June Reads

Oh, hey there, stack of twelve books that were read in July. This month was super busy (friends! Travel! Family stuff! House stuff!), but I also spent hours and hours out by the pool with a book in hand. Honestly, minus some anxiety I'm feeling here the last few days of July, it was the best month since... 2019? Whoa. 

I feel very much in a rut with monthly reviews. I used to do a paragraph for each book, and then I switched to sort of a more conversational bopping from topic to topic format, and now I am thinking about doing a quick "five things about this book" post for everything I read (it would work with what I do on Instagram, too). I also am welllllll aware that with work starting thing are going to get real crazy, real fast, so I don't know if this is the time to take on a new, self-imposed, blog obligation. But, maybe. 

For today, it is what it is...

For Fun:

Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary and Steven Rowley's The Guncle were both perfect, delightful travel and pool books. Neither took themselves too seriously, but weren't total fluff, either. 

Delightful Nonfiction:

Charles Wheelan's We Came, We Saw, We Left was a great travel memoir about his family's time spent traveling around the world on a tight budget. Scott Jurek's North about his time traveling the Appalachian Trail was motivational and inspiring. 

Social Issues:

Isabel Allende's short memoir about feminism, The Soul of a Woman, was pretty interesting, and her shining personality was prevalent throughout. I learned so much about intersectional feminism with a focus on back women in Ijeoma Oluo's Mediocre and How to Be Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi was extremely thought-provoking and led to a great book club conversation. 

Reserved Narration:

Jhumpa Lahiri's Whereabouts and Rachel Cusk's Outline reminded me of each other, in a way. The narrators in each are both reserved middle-aged women in Europe, each struggling with their present states. Cusk focuses more on interaction with others, while Lahiri places. Nonetheless, both are so deliberate and precise in their style.

Short Stories:

I read two short story collections this month, Brandon Taylor's Flithy Animals and Elizabeth McCracken's The Souvenir Museum. Taylor's was much stronger, exploring sexual identity throughout. I thought McCracken's was much more unbalanced, the first part being a bit lackluster.

A Disappointment:

I loved Save Me the Plums by Ruth Reichl, but I was so disappointed by her novel Delicious. It was like a bad Lifetime movie or something...