15 of Our All-Time Favorite Beach Reads
This surfside canon offers an immersion so total, you won't even notice the Channing Tatum–like lifeguard pulling on his cargo pants and calling it a day.
By Leigh Haber
11 of 15
The World According to Garp
By John Irving
437 pages;
Ballantine Books
Tender, violent, ribald and dizzyingly complex, Irving's unlikely feminist manifesto, featuring T.S. Garp and his fantastically fierce mother, Jenny Fields, broke the mold when it hit shelves back in 1978. All these years later, this deeply humane novel continues to amaze—still exerting, yes, an unusually strong Under Toad.
— Leigh Haber
Published 06/20/2014
