It's that beach bag time of year. What are you tossing into yours? How does your reading list match up to Oprah's top pix? I took a looksie at a few of O Magazine's recommendations by finding them on Amazon and clicking on the Surprise Me preview for each book (which basically gives you a few random pages of the novel to read.) Here are the first 5 on a list of 42 . . .


Bennington Girls Are Easy by Charlotte Silver

Blurb: A ruefully funny coming-of-age novel that follows two recent Bennington grads who are determined to make it in the Big Apple.

Surprise Me: I read about some girl washing her lingerie, was cranky about not having hummus, and dropped an F-bomb

Would I buy it? Nope.

In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware

Blurb: What should be a cozy and fun-filled weekend deep in the English countryside takes a sinister turn in Ruth Ware’s suspenseful, compulsive, and darkly twisted psychological thriller.
Blurb: A revelatory biography of Svetlana Stalin, a woman fated to live her life in the shadow of one of history’s most monstrous dictators—her father, Josef Stalin. Blurb: A spare yet eloquent, bittersweet yet inspiring story of a man and a woman who, in advanced age, come together to wrestle with the events of their lives and their hopes for the imminent future. Blurb: A wonderful novel about friendship, love, travel, life, hope, poetry, intelligence, and the inner lives of girls.