Back in December, I had this post about one of my favorite end of the year Best List-- LitHubs's Ultimate Best Books List.
What I love about this list is how it crowd sources dozens of major publications' "Best Lists" from all over and totals them all up to see what the most popular "Best" titles are. It gives you a survey of the entire "Best" landscape in an easy snapshot. If you look at that post or use the LitHub tag for all of their ultimate lists you can get current and backlist lists that look at all the lists. While that is a lot of instances of the word list, you get what I mean. LitHub's "Ultimate Lists" are an excellent resource because by definition they are crowd sourced, but also because LitHub makes it so easy to get the current list and the last few year's of lists with a single tagged link.
That's a general PSA for all of their "Ultimate Lists," but right now I want to focus of the current 2025 Ultimate Summer Reading List.
Author Emily Temple read 35 summer reading lists from 31 publications and crunched the numbers. This is THE summer reading list you need for your patrons because it is comprised of all the lists.
Below I have reprinted the intro but you can click here to read The Ultimate Summer 2025 Reading List.
Of course, many of these books will be checked out all summer, but many of these authors have older books you can suggest to readers while they wait.
Post this list online and in your libraries as the "Best of the Summer Reading Lists." Put up a sign and then fill the display with Summer Reading titles that are on the shelf. Use titles from previous years (use my Summer Reading tag for help with that), with previous titles by these authors, and with readalike titles for all of the authors.
I feel like a broken record, but it bares repeating. Books do not have to be from this exact summer to be great summer reads. Any book can be on that list. There is no summer reading police. Get creative but use the marketing of "Summer Reading" to your advantage and draw readers to you.
Speaking of....here is the link to pull up the Ultimate Summer Reading Lists going back to 2022.
This is also a great time to use my conversation starter to display posts (and handout with examples) to ask your staff and readers to share this favorite "Summer Reads." Note, I did not say, favorite Summer Reads out in 2025. Keep it broader. Find out what they have loved the most and you can not only make a display, but get some, in real time, feedback about what your patrons like to read in the summer. And it makes for an easy, interactive display that SHOWS your patrons that you are listening to them.
Be creative and broad with your "Summer Reading" lists, suggestions, and displays. Include titles from year's past, include other books by the authors on this year's lists, include readalikes for these authors... You get my point. Be as open as possible.
Give people more options that what they see in that one list they saw on that one website. No one is going to "check your math," and be like, "Umm....what list told you this was a "best" summer read." Of course not. They trust you to help them find the books they wouldn't find without you. They expect to fond things at the library they wouldn't see other places. This is where we excel and leave a mark on those we assist with their leisure reading. Embrace it and go for it.
And Ultimate Lists are a great resource to begin doing this work. Here's the intro and a link to the full 2025 list.
It’s finally starting to feel like summer on the East Coast. To wit: the forearms are out, and so are the reading lists. To find out which books everyone is reading and recommending this season (as is my wont), I read 35 summer reading lists from 31 publications, counted up all the books, and tallied them together for you here.
This year, those 35 lists (which are themselves listed at the bottom of this post), recommended a total of 540 individual books. 85 of those appeared on at least 3 lists; those 85 are now presented to you in descending order of popularity.
Click here to explore the list and scroll to the bottom for linked access to each of the lists used to make this ultimate list.
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