My Big Book Summer Plans 2023

Book By Book

I have just announced the 11th year of my annual reading challenge, Big Book Summer Challenge, so I guess I should be the first to sign up!

I always enjoy tackling some big books in the summer, and I’m looking forward to finally reading some of these bricks that have been collecting dust on my shelf (for this challenge, a Big Book is any book with 400 pages or more).

NOTE: Don’t let my stack below intimidate you! You only need to read ONE Big Book over the next three months to join in the fun and participate in the challenge. I like to make a “pile of possibilities,” but you do you 😀

I definitely won’t get through all of these, but I like to have some options to choose from. These are all currently on my shelves, waiting patiently to be read (along with many others!):

From the bottom of the stack:

• Billy Summers by Stephen King (528 pages)
• The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles (592 pages)
• Never by Ken Follett (816 pages)
• Voyager by Diana Gabaldon (870 pages) – book 3 of the Outlander series, left from Big Book Summer 2022!
• Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (608 pages)
• Afterland by Lauren Beukes (432 pages)
• Scythe by Neal Schusterman (464 pages)
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (470 pages)
• Burn by Nevada Barr (450 pages)

I know that looks like a huge stack–and it is!–but as you can see, many of my choices are in the 400-600 page range and several are fast-paced reads. Voyager will be my biggest chunkster of the summer (and those are big pages packed with dense text!), but I know I will enjoy it.

All of these also qualify for my Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2023. My shelves are overflowing, so this is good! One  of them will also count for my Back to the Classics 2023 Challenge.

I also devote my summer to listening to Big Audio Books (audios and e-books count). I will choose those as I go, throughout the summer.

Check out my 2023 Big Book Summer Challenge Video for more on what I plan to read this summer, plus some great suggestions that I enjoyed in past summers. You can also find more great Big Book recommendations on my Big Books! list on Bookshop. I have read and enjoyed every single book on that list, and it includes a wide variety of book types and genres–something for everyone!

 How about you? Are you up for tackling a Big Book (or two or three) this summer? 
Join me and sign up for the 2023 Big Book Summer Challenge! The rules, details, and link-ups are on that page.

NOTE: You don’t need a blog to participate–you can either leave a comment on the Challenge page or sign up in the 2023 Big Book Summer Goodreads group. Either way, first read the details on the Challenge page.