Recommending a Book Based on Your Favorite Wine

Elle Reads Library Books — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 18:01:26 GMT

The next Book Flights doesn’t come out until later this month, so I wanted to make something for my wine lovers to sip on in the meantime. So I thought to myself, what goes better with books than a good glass of wine? And thus, this post was born.

Below, I’ve picked 4 whites, 4 reds, and 3 that don’t fit a tidy category and have paired them with a book that fits that vibe. The point here is not to judge anyone’s taste, just to have a little fun and maybe find something new to read before the summer’s out.

Cheers!

The Whites

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Sauvignon Blanc

This is the wine you reach for without thinking, the one that’s always on the list and never lets you down. Sauvignon Blanc is crisp, bright, a little grassy, and zippy enough to wake your whole mouth up. It’s reliably, immediately good.

Which makes my recommendation for Sauv Blanc lovers Funny Story by Emily Henry. This is the book half your group chat has already read, the one you can hand to almost anyone knowing they’ll have a good time. Bright, witty, warm, a little tart at the edges, and so easy to drink you’re done before you meant to be. Popular for a reason. Sometimes the crowd is right! (book / audiobook)

The Armchair Traveler’s Guide to Greece

Elle Reads Library Books — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 17:51:58 GMT

While scrolling on Instagram lately, one thing has become abundantly clear: it seems like everyone is going to Greece this summer. After all, who wouldn’t want to see all the history mentioned in The Odyssey and relax on some of the world’s most beautiful beaches? I, for one, would love to. But, alas, a trip to Greece is not in the cards for me.

I grew up in a very small, very isolated town (we were a test market for Kraft Foods because we were so isolated…). Traveling to a different state was a big to-do. Traveling to a new country was pretty much an impossibility. But that never stopped me. By the time I got my first passport, I had already traveled all over the world, from the highest peaks of the Andes to the most remote Polynesian islands.

Here’s what I believe about books: they let you live in another world for a little while. The right one walks you through a country’s kitchens, its ruins, and its oldest stories. That was my first way of traveling, and it’s still the one I do the most.

Which is why I’m bringing you this new series: A Reader’s Guide to Travel. Every so often, I’ll pick a place and build a reading list to give you a peek into that country, whether you’re prepping for a trip or traveling from the comfort of your couch.

A quick word on how I use this, because the last thing I wanted to build was a curriculum. I’m a magpie. I follow whatever shiny thing catches my interest and find a book about it.

So expect 3000-year-old classics to beach romances to drunken philosophy parties, and everything in between. Please note that I have not read all of these books, and this is as much a reading list for me as it is for you!

The Odyssey by Homer (Emily Wilson translation)

If you’re going to start anywhere, it sort of has to be here, right? Wilson’s 2017 translation is the one that made Homer readable again for people who bounced off the versions they were assigned in school. Plain-spoken English with no fuss. The story is a man trying to get home from a war and getting blocked for ten years by monsters, witches, gods, and his own character flaws (of which there are many…)

Reading the Classics as part of our exploration of Greece isn’t homework. It’s like hearing the original recording of a song you’ve only ever heard through cover versions. “Oh,” you think, “So this is where it all came from.”

PS: If you’re an audiobook lover like me, the audiobook version of Wilson’s translation is narrated by Claire Danes. It is an Audible exclusive, however. (book)

Circe by Madeline Miller

Circe gets only a handful of pages in The Odyssey. She’s the witch on the island who turns men into pigs, and not much more is told about her. The story focuses much more on the men who encounter her. In Circle, Miller writes her whole backstory: exile at fourteen, centuries alone on Aiaia, and a son she has to hide from her own family.

This is my favorite of Miller’s myth retellings, and that’s saying a lot because she’s exceptionally good at what she does. I suggest reading it right after The Odyssey while Homer’s version of her is still fresh. It’s also an interesting exercise in letting a woman’s voice shine through in a story we believe we know well. (book / audiobook)

The Symposium by Plato

The Greeks are famous for their philosophers! But I think a lot of us think about Greek philosophy and imagine boring old white guys sitting around pontificating about life in language that’s maybe like Shakespeare? The Symposium is anything but this. Oh no! In this work, a group of friends in ancient Athens (including the illustrious Socrates), get drunk at a dinner party and take turns giving speeches about love.

From the reviews I’ve read, The Symposium is equal parts funny, warm, and strange. Not what you’d expect from a philosophy text, right? Bonus: this is where the idea of searching for one’s “better half” comes from. Swoon. (book / audiobook)

Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

I admit, I’ve heard of the term “Zorba the Greek” for years but had no idea where it came from. It comes from this book, one of the most important in modern Greek literature! In Zorba, a bookish, overthinking narrator arrives on the island of Crete to reopen a mine. He hires Zorba, a ravenous, opinionated man who has the habit of dancing at the most inappropriate moments.

A deep dive into a country is incomplete without exploring the literary voices that have shaped it over the past few decades, especially in a country with a history as long as Greece. It is, underneath the plot, a passionate argument about how to actually live, head versus body, caution versus abandon. Read it, and you will understand something essential about the Greek spirit. (book / audiobook)

The American School of Spies by Stephan Talty

I found this new release book completely by accident while browsing the “Greece” tag on Goodreads. It sounds excellent. The American School of Spies tells the story of the OSS’ Greek Desk during WW2. This team of specialized American archaeologists and classicists went undercover during the war to keep Greek antiquities out of the hands of the Nazis, stopping at nothing to keep them safe.

Early reviews rave that this book is written like a heist, despite being non-fiction. Underneath the caper, however, is the Nazi occupation, one of the darkest chapters in modern Greek history. What fascinates me is seeing this period through the fate of the ancient objects that define a culture. (book / audiobook)

The Greeks: A Global History by Roderick Beaton

As an avid history reader, I wanted to find a book to include that examines the full scope of Greek history. This book was the one that kept coming up. Beaton runs from the Bronze Age to the present day, and the whole book keeps circling one question: what has it actually meant to be Greek?

If you’re a history buff, this is required reading! My favorite thing to do after reading a book like this is to pick out the sections that most interested me and find follow-up books to explore those periods deeper. (book / audiobook)

Mythos by Stephen Fry

My sister read this and raved about it. Then my mom listened to it and told me that I really must read it. So I did! It’s excellent, especially considering how central myths and the gods are to understanding Greek culture. Fry really loves these stories, and his enthusiasm shines through on every page.

This is the book that will make the gods feel more like characters on a reality TV show than stuffy archetypes you studied in school. They are the messiest of messy, and this is required reading if you’re interested in exploring more books in the myth retelling genre.

Note: If you are an audiobook person, Fry does a fantastic job narrating this himself. (book / audiobook)

Something Will Happen, You’ll See by Christos Ikonomou

Yes, Zorba is technically modern Greek literature, but it was originally published in 1946. I wanted to include an even more recent literary voice, and Ikonomou was the perfect choice. If you’re a Millennial or older, you probably remember the Greek financial crisis. Something Will Happen, You’ll See is a collection of short stories set in working-class neighborhoods during the worst of this crisis.

This is the Greece that doesn’t make it to Instagram, but that has shaped the lives of the real people living and working in the country. It won Greece’s prestigious Best Short-Story Collection State Award and will tell you more about what that decade actually did to people than any archived news article ever could. (book)

The Parthenon by Mary Beard

Mary Beard is the most readable classicist alive, and this short book is the whole story of the most famous building on earth: how it was built, what it was actually for (not what you think), how it became a mosque and then a gunpowder store that blew up, and the still-raging fight over the marbles Lord Elgin hauled off to London.

It reads like your smartest, funniest friend explaining why the thing you thought you understood is far stranger than you knew. If you want me to recommend more Greek art books, let me know in the comments! (book)

Vacation Wars by Meghan Quinn

We couldn’t complete the list without a book that pays homage to every Greek island fantasy: pure, sun-drenched romance. Tessa arrives in Santorini in the weeks before her sister’s wedding, expecting sandy beaches and zero romantic obligations, until her sister reminds her of a teenage pact to find her soulmate before the big day.

Enter the childhood crush who happens to work at the resort. You know exactly where this is going ;) Read it on the plane, on the beach, or on your back porch pretending the porch is Santorini. (book / audiobook)

The House of Hidden Letters by Izzy Broom

Another new release, this takes place on the island of Folegandros. A woman wins an abandoned stone cottage on one of the quietest and most romantic of the Cyclades through a one-euro island lottery (which is a real thing happening across rural Greece right now). She then discovers a cache of letters hidden in the fireplace since the Nazi occupation.

Dual timeline, escapist, tender, and guaranteed to send you googling flights to an island you did not know existed an hour ago. (book / audiobook)

Greece: The Cookbook by Vefa Alexiadou

A cookbook? Yes! What better way to transport yourself to the Greek Isles than with a meal? I’ve owned this cookbook for a decade, and it’s one I pick up often. Vefa is essentially the Julia Child of Greek cuisine, the woman who codified regional Greek home cooking for a mass audience.

This is her definitive English-language work in the beautiful Phaidon series. You will be pulling this cookbook down for the next twenty years whenever you need to remember how much lemon goes in the avgolemono. Because it’s Phaidon, it’s also available at many libraries! (book)

Pack Your Bags. It’s Time to Go!

I’m still not getting on a plane this year. But I’ve spent this list in Greek kitchens, ruins, a devastating financial crisis, and one very blue island fantasy. That’s the trick I stumbled into as a kid in a town that barely made the map, and it still works. The entire price of the ticket is a library card.

Elle Reads Library Books: Special Collections