📚 what I'm reading the rest of the Summer + books I wish I had gotten to
Mourning my last days of total reading freedom before the new semester of graduate school begins and my freedom will be slowly stripped away...
If you know me, you know that I read a lot. Its not that reading is my entire personality (although I love literature more than air), its more so that I literally can’t stand to just listen to the sound of my own thoughts.
After having very limited time and brain space to read whatever I wanted from February-May, I was ecstatic to finally be able to read whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, come June.
This Summer, I didn’t set a numerical goal for how many books I wanted to get to. Instead, I made a list of books I wanted to get to over my break from dense scholarly readings, titling it “Summer 2024 📚” in my Notes app.
I now have t-minus 14 days until my official first day of classes—exactly two weeks left of my reading freedom.
I must first confess that I have altered the list since its initial conception, swapping out a couple and crossing off others. I can’t remember how many books the list started with, as I’ve crossed them off since I’ve finished them, but it must’ve been around 20-30, assuming my usual rate of around 10 books/month.
So what on my list did I actually get to, and what’s still on my list for the next couple weeks?
1. What I would recommend
Arguably my most successful read of my whole Summer TBR was Abby Jimenez’s newest release Just for the Summer. After reading Jimenez’s Yours Truly earlier this year and absolutely loving it, I was so excited for this that I purchased my own physical copy brand-new, something I rarely do for new releases.
This was the perfect trip to bring on our trip to Yosemite in early June. I started it on the drive there so that all my positive memories from the book and the trip would be intertwined (don’t you love when that happens?).
The storyline had me immediately: Emma, a travel nurse, believes that she is cursed with men, because all of her exes find the love of their life and get married right after breaking up with her. Through a Reddit post (love), she meets a guy that seems to have the same problem, and wouldn’t you know it, the two concoct an experiment: will two afflicted people dating effectively break the curse for them both?
Another thing this book has that I love is a toxic mother-daughter relationship. As someone who also has “mommy issues,” I feel so seen when the rare storyline of a narcissistic mother appears in a book. This book featured not one, but two unstable mother storylines, both deeply layered and explored with great nuance (in my opinion).
This was five stars for me, and I would definitely recommend for any romance lover. Be warned: the content is heavier than typical romance novels, but if you can handle some more intense subject matter with your witty romance, it is well worth it.
This quintessential disability novel has been on my TBR for the past couple of years, and I thought for sure this Summer was the perfect time to get to it. When I found it at my local indie used bookstore a couple weeks ago, I knew I had to get to it that weekend.
I brought it with me to Truckee, alternating between the audiobook and annotating my physical copy. As a Disability Studies scholar (my undergrad minor), I have a unique appreciation, not only for the great significance and need for this book, but also it’s potential positive impact on the disability community by uncovering our lived realities.
It’s full of incredibly important essays that shed light on the care aspects of disability, things like access to basic needs and public spaces, equal treatment in the workforce and destigmatization of disabled sex and joy. Piepzna-Samarasinha does important work outlining the foundations of disability justice and systemic barriers that exist in our society, highlighting the different forms “care” can take. More importantly, she amplifies the disabled histories integral to where we are today, while highlighting the work we have left to do, as well as steps we can take to get there, as individuals and as a community.
If you can’t tell, this was also five stars for me, and if you’ve ever been interested in disability studies or disability culture, this is an important and necessary read, and easy to find at your library.
My favorite sections were “Crip Sex: Moments & the Lust of Recognition,” “Cripping the Apocalypse,” and “So Much Time Spent in Bed: A Letter to Gloria Anzaldúa on Chronic Illness, Coatlicue, and Creativity.”
Another classic that I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t read, especially since Butler’s Kindred was one of my top 10 favorite books of last year, and one I have referenced in my academic writing since. I also acquired a paperback from the library sale this year, I’m shocked it took me so long to get to it.
While I love this one as much as Kindred, I enjoyed it very much and annotated throughout. Science fiction is another one of my least-read genres, but I knew it depicts disability representation in the form of chronic pain. When I flipped to the opening pages and saw the date “July 30th, 2024,” I knew it was the perfect time to start it.
The main character, a fifteen-ear-old girl named Olympia, is afflicted with hyperempathy, which causes her to “debilitating sensitivity to others,” or the burden of feeling the pain of others whether she chooses to or not. Olympia deals with chronic pain as a result of her condition, and I appreciated the nuanced discussion of chronic pain throughout: “You must know how disabling real pain can be,” (278).
However, I think overall I enjoyed the disability and complex embodiment discourse more than the plot of the novel, which was extremely depressing in tone throughout, and I don’t think appreciated it as much being a non-sci-fi reader. Even still, I would recommend this, especially if you’re a fan of Butler’s other work.
2. Books you can skip: disappointments & DNF’s
This one is obvious: I wanted a book to read by the pool, and this one seemed like the perfect choice. I had read Annabel Monaghan’s previous novel Nora Goes Off Script and found it charming (3⭐️), so I thought it couldn’t hurt to pick this one up.
Described on Goodreads as a “nostalgia read,” this novel follows an engaged woman who has a random encounter with her “first love.” She hasn’t seen him in fourteen years, but they used to spend every summer together on the beachside homes (very relatable content). In alternating chapters, we get the story of the developing, complicated love story spanning many summers, and by the end we are supposed to understand why she is conflicted between the two men.
As someone who’s been engaged for eight months now, I thought I would enjoy this engagement-themed beach read.Unfortunately, I was not a fan of this one.
Not only did I find the main character incredibly annoying and one dimensional, but the plot was so mundane that I couldn’t care less to remember what was happening at multiple points. In hindsight, I probably should’ve DNF’d (did not finish) this one, because I honestly can’t remember too much about it, including the main character’s name. Even if you are a fan of fluffy, cheesy romance novels, I would skip this one and instead pick up the far more developed aforementioned debut novel, Nora Goes Off Script.
This wasn’t my first DNF of the Summer, but it was one the most surprising ones for me. Not only was Elin Hilderbrand’s newest release on my Summer TBR, but also on my most anticipated releases of the season. Sadly, this was DNF for me after only a few chapters, and I was so disappointed.
Like many of Hilderbrand’s novels, this one also takes place on Nantucket island, following a young woman who was recently hired to be the housekeeper of a mysterious but affluent family on the island. One of the novel’s selling points is the reappearance of Chief of Police Ed Kapanesh, a beloved recurring character of Hilderbrand’s Nantucket novels.
As much as I wanted to enjoy this as I’ve enjoyed Hilderbrand’s last few releases, this was a miss for me. Admittedly, I was having a particularly terrible chronic illness week when I read/DNF’d this, so I was hoping to find comfort in a cozy beach read.
Instead, I was thrown off by the storyline of the cliche “poor, down on her luck, under-privileged young woman goes to a luxury island to be taken in by rich people,” as well as the general pompousness of everyone on the island.
During a time in the real world which made the behavior of the characters seem trivial, I found myself increasingly annoyed by the characters, as well as the afterthought attempt at a forbidden female/female romance.
While it wasn’t for me, I would still give this a try if you’re a fan of EH, especially the police character (who I personally didn’t even remember was in all of her Nantucket novels).
3. What I’m still getting to (maybe)
After absolutely devouring Babel last year (and following her on Instagram), I’ve been aching to read R. F. Kuang’s bestselling “Poppy War” trilogy. What’s been stopping me? Well, fantasy is probably my least read genre, if I’m being honest. I’ll read the more hyped ones once in a while here and there, but I’ve never been into the whole dragons and magical Lord type of thing (after Percy Jackson and Harry Potter, of course).
Another thing is, fantasy novels tend to be part of, well, trilogies or lengthy series. Listen, from a writer’s standpoint, I get it: you spent all this time building an entire made up magical world with its own rules and lore, of course you should capitalize that out through as many books and novellas as possible.
But, as a reader, thats a lot of commitment for me. In fact, I’m such a series-commitment-phobic person that I didn’t read the Hunger Games series until, like, four years ago. And—don’t tell anyone—but I never finished the final Twilight book *gasp*.
However, I finally snagged a paperback of the first book this past weekend at a Savers, and am going to read it before school starts. Promise!
Ready for another jaw-dropping confession? I haven’t seen “Fight Club” (the film) or even read Fight Club (the novel). I didn’t even realize that this was a serious English major faux pas until one of my grad school classmates let me know of this fact as she explained to me (in great detail) an undergraduate thesis she’d written on Fight Club and Jane Eyre (in case you can’t tell, she also went to Berkeley).
Another used bookstore find of the summer, this is one of those library holds that I’ve let expire an embarrassing number of times. I’ll get to it soon—the audiobook is less then 6 hours—but I can’t say how soon.
One of my all-time favorite genres is essay collections and memoirs, hands down, no contest. I think I own more memoirs and essay collections than the average reader; if you can think of one, chances are I’ve read it and likely own it.
Alexander' Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel has been on my TBR an embarrassingly long time. Like, I’m talking circa 2018 junior college days. In one of my favorite classes I’ve ever taken (which is literally dozens), an online creative nonfiction class at Diablo Valley College, Chee’s memoir was among the works we could choose as the subject of our final paper. Having had trouble with the complex writing style at the time, I chose instead Maggie O’Farrell’s memoir I Am, I Am, I Am, almost purely for it's titular Plathian reference.
All the optional memoirs from that course were added to my TBR, and Chee’s is one of my last unread ones remaining (along with Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot), but this year I’m so serious about reading it that I went to the trouble of purchasing a used copy for a few dollars on Ebay. I’ll surely read it now!
If you don’t see this on my August reading wrap-up, something has gone seriously awry and you should send help.
Hopefully I gave you some recommendations—of what to read or to avoid. Make sure to subscribe for my roundup of all the book I’ve read over the summer (coming within the next 2 weeks), as well as more book related content regularly!
What was your favorite book you read this summer? Let me know below!