july reading recap 📚

as seen on my shelf #1

When people ask me how I moved to Germany, I tell them, under duress. I passed through five different airports on my way to Edinburgh from Portland, and then from London to Germany a month later. At each airport, I bought a book, all thrillers. Somewhere along the way, I’d decided to make this a ritual—one book at each airport. I do it even now.

I hadn’t been a reader since I was sixteen, when I left home. I remember feeling like I’d spent my whole life reading and dreaming and hoping, and now it was time to live. For those two years I lived in Canada, I think I cracked maybe three books that weren't part of my school curriculum. Because for the first time in my life, I was surrounded by people all the time—fun people and smart people and beautiful people. I didn’t need to read any stories, I was living in one. So two years ago, 22, three moves and three countries later, I knew it was significant that I’d taken up reading again. I’d come to believe that in life there are periods of stillness and periods of movement. Seasons of dreaming and hoping and planning, and then seasons of living—of reaping the fruits of your labor, so to say. I knew I was entering a season where I wouldn’t “live” like I wanted to—instead, I’d dream and hope and plan, and for that, I'd need books.

Reading books and buying books are two different hobbies, or at least this is what I tell people when they ask me how it is that I read so much but somehow own so many unread books. It’s hard to explain that if I buy a book, I want it to sit on my shelf for a while. That it’s a small pleasure to look over at my packed bookshelf, each unread book a symbol of possibility. That each time I reach for that shelf and finally pick a book, sometimes not even knowing what I’m reaching for until I have it in hands, it feels like a prayer. Thank you thank you thank you that I get to do this. And when I’m about fifty pages in, and the story begins to take shape, I think to myself, wow, you’ve been on my shelf this whole time? This story has been sitting on my shelf this whole time?!

I know people feel some type of way about readers who only buy physical books, who hoard paperbacks and hardbacks and take aesthetic pictures of their book piles and post them on Instagram, as if to say look at me, I’m a reader. Well-meaning people are often suspicious of such displays of excess, but if you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you’ll know I’m one of them.. I’m here for reading culture and literary culture and hot girl lit culture. I like to think that people like me— people who can’t resist a pretty cover or a good blurb, those of us who walk into a bookstore with the impulse to buy buy buy—that we're carrying the entire publishing industry on our backs. Frankly, I wish there were more of us. These days, when people question the veracity of my reading, I tell them simply that I am a patron of the arts.

All this to say, welcome to the first edition of my monthly reading recaps! Each month, I’ll share all the books I read and all the books I bought, hopefully with a few novel ideas thrown in here and there. I’m doing this for reasons no more complex than to make myself happy. It’ll be a bonus if you get some good recs too! 

On my reading taste: I’ll read pretty much anything if it’s good, but I’m partial to literary fiction, African fiction, Irish fiction, Japanese fiction, contemporary fiction, and detective-led thrillers. I’ll buy any family saga out there. I tend not to like romcoms, sci-fi, horror, or war stories. I won't read about slavery or black trauma in general. 

I like the idea of a book club, but I also like the idea of bookish interviews, so each month I’m going to be asking one Substack creator to pick a book to read with me, and then we’ll have a little chat about it for the newsletter. As soon as I had this idea, I knew I had to ask

Tembe Denton-Hurst

to be my first book club guest. Tembe writes my favorite bookish substack, Extracurricular and is the author of Homebodies, which needs to be on your tbr if it isn’t already. This month, we’ll be reading If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga and discussing it in August’s reading recap. You’re welcome to read along :)

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BOOKS I READ IN JULY

Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell

Thrillers, for me, are the ultimate palate cleansers. They’re also great for pulling me out of a reading slump, which was where I found myself by the end of June. I’d been slogging through a book for almost two weeks (which I’ll get to later), and Lisa Jewell’s fast-paced if formulaic dual timeline thriller was the perfect pick me up. I don’t have much to say about this one. When you read as many thrillers as I do, you start to recognize the patterns and the twists, so that most stories are simply satisfying, less thrilling. Then She Was Gone was a satisfying thriller with a predictable plot and a happy ending. A teenage girl goes missing, presumed dead. Ten years later, her grief stricken mother starts dating a man whose young daughter is a spitting image of her dead one. Slightly far-fetched, but aren’t they all?

Babel by R.F. Kuang

I know you’ve heard about Babel. Everyone has heard about Babel, R.F. Kuang’s historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tools of the British Empire. This book had been sitting unread on my shelf for two years—the fate of big books I have a hunch I won’t enjoy. I was right; I didn’t enjoy this book. The first 150 pages went by very slowly. Robin, the main character, had a mind I didn’t much enjoy being in. Things started to pick up in the middle as more characters were introduced, others were developed, and I started to understand the fictional universe and its stakes. And then it lost me. I got bored, and once I figured out that there was only one way the story could end (and I was right), it got difficult to remain invested. I understand why this book is so highly rated. It’s an intelligent work of fiction. It’s powerful, well-researched, and relevant. But I didn’t find it enjoyable to read, and at times I felt it was a bit heavy-handed and even repetitive. And those footnotes. Those footnotes!

Biography of X by Catherine Lacey

This is the book that put me in a reading slump. When X—an iconoclastic artist, writer, and polarizing shape-shifter—falls dead in her office, her widow, wild with grief and refusing everyone’s good advice, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Tracing X’s peripatetic trajectory over decades, from Europe to the ruins of America's divided territories, and through her famed collaborations and feuds, CM realizes her wife’s deceptions were far crueler than she imagined. I picked up this book expecting to read some type of speculative fiction thriller. I expected—wanted—a cast of characters so interesting and mysterious that I wouldn’t be able to put the book down. But what I got is what the book told me I’d get—the biography of X, as told by someone who loved X but hated X and, at the end of the day, didn’t know very much about X. The ways in which X was “cruel” and “unknowable” I didn’t find particularly interesting or believable. Her secrets weren't exciting secrets, and thus the payoff for our narrator’s wonderings and spiraling wasn't worth it for me.

All the Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham

I read this thriller about a woman whose son gets taken from his bedroom in the middle of the night on a two hour train from Nuremberg to Frankfurt as I was making my way to Portland. Thrillers and train rides are a match made in heaven. This was a good one because it actually got to me. I wasn't scared, as there was no imminent danger to the characters, but I felt our main character’s pain, and I was nervous for her the whole time. “Unreliable female narrator spiraling” is my least favorite type of thriller—they make me anxious and I always end up irritated by the main character for getting herself and everyone else in trouble. This was no different, except that this time I was also spiralling because I actually didn’t know who had done the thing (I usually do), and worse still, there wasn't any one character I was hoping had done the thing. Good pacing, great twists, and a nice ending.

The Trio by Johanna Hedman

I love a quiet, introspective novel with a tight cast of characters who make small but significant choices and feel big, confusing feelings. Add in a complex love triangle and subtle social commentary, and I’m sold. The Trio follows Thora, August, and Hugo, three students who come from different worlds—one an art school dreamer, one a wealthy scion of the old elite, and one an ordinary boy from out of town. Over the course of two sky-blue summers in Stockholm, they are drawn together magnetically, but years later, only one of them is ready to tell their story. I thought this book was brilliant for the same reasons I won’t recommend it to everyone—it’s one of those stories where all the action happens in the inaction, and because no one saying how they actually feel, we as readers are left with many questions to grapple with. Personally, I love when an author makes me work, so this didn’t bother me. If you like Sally Rooney’s work, but want something a bit more quiet, challenging, and Nordic, you should check this out.

The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Aunty

Easily the weirdest book I read last month (the main character is called Blandine and is obsessed with ancient female mystics), so again, I won’t recommend to everyone. But if you enjoyed A Visit from the Goon Squad or The Candy House, both by Jennifer Egan, you’ll probably love this. Several characters, all connected, all miserable, most living in the same apartment complex, dark humor, dry humor, everything is symbolic. The book is set over one sweltering week in July, culminating in an unfortunate but cathartic grand event that changes each of the characters’ lives. So weird. I loved it.

The Guest by Emma Cline

My toxic trait is that if a book is very popular, or more specifically currently trending, I won’t read it. I’ll buy the book and read every review out there, but it’ll sit on my shelf until the hype phase is over and I can't remember what those reviews said. I’m legendary amongst my friends for my complete lack of FOMO. It makes no sense, but I like my reading experience to be personal, not collective. I’m selfish that way. So, I finally read The Guest, last year’s book of the summer, and I get the hype. It’s fun and messy and a little bit thrilleresque. There’s the right amount of unknowns, so it begs discussion without being frustrating for readers. Everyone has their own theory of who the main character is and what the ending means. It’s the perfect summer read for girls (like me) who don’t like summer reads.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

I’m starting to develop small reading traditions, and one of them is reading a Jonathan Franzen book every summer. I decided to start doing this after I read and fell in love with Crossroads last year, and now that I’ve followed through with The Corrections, I guess it’s a real thing. The Corrections is the one Franzen book everyone knows. It’s the ultimate family saga (my favorite kind of story, by the way), and was number 5 on The Time’s list of 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Need I say more? We follow a Midwestern family of five—the children are adults and the parents are aging. They’re all unhappy; they make each other unhappy, and they make themselves unhappy. They’re not great people. But as with Crossroads, Franzen makes us spend so much time in each character’s head, exploring their temperaments and motivations, their fears and regrets. It’s tragic and really funny, but it’s not necessarily an easy read. I had to work to keep up with the narrative, not to mention making sense of it all. It’s one of those books that isn’t big, but takes longer to get through because it requires that line by line focus. But like I said, I don’t mind a challenge. I bought Freedom, so that’ll be next years’s Franzen summer read.

Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin

After reading The Corrections, I needed a palate cleanser. Happy All The Time is about perfectly nice young people with perfectly normal relationship problems. There are four main characters, two men and two women. The men are cousins and the women are their love interests. They’re beautiful and privileged, and nothing very bad ever happens to any of them. The main tension comes from them figuring out how to be happy in love and happy with themselves, but they’re mostly happy in love and mostly happy with themselves, so there’s barely any tension at all. This WaPo review titled "How I Learned That Literature Doesn’t Have to Be Miserable" sums things up: it’s good literature that isn’t miserable. I gave it five stars.

Side note: this book was published in 1978, which I think is part of the reason I enjoyed it so much. I’m getting bored with uber-contemporary storylines and reading about people who are just like me and my friends. So if you have lesser-known older book recommendations (not necessarily Hist-Fic), please send them my way.

Above the Salt by Katherine Vaz

My boyfriend’s mom got me a signed copy of this book as a gift, and I decided to read it immediately because I always feel guilty about letting gifted books stay too long on my shelf. Above the Salt is a sweeping love story that follows two Portuguese refugees who flee religious violence and reignite their budding romance in Civil War-era America. I’ll admit it isn’t something I would have picked out on my own, but I ended up falling in love with the characters and feeling alternately hopeful and heartbroken as life brought them together and tore them apart time after time over many decades. Apart from being a love story, this book is a tender reflection on race, immigration, and family, made all the more special by perspectives I’d never considered before.

Penance by Eliza Clark

Penance reads like a true crime podcast. I love true crime podcasts, so I knew I’d love this. Penance is a book about a book; it’s a work of social commentary about true crime but also a story about a teenage girl in a small seaside town who is brutally murdered by three of her classmates. Narrated by a fictional journalist, Alec Z. Carelli, we get a patchwork of interviews with witnesses and family members, historical research, and correspondence with the killers themselves. The catch is, how much of it is true, and how much is Carelli’s fabrication? There were parts of this book that lagged for me, like the history bits and Carelli’s own attempts to interpret events. But the interviews and diary entries were so engaging that I ended up giving this five stars. I finished the book in a single afternoon—I was that hooked. I’ve noticed that a lot of new thrillers are in some way or another exploring the ethics of true crime, so I’ll drop some more recs that do this here.

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

In my defense, I tried reading this book twice. I picked it up the first time, expecting to love it because all the readers I trusted said I would, but I got through about 100 pages before I gave up and put it down. The second time I picked it up, I was getting on a four-hour flight and figured that would be enough to get me through the book. I couldn’t do it and ended up leaving my copy on the plane in frustration. I’m sort of embarrassed to say I didn’t get this book because I know it’s unique and explores important subjects like faith, art, war, sobriety, and identity. I saw what this book was trying to do; it just didn’t do it for me.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Each month, I make myself read one really big book. A big book needs to have at least 500 pages, and it needs to scare me a little. At almost 900 pages, Lonesome Dove is one of the bigger big books I’ve read, and with a 4.54 Goodreads rating, it’s also one of the highest-rated. I can’t even remember how I came across this one, but when I posted on Instagram and Substack that I was reading it, so many people told me it was their favorite book (or their mom’s favorite book). The novel, set in the waning days of the Old West, centers on the relationships between several retired Texas Rangers and their adventures driving a cattle herd from Texas to Montana. We meet their rivals, friends, families, and love interests along the way. I know it might sound mid, but there’s such an exciting and lovable cast of characters, and so many interesting themes explored. It’s one of those where different pockets of action are happening, and they all end up coming together in the most satisfying ways. If you’re tired of reading sad girl novels and want something a little more gritty yet wholesome, this is the way to go.

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BOOKS I BOUGHT IN JULY

I got 20 books in July, which is admittedly a lot, even for me. In my defence, I’ve been really good about book buying this whole year, and there were specific books I wanted to pick up while I was in the U.S. because I liked the U.S. cover better. Some of these were gifted, a lot of them I got from Thriftbooks, some from Amazon, and a few from Powells. (Yes, I’m one of those people that bought Hillbilly Elegy. I had to order it in Germany because it was sold out in the U.S.. I just had to know the lore. Sorry not sorry).

• Hope by Andrew Ridker

• Gone Baby Gone by Dennis Lehane

• Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

• Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

• Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

• Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck

• Private Rites by Julia Armfield

• Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy

• Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson

• Bel Canto by Anne Patchett

• Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

• City of Thieves by David Benioff

• The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly

• Above the Salt by Katherine Vaz

• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

• Cruel & Unusual by Patricia Cornwell

• Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

• Happy All The Time by Laurie Colwin

• Cassandra At The Wedding by Dorothy Baker

• Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories by Alice Munro

Back to regular programming Friday. See you then :)