What I Read July - September 2022

Starting this list at the beginning of July I am anticipating that the next three months my personal reading life is going to take a bit of a hit while work reading gets going and other work assignments, the new school year, lots of life things get the front row of my attention. Interesting how things look when you lump them like this. Fingers crossed I will be delightfully surprised, and may you, dear reader, never run out of material.

JULY:

A House Between Earth and the Moon, by Rebecca Scherm - It’s November now as I write this, and, to be honest, I really don’t remember much about this book at all. I wanted more from it. It seemed to have a cool premise and it does explore the type of inequity that exists now on this planet but through the lens of science fiction. The cover is rad though, and I didn’t dislike it, it just wasn’t a stunner.

Auntie Poldi and the Handsome Antonio, by Mario Giordano - Auntie Poldi is a comfort read. It’s fun, amusing, cozy mystery with Italian sass, and a nice little place to put my brain for a while. This is the third in the series I think.

Reasons to Stay Alive, by Matt Haig - This is exactly what the title implies. It’s a book of reasons to live. It is deep, sometimes less deep but still meaningful, and delves into the authors personal life and how he dealt with and continues to deal with sometimes overwhelming bouts of depression. I found it encouraging and moving.

So Happy for You, by Celia Laskey - This is a wild book, not at all what I expected. It’s a pick your jaw up off the floor type of book, a twisty female friendships gone dangerous type of book, a juicy and fast paced wtf moment type of book. You gotta suspend some disbelief, but if you want something that’ll likely pull you in this might be the thing. The basic premise is a maid of honor/bridezilla and good luck charm gone very very wrong. Entertaining af.

Seven Days in June, by Tia Williams - This is likely going in my favorites of the year. It’s a romance, and it has some of the most sizzling sentences and the thickest chemistry between characters that I’ve read in a while, so if that’s for you you won’t be disappointed at all. It is hawt. It’s also important. It’s about Black joy, about difficult relationships, about time, circumstances, doing one’s best with those circumstances in mind, and the ones the world gives that aren’t even a little bit your fault, and has this one line in it that I have remembered and think about often that says this, “being soft doesn’t mean you’re weak, it means you’re alive” and I love that. The book deals with trust, vulnerability, intimacy, and its so well written. Everyone is well rounded in this and deep. It’s gorgeous.

AUGUST:

Finlay Donovan is Killing It, by Elle Cosimano - Hella entertaining. This was just fun to read. It was ridiculously amusing, funny, like that show good girls but funnier and a bit less spicy. I enjoyed it, am reading the second one right now. It’s just a good time. An author and single mother accidentally gets involved in a hit, a hot lawyer/bartender, a hot cop, an amusing no nonsense babysitter, and a book to write that’s way past deadline.

I’ll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood, by Jessi Klein - I wrote about this on instagram, but motherhood writing is really difficult for me to get into, but Klein wrote another collection of essays I loved, so I was curious about this one. I picked it up on my trip to LA with my BFF and am so glad I did. I loved it. Klein doesn’t mince any words, she doesn’t sound like a “mommy blogger” (barf) and she is hilarious, meaningful, and spot on. She writes about things I wish I’d been able to read before and while I had young kids. Like how life draining it can be to wrangle a toddler into a car seat. I loved this. If you want to be a parent, you are a parent, you know a parent, it’s worth reading.

Our Wives Under the Sea, by Julia Armfield - I listened to this one and it almost felt like a fever dream, I think it would’ve been more impactful to me if I had read it in a physical format. It’s about a group of people who return from a really long and partly deeply mysterious undersea voyage. They’re not the same. There’s a bit of body horror, there’s mind-bending stuff like how the Anihilation series by Jeff Vandermeer messes with like, foliage and greenery, this does that with water and undersea stuff. It’s difficult to talk about because it feels slippery and almost gone. I liked it and am interested to follow Armfield’s work now.

Woman, Eating, by Claire Kohda - Loved it. Wrote about it here on instagram. Literary fiction vampire novel full of hunger, difficult relationships, and how trauma lingers. Explores the duality of being demon and human at once, and can’t we all relate to that a little bit? It was satisfying and provocative and full of shadow, just like a vampire novel should be.

Scattered All Over the Earth, by Yoko Tawada - I wanted to love this so hard. The cover and the premise worked better for me than the actual story. It’s about language, how it morphs and transforms, changes, and can evaporate. It’s about belonging, wondering how to preserve a language and a culture when the land lines disappear and the place you come from doesn’t technically exist anymore. In execution it didn’t work for me. But the thought experiment is interesting, so for that it was worthwhile.

SEPTEMBER:

Priory of the Orange Tree, by Samantha Shannon - I think this was overhyped for me. I read it with a rad book club and that part was so much fun. But for such a thick book I found it like, a little unmanageably dense in the wrong ways. I wanted it to expand in areas that it didn’t, and to skim more of what it went deep on. I don’t remember a lot of what happened. Moral being that reading with other folks is a lot of fun even if the book is a little less than you expected. And for other people it works really well so it might be fore you.

The Ends of the World, by Peter Brannen - omg I loved this book. It’s non-fiction, it’s compelling and so cool. It’s about the universe, the extinctions that have happened on earth, and puts our moment in time in perspective with the rest of the universe. It’s momentous and one of my favorite reads of the year. It combines scientific accuracy, poetic sentences, and magnificent and awe inspiring perspective. I adored it and love love love it.

Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir - I adore Gideon, the first book in this series. There’s something I want desperately from the series and from the author that I haven’t gotten back in the subsequent two books. It’s felt like a tease and a bit of an attempt at clever distraction, but I love Gideon so much. So much. My eye is laser focused on that one thing. There’s one more book coming, and I think once the series is done it will be easier to talk about this one. Go read Gideon though, that’s always good advice and worthwhile. Ugh I think I’ll go do that again too.

Manifest your Destiny, by Wayne W. Dyer - Read this at the reference of someone else, and I thought it had some insightful things in it. I could see it valuable, helpful, and empowering. Manifesting is sort of a wiggly subject to me, but I liked the parts of this that helped you realize that you’re the active agent and director of your life. It was a positive impact to me and worth the time.

Ice Planet Barbarians, by Ruby Dixon - Ok I don’t know how to talk about this one but also really want to talk about it because it’s wild. If you’re looking for something that will push you, that’s gonna challenge you on some interesting levels, and no matter what will have you thinking wtf the whole time, this is the series. Warning though it is exceptionally open door romance, haha, and it is about blue aliens on a different planet with horns and tails, so like….know that.

What Are You Going Through, by Sgrid Nunez - I loved this, but think I liked The Friend, a bit more. This also deals with loss, death, the value and meaning of living and life, in a really gorgeously quiet, poignant, and thoughtful way. There’s an episode of the golden girls where Sophia’s friend asks her to be there when she ends her life on her terms, before she is in hospice, or not in control of her body or mind. A similar theme is in this book. The book manages to highlight moments of life that are so common they sometimes feel insignificant, but they’re not. Difficult relationships, ended relationships, so much of it is in this tiny little book. I liked it a lot and it’s stayed in my brain longer than I expected.

Pillow Thoughts, by Courtney Peppernell - Nice little poetry collection. It’s sweet, not very much out of the expected, but I think it has value, and is a great place for poetry readers to go. Pleasant and sweet, I liked it.


That’s all! Probably the slowest chunk of my reading year, but still some good things. Happy reading to you and yours, my nerds. May you never forget to bring a book.