Congratulations! Now your job is to relax / idle / explore for the summer. Here are some books that I've thought were great over the last few years.Aimee Bender's The Girl in the Flammable Skirt - A short story collection that I really can't recommend enough. Think "magical realism."
Anything by David Foster Wallace - You can find a number of his essays online here, Where I recommend beginning with "Shipping Out," about a cruise ship. In terms of fiction, why not start with Brief Interviews with Hideous Men or his first novel, The Broom of the System. Also check out Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies or Unaccustomed Earth. Junot Diaz: Drown, a collection of stories about (young) Dominican Americans in New York and New Jersey. Make Believe, by Joanna Scott; "The Secret Integration," a story in Thomas Pynchon's Slow Learner.
Just south of the US I recommend checking out the Mexican / Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño; maybe begin with his story collection Last Evenings on Earth before moving on to his Savage Detectives. From Brazil, I can't get enough of Clairce Lispector, particularly her Hour of the Star. Also, anything by the Argentines César Aira, Jorge Luis Borges, and Julio Cortázar. In Praise of the Stepmother, by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru).
From India, check out Aravind Adiga's White Tiger and Arundati Roy's The God of Small Things. From Africa, The Book of Chameleons; Ngugi wa Thiong'o, The Devil on the Cross.
As for biographies, I just read one on Shakespeare, Will in the World, and one of the French "Symbolist" poet, Arthur Rimbaud, both of which are fantastic.
If you read one and like it, why not leave a comment below? Or recommend something that you like! Happy Reading!
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