Image of a book on a beach towel
Book Fetish

Check Out These Bookish Beach Towels to Keep Your Beach Reads Dry

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Tracy Shapley Towley

Staff Writer

Tracy is a freelance copywriter, all-around ne’er do well, very-adult graduate of the University of Iowa, and occasional waterer of plants. Her hobbies include writing fiction, reading fiction, mixing together various flavors of soup, and typing letters to her friends on an old red typewriter that doesn't have a working period so all sentences must end in questions marks or exclamation points? She has read every Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and has a lot of thoughts on them. Her old Iowa farmhouse is shared by her husband Sean, a pair of cats, a pair of dogs, and the ghost of Kurt Vonnegut.

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I might be landlocked in the middle of Iowa but that doesn’t mean I don’t need a good bookish beach towel. Why, just a few weeks ago I went to a family get-together at a state park with a body of water in it. And as my brother-in-law said at the time, that body of water had what “could loosely be described as a beach.” Guess what we all had? Beach towels!

Unfortunately, my beach towel was a blue and white striped bore of a beach towel. Which got me to thinking: Surely there are bookish beach towels out there? So before I head on my next international vacation to lovely Iceland and its geothermal baths, I’m going to have to grab myself and my partner a couple of bookish beach towels.

Luckily, my fellow Book Riot contributors have written great articles about how to further perfect my bookish beachy day. I can follow this quiz to find out what brilliant beach read I should read this summer. I can get tips on how to achieve the ideal beach reading day. And if I want to just slap my new beach towel down on my front porch, I can even read one of these books that will transport me to the beach.

Jip and Janneke Beach Towel

Right out of the gate, I’m going to bow to our Netherlands readers with this vintage Jip and Janneke beach towel. $36.

A beach towel depicting a stack of books with an octopus on top of them

This bookish octopus beach towel is making me pretty jealous of octopuses. I’d love to walk around holding multiple books, a tea cup, and a teapot — and still have tentacles to spare! $35.

Books on a beach towel

It doesn’t get much simpler or more bookish than this beach towel with books on it. $35.

Beach towel with a beach chair and text that says "Toes in the Sand and a Book in My Hand."

Now this looks relaxing! A beach towel with a cozy chair, a stack of books, and a not-too-annoying bookish refrain. $35.

Beach towels shaped like bookmarks with monograms on them.

These bookmark beach towels can be personalized with your initials. $30.

Beach towel with a living room scene in which a Black woman reads on the couch.

I love that this beach towel has a living room scene on it. It’s not the most beachy theme, but it does depict a relaxing scene of a comfy person on a cozy couch. $38.

Beach towel with books and a name.

Another personalized beach towel for a bookworm, this one allows you to put a full name. The background is perfect for folks who want to keep it simple with books and cool glasses. $28.

Vintage beach towel showing the back of a curvaceous person with books and eyeglasses strewn around.

Hubba hubba, this vintage beach towel has books, eyeglasses, tunes, and, of course, this curvaceous hottie I’d like to make pals with. $48.

Beach towel with the quote "I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library."

Taking a cool beach towel to paradise is always fun, especially when it’s a bookish beach towel that itself defines what paradise is! $38.

Beach towel with comic book cartoon bubbles on it that say POW.

You can also showcase your love for comic books with this comics beach towel. Boom! Pow! indeed! $53.99.

I have my work cut out for me, trying to figure out which of these bookish beach towels is the right companion for my next trip to a sort-of beach. In the meantime, I’ll be chewing over what makes a book a beach read in the first place.