june reading recap 📚

as seen on my shelf #11

This month’s reading recap is kindly sponsored by Pinterest, who reached out about their POV: You’re in a Book Club content moment—because everyone and their mom knows I know a thing or two about that.

She wastes herself, she drifts; all she wants to do with her life is lose it somewhere
― Dorothy Baker, Cassandra at the Wedding

I’m the only one I know whose desire to pick up a book goes down just as the sun comes out. I can’t focus on reading when the weather is pleasant—and don’t even get me started on beach reads. Beaches are the worst places to read. Who can focus on good literature with sand sticking to your skin and the threat of sunburn never quite extinguished? Certainly not serious readers. If the sun is out, I need to be outside, doing things. Expanding the Ochuko cinematic universe.

But everyone else loves to read in the summer. According to the Pinterest Summer Trend Report, searches for book club crafts are up 558%, with searches for book club hosting and book club decor up 87% and 67%, respectively. Book club retreat ideas are up 265%. 

In my book, summer is the season of romance. I met my boyfriend the summer after I graduated college. I was a very serious sort of collegiate—which is not to say that I got good grades, because I did not. In fact, my situation was so dire, so constantly teetering on the edge of academic failure, that I convinced myself any fun at all would tip me right over. I graduated by the skin of my teeth, having had no fun after the pandemic began, after which I more or less resigned myself to living in sweats. It was a very sad business.

My friends, naturally, never did quite understand my situation, which meant I spent most of junior and senior year assuring them that my return to vivacity was ever imminent. I had a plan to fall in love once I had a degree in hand, and I was certain that would perk me right up. I don’t believe in manifesting, but I seem to be quite good at it—because one day, my boyfriend walked right into my apartment, invited by someone who was not me—and the rest, as they say, is history. 

The next summer was very sad and very special, because I was moving to Germany. I have cause to believe our love grew stronger under the pressure of separation. Someone has a very good quote somewhere about pressure making things better or something. Anyway, that was the case for us, and over the next three years, even though we spent most of the year apart, we always had summers.

All to say, who can bother reading when there is a man around to be reminded of your splendor? Being in love is very nice, if you do it right (and there is a way to do it right). It makes you feel like the whole world should love you. Suddenly, you’re bemused that all those poor sods before did not. 

But most people, it turns out, reserve matters of the heart for seasons less pleasant. When Pinterest reached out to me about the launch of POV: You’re in a Book Club, it gave me the notion that I had started something very special and important with this essay I published over a year ago on book club culture. I may be exaggerating my own importance here—I may not be—but I do think it means something that it’s still my top post after all this time. (And I refuse to entertain the less flattering implications.)

For the content moment, Pinterest tapped your favorite bookish creators and clubs like Dua Lipa’s Service95 Book Club, 831 Stories, Taschen, and Reese’s Book Club to curate book club–inspired boards for your summer reading pleasure. You can always start with mine, inspired by my two great loves—books and interior design—and the apartment that helped me merge the two. 

I think it’s a wonderful thing for people, especially women, to gather and read, and I’m always happy to contribute to the aestheticization of literary culture—seasonal preferences notwithstanding.  Happy summer reading xo.

P.S I find myself at a loss as to what the book of the summer is this year. What are the girls reading?? Or what are you reading? Let me know in the comments :)

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BOOKS I READ IN MAY

most of my books are in storage in Germany so we’ll be making Pinterest boards for the next couple of months

Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas

Adrift after college, a young woman is spending the summer with her mother in a quiet Australian beach town, where she meets Jude, a man nearly twice her age. Drawn to his calm, coastal life, she slips into something that feels like stability for the first time, but as the year goes on, she realizes that what feels like safety may not be as solid as it seems. I wanted a summer read, a beach read, but two chapters in, I knew this book would put me in a reading slump—which is not to say that it’s a bad book, but rather that it’s a very particular type of book. Gorgeously evocative descriptions, promising character dynamics, a fun little age-gap conceit… but reading this, the parts felt more endearing than the whole thing. Our protagonist was too detached, and not nearly interesting enough for me to really care, and the tensions were soooo understated they barely caused a ripple.

Sleep by Honor Jones (TW; CSA)

I read this on my eight-hour flight from Frankfurt to Seattle between naps and watching The Lord of the Rings for the first time. Thirty-five-year-old Margaret is a new-ishly single mother of two young daughters, living in New York City. In her present, she is mothering, dating, navigating her pretentious ex, her cruel mother, and a demanding job as a magazine editor. In her past, she is a little girl, being repeatedly molested over the course of several months, by her teenage brother. Suspended between the stifling summer of now and that of two decades ago, a reckoning forces its way through.

Pandora Sykes

and I read and discussed this for June’s 2 Girls 1 Book, so go read that conversation. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this book when I first read it, but my conversation with Pandora made me realize there was a lot I did appreciate about it. Would definitely recommend, particularly if you enjoyed The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller.

The Dry by Jane Harper

Amid a devastating drought, a small Australian town is rocked by the brutal murder of a local family. Federal investigator Aaron Falk returns for the funeral of his childhood friend, only to find himself drawn into the case—and into the past he thought he’d left behind. Now this is what I wish I’d read on my flights, mostly because, as I’ve said many times, thrillers are made for travel. I loved this one — it was dark, twisty, scorching, and everything you want in a good summer thriller. No notes. After finishing, I looked up Harper’s backlist and realized I’d read her most recent book in this series, Exiles, a few years ago. I remember loving that too, so I might give it a re-read when I’m back with my beloved books. Any thrillers I should have on my radar this summer?

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

I’m really struggling with the possibility that I may not enjoy classics, guys. Mostly because I don’t like what it suggests about me! I would love to be a woman enamored with her classics, but six times out of ten, I’m just not about it. Brideshead Revisited was really hard for me to get through. I actually had to watch the movie (so good) alongside it to keep me engaged. When I did finally get through it though, I was glad to have stayed the path. Let me know your thought on this one.

Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker

Finally, I read a book I’d been anticipating for a while. Cassandra Edwards is a graduate student at Berkeley — gay, brilliant, nerve-racked, and miserable. At the start of the novel, she drives back to her family’s ranch in the Sierra foothills to attend the wedding of her identical twin, Judith, to a nice young doctor from Connecticut. Cassandra, however, is hell-bent on sabotaging it. Cassandra at the Wedding is a true tragicomedy. I felt so many emotions flipping through the pages — pity, annoyance (which turned into exasperation), and then pity again. I laughed a lot. I usually think about the sad girl trope as a Millennial fiction thing, but I’m realizing there’s such a rich lineage of intelligent, witty female depressives in literature — and I’m very much here for it. Cassandra is funny, she’s sharp, incredibly self aware and at times stunningly obtuse. In other words, the perfect protagonist.

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Tracker: 62 Read (excl. DNFs), 6 Listened

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NEW ON MY SHELF

The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy; What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver; I Used to Be Charming by Eve Babitz; Skeletons in the Closet by Jean-Patrick Manchette; Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy; The Lone Pilgrim by Laurie Colwin; Baumgartner by Paul Auster; Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum; The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

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ON YOUR RADAR: JULY NEW RELEASES

gifted by publishers; curated by yours truly. if your literary taste aligns with mine, check these out.

• Flashlight by Susan Choi | VINTAGE | 07/10

After a walk with her father ends in tragedy, ten-year-old Louisa washes up alone on a beach, unable to remember what happened. For the rest of her life, Louisa will be affected by that night. What really happened to Louisa's father? Why did they move to Japan that year? Who was the woman he took Louisa to see there? What was the mysterious illness that kept her mother home? And how can we connect, make a life, when there is so much we cannot see?

• Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart | ATLANTIC | 07/08

The Bradford-Shmulkin family is barely holding it together—culturally mixed, politically mismatched, and emotionally frayed in an America that's changing faster than they can keep up. At the center is Vera: half-Jewish, half-Korean, endlessly curious, and quietly watching it all fall apart. She’s desperate to keep her parents together, figure out her place in the world, and finally meet her birth mother—the one person who might hold the missing pieces.

• The Other Wife by Jackie Thomas-Kennedy | VIKING | 07/15

Susan “Zuzu” Braeburn is nearing forty with the life she thought she wanted—a wife, a kid, a nice house—but it’s not sitting right. She’s haunted by the choices she’s made: picking her white mom over her Black dad, law over art, and a marriage that’s safe but not quite true. When grief pulls her back to her hometown, all the buried what-ifs come rushing in, forcing her to ask what kind of life she actually wants—and whether it’s too late to choose differently.

• The Compound by Aisling Rawle | THE BOROUGH PRESS | 07/03

LORD OF THE FLIES meets LOVE ISLAND. You wake up in a compound in the middle of the desert, along with nine other women. All of you are young, all beautiful, all keen to escape the grinding poverty, political unrest and environmental catastrophe of the outside world. You realise that cameras are tracking your every move, broadcasting to millions of reality TV fans. Soon, ten men will arrive on foot – if they all survive the journey. What will you have to do to win?
And what happens to the losers?

• The Catch by Yrsa Daley-Ward | MERKY BOOKS | 07/10

Twin sisters Clara and Dempsey have barely spoken since their mother vanished into the Thames. Years later, Clara sees a woman who looks exactly like her—unchanged and living freely—and becomes convinced it's her. As the sisters clash over who this woman is, they’re forced to confront the pain of her disappearance and what it means to choose yourself.

• Endling by Maria Reva | VIRAGO | 07/03

In 2022 Ukraine, Yeva is a rogue biologist funding her snail research by seducing Western men on romance tours. Meanwhile, Nastia and her sister pose as a bride-translator duo to search for their missing activist mother. When their paths collide, the trio, plus a rare snail and a truck of unsuspecting bachelors, set off on a chaotic cross-country quest just as war breaks out. Darkly funny and sharp, it’s a story about survival, protest, and unlikely sisterhood in a collapsing world.

• Necessary Fiction by Eloghosa Osunde | 4TH ESTATE | 07/31

What makes a family? How is it defined and by whom? Is freedom for everyone? Set in the chaos and beauty of Lagos, this novel follows a cast of artists, lovers, and outsiders as they chase love and selfhood—often at the expense of family, tradition, or safety. Osunde’s characters are bold, messy, and deeply human, navigating a city that demands both reinvention and resilience. As their lives weave together, so do their heartbreaks, hopes, and the fictions they cling to in order to survive.

• Reframing Blackness: What’s Black about “History of Art”? by Alayo Akinkugbe | MERKY BOOKS | 07/10

Since the inception of mainstream art history, Blackness has been distinctly ignored.
In Reframing Blackness, art historian and founder of @ABlackHistoryOfArt, Alayo Akinkugbe challenges this void. Exploring the presentation of Black figures in Western art, as well as Blackness in museums, in feminist art movements and in the curriculum, Alayo unveils an overlooked but integral part of our collective art history.

• Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language by Adam Aleksic | KNOPF | 07/15

Algospeak explores how the Internet—and the algorithms behind it—is reshaping language as we know it. From “unalive” to endless “-core” trends, linguist and influencer Adam Aleksic breaks down how slang spreads, grammar evolves, and even accents shift in the age of social media. Drawing on data, surveys, and internet archives, he shows how online life is creating a new linguistic era—one where language is faster, stranger, and more telling than ever.

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shoutout to my boyfriend for funding my NYRB habit xo

Here are all the books I’ve got with me in Portland for the next two and a half months. A few more are on the way from publishers, Wild Dark Shore arrives today, and I’m currently reading The Sisters (soooo good!). Trying to keep book buying to a minimum, so let me know what I should read in July!