Can you face reality reading on the beach?

(Photo: Hannah Whitaker/New York Magazine)

Could this be the summer we finally bury the notion that a beach read must be mindless to be fun? We find ourselves particularly drawn this season to nonfiction and a few realistic novels. Below, some of our top picks through July. Save August for Thomas Pynchon’s latest, Inherent Vice—“part noir, part psychedelic romp”—a mere 400 pages.