Beach Reading: A History

A genre-bending exploration of “beach reading”—the genre, the activity, and the artists who shaped our understanding of the beaches we love

The “beach read” has had an enormous, generally unacknowledged, impact on how we spend our leisure time, how we think about escape and pleasure, and how we experience the natural world. Blending memoir, archival research, and literary and cultural analysis, Sari Edelstein traces how the shoreline became a site of freedom, pleasure, and possibility.

From Kate Chopin’s The Awakening to Elin Hilderbrand’s modern empire of beach read classics, Beach Reading explores the evolution of a beloved category of literature, often dismissed as frivolous. Edelstein instead takes these books seriously and also expands our understanding of the genre, revealing the beach as an overlooked but important site of creativity and community. Charting the cultural history of the beach as a cherished destination, Beach Reading visits elite island retreats, Black-owned seaside resorts, and queer sanctuaries like Provincetown, and considers the literature and art that arose from these places.

An overdue celebration of reading and writing on the seashore, Beach Reading unpacks the cultural importance of this supremely underrated genre—showing us that fun books are meaningful and important, too.