Summer is for reading.

Ask anyone in a newsroom and they'll prove it. When asked for recommendations, our staff came back with a list that spans seven-volume Danish time-loop novels, Che Guevara's road memoir, ancient Mesopotamian history told with wit, a Pulitzer winner and a debut from a Slidell playwright.

One book made a colleague cry. Another prompted a rereading of everything by the same author. These are not assigned reads or trend pieces 鈥 they're the books people actually reached for when given a few hours and a choice. Here are highlights of what the newspaper staff is reading this summer:

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Alex Lubben says he will be reading the "On the Calculation of Volume" books, written by Solvej Balle. There are seven of them, all about a single day, or about the repetition of a single day 鈥 thousands of times over. The protagonist, Tara Selter, finds herself stuck in a time loop, Groundhog Day-style, living Nov. 18 again and again.

Lubben read the first book in one sitting.

He's also reading "The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea" by Jack E. Davis. Lubben says the panoramic portrait of the ancient Gulf, overabundant with fish and birds before Europeans got here, will stick with him.

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And he plans to read more Percival Everett this summer, but "Telephone" is Lubben's favorite of the author who wrote "James," which won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Joanna Brown says she just read 鈥淭hey Can鈥檛 Kill Us Until They Kill Us,鈥 a 2017 book of essays by culture and music writer Hanif Abdurraqib. This book is a poignant look at contemporary America through the lens of a writer who grew up as a Black, Muslim, Midwestern kid in the early 2000s, heavily immersed in the emo-punk scene of that era.

"If you鈥檙e of a certain age and remember the bands that paved your way through high school (Fall Out Boy, anyone?), this book might make you cry," Brown says. "It will definitely expand the way you think about music, community, identity and being from Ohio."

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Aidan McCahill said he recommends聽"The Motorcycle Diaries,"聽Ernesto Che Guevara's travelogue as a 23-year-old medical student driving a rickety motorcycle up the western side of South America, accompanied by his doctor friend, Alberto Granado. Throughout the short and easy read, Guevara describes poverty, exploitation and the treatment of lepers in 1950s Latin America, lightening the memoir with some hilarious descriptions of his own debauchery and shamelessness.

Regardless of one's feeling toward Guevara or the Cuban Revolution, McCahill notes that it's an interesting window into the roots of his revolutionary fervor and showcases an impressive literary ability and eye for detail for a 23-year-old.

Faimon Roberts is reading "Between Two Rivers" by Oxford scholar Moudhy al-Rashid, who writes the book about ancient history in a light tone with easy readability.聽

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"The book takes on the massive complexity of 3,000 years of Mesopotamian history and distills it into digestible, even whimsical, sections," Roberts said. "In that, she turns what can be a musty topic into a fresh, enjoyable trip through history."

He also recommends "Eros the Bittersweet" by Anne Carson, a classic examination of Greek poetry that's part essay, part literary criticism, part philosophy and part love song.

Though Roberts doesn't usually read classical Greek, he says the book made him think about things in ways he never did before: "There are parts to love, parts to dislike and parts that you won't get unless you read classical Greek, which I don't. And regardless of how one feels about the book as a whole, there are some sentences that are almost the Platonic ideal of the form."聽

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Andrew Canulette recommends "Travis Moon and the Ghost Train" by Donald G. Redman, who is a Slidell resident. In his first book, the award-winning playwright and journalist blurs grief and wonder with reality and fantasy.聽