One of the best and worst things about the summer is the massive amount of freetime created by the sudden absence of school. On one hand, I love having all that time to pick up hobbies, work, or even just a couple extra hours of sleep. On the other hand, by the third week I’m always struck by the haunting feeling that I’m frittering away all my precious time on pointless endeavors. It’s a peculiar, creeping kind of panic that is best chased away by a good book.

I find that no matter the content, reading a book always makes me feel like I’m doing something worthwhile. And if you’re looking for some recommendations that’ll expand your reading horizons, here’s a couple of my favorite reads.

All the Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell is a nonfiction book exploring the work of death and those who do it. Campbell interviews and retells the stories of morticians, executions, crime scene cleaners and more to form a nuanced and fascinating perspective on death as an industry and a social force. The writing is fluid and witty, the information digestible, and the content captivating. Altogether, an excellent read.

Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson is often my go-to recommendation for anyone interested in the Cosmere (the wider connected universe that many of Sanderson’s books exist in). It’s completely stand-alone, so you don’t need to complete an intimidating reading list before picking it up to understand what’s going on. It’s a great fantasy novel with a fascinating magic system wherein everyone is born with a measure of power—called a Breath—but it is only by obtaining the Breaths of others that someone can do anything magical with it. This creates an additional slant to socioeconomic disparities and sets the groundwork for some of the conflicting personal and cultural beliefs that contribute to the narrative. And that’s not even touching on all the people coming back from the dead!

The Poison Squad by Deborah Blum may sound familiar if you follow UW Madison’s Go Big Read program, as it was selected for the 2019-2020 school year—and for good reason! Not only is the book well-written, engaging, and chock-full of fun facts to share at parties (formaldehyde in milk is just the tip of the iceberg!), it’s also horrifyingly relevant in the current political climate. The book chronicles the birth of the FDA—the conditions from which it arose, the people who fought for it, and the young men whose gastronomic risk-taking proved it necessary. I believe this book is important now more than ever, considering how Robert Kennedey Jr. is dismantling the FDA as you read this. The Poison Squad reminds us that food is only safe because those in the past who worked, argued, and sickened themselves to make it so. And it will not remain safe if we let the FDA fall.

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin is one of my all-time favorite works of fiction. It’s a delightfully rich, complex, and deeply human piece of urban fantasy based around the premise that once a city becomes large or distinct enough, it develops an Avatar who can speak its will and guide its people. Most cities have one. New York, however, has six. It’s the first in a duology that was originally planned to be a trilogy, but was unfortunately semi-truncated due the fact that many of the author’s original plans for the sequels started actually happening in the real world. Despite this, the series wraps up very well and is a fantastic read. The whole thing is brimming with character and a bone-deep love of New York City that is relatable to anyone who has ever loved every gritty detail and wondrous quirk of the place they call home.

The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee is a spectacular work of nonfiction covering the history of the human understanding of cancer, written by one of my favorite authors. Mukherjee has an incredible talent for explaining complex scientific concepts to laymen, so if you’re able to finish the book you are guaranteed to know far, far more than when you started. He expertly interweaves the science with the history, and manages to side-step the common issue of attributing too much to any one individual while maintaining an engaging narrative.

So that’s five of my top recommendations! I encourage you to pick up one at your local library, they’re all quite fascinating and make for a great way to spend your summer.