading spot: the bed. After receiving her parents’ collection of leather-bound editions of several timeless novels, such as The Odyssey and Crime and Punishment, Beaver challenged herself to read the books she never had a chance to read in college. “I welcome the challenge — to prove that it’s never too late for me to fill in the educational gaps,” she says.

Suggested reading: The Trial, by Franz Kafka and The Penitent, by Isaac Bashevis Singer


With the beautiful summer weather, Nelida Mejia prefers to read either at the beach or on her patio. The best seat in the house: her Adirondack chair complete with a comfy footrest extension.

Suggested reading: Islands in the Stream, by Ernest Hemingway


Although most of her summer reading will be done on her deck, Susan Watts has her own private library, built by her husband.

Keep the conversation going: Share what you’re reading and where this summer. And if you need a few ideas …

Other Houzzers’ suggested reading:
French Children Don’t Throw Food, by Pamela Druckerman
My History: A Memoir of Growing Up, by Lady Antonia Fraser
The Riot, by Laura Wilson
Miss Buncle series, by D.E. Stevenson
The Wrong Mother, by Sophie Hannah
Bleak House, by Charles Dickens
The Cuckoo’s Calling, by Robert Galbraith
Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey, by Marie Mutsuki Mockett
All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman
Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon
The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green
Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins
Diary of the Dark Years, 1940-1944: Collaboration, Resistance, and Daily Life in Occupied Paris, by Jean Guéhenno
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? A Memoir, by Roz Chast
The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance, by Edmund de Waal
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, by Elizabeth Kolbert
In Defense of Selfishness: Why the Code of Self-Sacrifice is Unjust and Destructive, by Peter Schwartz
Dorothy Must Die, by Danielle Paige
Mrs. Poe, by Lynn Cullen
Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson
Leonora, by Elena Poniatowska
The Japanese Lover, by Isabel Allende
Lifted by the Great Nothing, by Karim Dimechkie
Still Life, A Fatal Grace, and The Cruelest Month, by Louise Penny
Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts
The Martian, by Andy Weir
The Daughters of Mars, by Thomas Keneally
The Call, by Yannick Murphy
Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger
The Complete Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue, by Neale Donald Walsch
Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor, by Stephanie Barron
The Sun, by Seymour Simon
Rasputin’s Daughter, by Robert Alexander
Watership Down, by Richard Adams

URL: What You’re Reading This Summer — and Where http://www.decor-ideas.org/cases-view-id-26435.html