After a rough start to the reading year, which prompted me to spend the last several months making up excuses to write about books I truly love while openly bemoaning the fact that I didn’t have any NEW favorites to share, essentially haunting my own Substack like an annoying ghost…

Everything is coming up me.

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Last month alone led me to three potential new favorites, and I didn’t have to sell my soul OR slow my reading like I’m afraid if I stop I might experience a single original thought. (Too real?)

To share my joy and commemorate the cruel and unfeeling passage of time, I’m doing a sort of mid-year reading check-in — but just writing about the 50 best books of the 147 I’ve finished since January.

Fun.

50. The Future Perfect by Cay Kim

This is a tough and complicated read about a tough and complicated topic: whether, if your existence supplants your parents’ dreams, your life can ever be enough to fulfill theirs.

49. The Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket (reread)

Immediately discrediting myself by including a revisit of a later installment of a beloved childhood series, but if loving A Series of Unfortunate Events is wrong I don’t want to be right.

48. Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance by Alison Espach

This was very different from The Wedding People — somber rather than silly, literary rather than upmarket — but they had one thing in common, which is my liking them.

47. Is This a Cry for Help by Emily Austin

I like all of Emily Austin’s books about odd lesbians finding themselves in our current political climate. This one not as much, but still.

46. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (reread)

Trying to get the rereads of childhood favorites out of the way early, but this is too charming and pun-inclined for me to reasonably put it any lower.

45. Another Marvelous Thing by Laurie Colwin

Laurie Colwin can make even an ill-fated affair between two ill-suited married people seem cozy and charming.

44. Kin by Tayari Jones

It took me weeks to read this, which had some cons (slow patches in the middle seemed extra slow) but mostly pros (this is a long and sprawling story to be savored).

43. Nothing Grows by Moonlight by Torborg Nedreaas

“A forgotten classic in translation about a woman’s life-destroying love” includes many of my favorite words.

42. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

As Emma commented on my June wrap-up, this is “weirdly uninterested in actually developing the main romance.” And yet it was enough to work pretty well for me.

41. Phoebe Berman’s Gonna Lose It by Brooke Averick

Right up there with Jenny Slate’s first memoir in terms of authors nailing their own comedic voice. It sounds like a given but having gone through a strong comedian book phase I promise you it’s not.

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Although now that I think of it, repeatedly suggesting you read books where the only plot is a woman losing her mind might be enough of a cry for help in and of itself.

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Anyway, in June I read 25 books, a few less than in May. So to translate, we’re on the ups.

Add to that the new favorites I read this month and we’re even better.

What paid subscribers got

Above all, my appreciation, gratitude, and honestly…love. Plus some posts:

• reading the books I’m most excited about: Immediately I found multiple five stars, just by reading books that actually sounded good to me. Who’d’ve thought? I’m a genius.

• every tab I have open: Turns out it was north of 400. I closed all the duplicative Zillow listings, Philly sports results, and restaurant menus I’m going to in two weeks, and summed up the rest here.

• every book I’ve ever reread: I’ve gone through phases of never rereading and eras where it’s all I do. This reflects all of that, in order of some kind of importance.

• hyperspecific book recommendations: Some of my favorite books, organized into very niche made-up subgenres. For example, my personal favorites are Japanese literature about cats, literary romance, books about the beauty and magic of the mundane…

What all subscribers got

Still kinda figuring out what the difference between free and paid posts is, other than “this is the idea I had at the time.” Nevertheless!

• why do people hate readers?: My first opinion essay, but I have a lot of them, so. It won’t be the last.

• everything I read in May: Damn good month! Almost as good as this one. Actually maybe better. I’m bad at clickbait.

• books for people who hate everything: As someone who hates everything, all of my recommendations qualify as this.

• reading is cool now. why do we hate that?: Opinion essay #2! I told you I have lots.

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Projects

I’m working on something secret. Watch this space.

Besides that, I of course had my monthly self-imposed project long classics assignment: A JUNE WITH A VIEW.

It was lovely.

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Review copies

The only thing that threatens to put me in a reading slump / hate everything I read / give up on my ineffable joie de vivre entirely is my NetGalley addiction.

And I have no plans to change anything about it, so.

Last month, I had 14 June releases to read, plus 2 May hangers-on (read: books I did not get to). And I did read 14!

It just so happens that somehow I now have six leftovers, plus 13 books that come out in July. See you in August for more math.

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Other media on my mind

Well. Let’s see.

• I am watching a lot of World Cup games and fervently rooting for whichever country seems to have a less colonialism-based past.

• I am listening to Phoebe Bridgers’ new single, which is a fun song with significantly worse lyrics than her usual standard.

• I rewatched the People We Meet on Vacation movie while doing some deeply belated spring cleaning. I think it’s really good. The Beach Read adaptation status is an encroaching nightmare.

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The books in question

We’ve put it off long enough. Here is what I read in June:

Maggie; Or, a Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar by Katie Yee

May 28 - June 1 | Source: Library

I respect this title so much. A comma AND a semicolon AND a setup to an as yet undetermined punchline. That takes a lot of courage so I assumed I would love it with no further information needed.

Read more: Reading the books I’m most excited about

Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

May 30 - June 3 | Source: Book of the Month

This book kept me company as I binge-read it over the course of an insomniatic night. Actually the worst kind of insomniatic night, in which you keep thinking you might be able to fall asleep and you cannot. That’s the nicest thing I have to say about it.

Also, I learned in writing this that “insomniatic” is more “Aly & AJ album title” than formally recognized adjective, and therefore I will be keeping it.

Read more: Reading the books I’m most excited about

Whistler by Ann Patchett

May 29 - June 3 | Source: Bought, from a book event, the best night of my life, nbd

Oh, god. I’m smiling at my laptop just thinking about this book.

Read more: Reading the books I’m most excited about

Vilhelm’s Room by Tove Ditlevsen

May 30 - June 4 | Source: NetGalley

This was such an icky, grimy-feeling book. Both intentionally and less so. Either way I had a pretty bad time.

Rating: ✯✯✯

The Flowers of Buffoonery by Osamu Dazai

June 4-5 | Source: Library

Each of Dazai’s books is so different and so excellent. Schoolgirl? No Longer Human? The Setting Sun? All hits no misses. Or I guess three hits one miss.

Read more: Reading the books I’m most excited about

The Pleasing Hour by Lily King

June 3-7 | Source: Bought

I shouldn’t ever have to run out of Lily King backlist books to read. I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything wrong in my life.

Read more: Reading the books I’m most excited about

The Sisters by Jonas Khemiri

May 28 - June 7 | Source: Library

This was Hunter Harris’ favorite book of the year, and her recommendations have never steered me wrong. By which I mean “her reading taste introduced me to Katie Kitamura, the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

Read more: Reading the books I’m most excited about

John of John by Douglas Stuart

May 27 - June 8 | Source: NetGalley

I’m not sure what happened here. I dreaded picking this up, I found its story unpleasantly immersive, I felt haunted by its injustices large and small (lots of gross farm stuff here). And yet when I finished it, I thought, did I love that? Do I have to read Shuggie Bain?

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

Glyph by Ali Smith

May 31 - June 9 | Source: NetGalley

Another mind-bender. I strutted around all over town talking about how Ali Smith is doing our culture the service of teaching authors that lit fic can have sequels, and then I put off reading this for as long as I could. And then I enjoyed every page! What am I ever on about.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

The Children by Melissa Albert

June 4-10 | Source: NetGalley

I love Melissa Albert’s dark, eerie, fairytale-y fantasy, and I love no plot just vibes books, but this combination of the two didn’t work for me.

Rating: ✯✯✯

The Typing Lady by Ruth Ozeki

June 11-15 | Source: NetGalley

And! I love Ruth Ozeki’s meta, quirky work, and I love short stories, and THIS combination of the two didn’t work for me!

I’m going to stop now because I could probably use this sentence structure until the end of the post.

Rating: ✯✯✯

The Summer Girlfriend by Kristina Forest

June 11-15 | Source: NetGalley

Took the risk of trying to find a rom-com type beach read (not to be confused with Emily Henry’s rom-com Beach Read) and it kind of…paid off? This was nice!

Rating: ✯✯✯

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

June 8-16 | Source: Publisher

Don’t let me procrastinate reading modern classics by authors whose other work I’ve enjoyed EVER again! This is a candidate for one of my favorite books of the year.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯✯

The Satisfaction Cafe by Kathy Wang

June 15-17 | Source: Publisher

Had me at the Ann Patchett blurb, lost me at the upmarket literary/commercial no man’s land, the weird and very dark scenes against the smiley style, the out of place ending sequence…

Rating: ✯✯✯

The Future Perfect by Cay Kim

June 12-17 | Source: Publisher

Another tough read, and another style that didn’t always work for me, and yet I admire the big swings and intense feelings and gray areas that this one went for so much more.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

Nymph by Sofia Montrone

June 16-19 | Source: NetGalley

I am not taking any Euro trips this summer (the term “down to earth relatable queen” gets thrown around a lot these days…) but this book helped me to feel like I was on vacation in the Italian countryside. Insert Arthur quote about library cards.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

The Cat Who Saved the Library by Sosuke Natsukawa

June 18-20 | Source: Library

If you’re wondering how, or why, or from what the cat in question saved the titular library, do NOT ask me. I’m still pretty confused about the whole situation.

Rating: ✯✯✯

Pool House by Mary HK Choi

June 9-22 | Source: Publisher

I have no comment at this time.

Okay wait, I have one comment. It’s :(

Rating: ✯✯✯

Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung

June 17-22 | Source: Library

A novel (love) in ghost stories (LOVE)! This is one of those books where you can tell how much fun the author had writing it. So readable, so weird, so good.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

All This Want (and I Can’t Get None) by T Clark

June 16-23 | Source: NetGalley

A troubling and true collection of stories about what it means to be a teenage girl in this country, and more so to be becoming a Black woman — desire and being desired, the threat and the act of violence, the ever encroaching arm of the patriarchy.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

June 19-26 | Source: Library

I love getting book recommendations from other books. This was such a mindfuck in the way that only a rich, complex book that has earned its abstractness can be.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

Girl’s Girl by Sonia Feldman

June 23-27 | Source: NetGalley

I enjoyed reading this so much that it prompted me to do the unthinkable: post an Instagram story. It’s a dreamy, sweltering story of a teenage summer/first love/finding yourself. I never thought I could enjoy immersion in the feeling of being 15, but here we are. Could be another favorite.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯✯

They All Fall in Love at the End by Haili Blassingame

June 7-29 | Source: Author

Substack queen Haili Blassingame kindly sent me her book — which is both funny and readable and serious and true to our current moment — and I, of course, really really enjoyed it. Strongly recommend!

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

Mornings without Mii by Mayumi Inaba

June 23-30 | Source: Library

I told you books about Japanese cats are one of my favorite literary niches. I got two of them in this month.

This one was a tough (in more ways than one) love letter to having a pet.

Rating: ✯✯✯

Summing things up

Having just fully recapped it…was this an incredible reading month? Feels generational.

Out of the 28 books I read, I would fully recommend…drumroll please…13 of them. That’s more than half, which is an amazing ratio for me.

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The very best book I read was REDACTED. Read to find out! Not withholding the worst book I read, though, which was a tie between The Cat Who Saved the Library and Vilhelm’s Room.

Your turn!

What were the best and worst books you read in June? Have you read any of these? How’s your reading year going?

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A few of mine: Japanese literature about cats, literary romance, books about the beauty and magic of the mundane…I could go on. And in fact I want to. Maybe I should redirect this post.

Anyway. Armed with that fixation of mine, a few months ago, I marched on over to Instagram to ask a question:

What wildly specific categories can I give you book recommendations within?

98 requests and 10 days of procrastination later, I wrote part one of the post, and now (after roughly 9 times the procrastination duration) I’m back with part two.

If you have reading niches you’re obsessed with that I can arm you with material for, drop a comment!

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books about relationships that aren’t necessarily romances

Well I’m tempted to just list out my literary romance favorites again…but that is not what the question is, so.

Girl’s Girl by Sonia Feldman

I a) just finished this book yesterday, b) said “oh no” out loud when I turned the last page, and c) am strongly considering it for five star status. In other words there was no way I could write a whole post without mentioning it.

This does have a crush-forward throughline, but I think its most interesting dynamics — obsessive friendship, mothers and teenage daughters — are unromantic. This is an immersive entry into the 15-year-old mind, and somehow I mean that as a compliment.

This is more than I was planning on writing.

Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly

A funny, charming, eminently readable book about when your sibling is your soulmate but you’re beginning to love other people, too. And again, not necessarily romantically!

That’s more in line with the blurbs I was going for. We’ve got a lot of recommendations to get through.

The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo

This is a book about a family, but more importantly, it’s a book about MY family. Because I loved it so much I wanted to live inside it and never be done and therefore I’m looking into some kind of trans-reality adult adoption situation.

enemies to lovers books

Not that hyper-specific and not a great question to ask of me, someone who doesn’t read much romantasy or either of the genres that inspired the portmanteau.

But it is my favorite trope, so.

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Third grade me, who was teased for reading at recess, can’t believe it. My sixth grade self, in the era in which I took a couple years off the stuff to see if that might be the missing piece for popularity, is astonished.

The Emma of first grade, who was the first to finish the learn-to-read modules and therefore unlock the right to read the American Girl books, knew it was just a matter of time.

I’ve been wary of calling it, but it’s undeniable now. Terms like “hot girls read” (hold the scandal) and “it girl reading list” proliferate. Celebrity book clubs have surpassed the sphere of the pleasantly mom-like to certified youth icons (myself: washed, unc) ranging from Dua Lipa to Kaia Gerber. Books are something to shill for alongside skincare and bring to the beach for bikini shots.

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This trend, as it were, is getting more and more attention on Substack of late, launching thinkpiece after rant after essay getting to the bottom of the Kardashian-Jenners’ theoretical mid-Instagram-post mindset.

As someone who has been in the trenches of thankless, unsexy reading all my life, ruining my vision and failing to make even one teen pop sensation fall in love with me by holding a book in the middle of their concert, I thought I’d weigh in:

I think this is all fantastic.

The behavioral impact that influencers wield is terrifying and far-reaching. Seventy-six percent of people follow influencers1. Seventy-four percent of people2 have purchased an item based on an influencer’s claims.

That level of trust and widespread presence can have insidious results. Twenty-nine percent of people self-report parasocial relationships with influencers (a number I’m sure is actually much higher). In an age of climbing health misinformation, 40 percent3 of people get health and wellness advice from influencers who are frequently completely unqualified. A recent study4 found that influencer culture can harm viewers’ well-being in six significant ways, including through unrealistic standards from beauty to finance to consumption.

With all this going on every minute of every day…you want me to be mad that the baddies are quoting Eve Babitz?

Celebrity book club selections can have real impact, with authors whose books are chosen by sources like Read with Jenna or Reese’s Book Club seeing 500 to 700 percent spikes in sales5.

I am personally of the opinion that all reading is good reading, and I don’t care what kind of books you like as long as you like them. But even if you did — these book clubs prioritize debut novelists, women writers, backlist lit fic, classics. On the scale from commercial to literary, they tend toward the latter, most often floating in the “upmarket” no man’s land but occasionally wading their way into something new and fresh and genuinely interesting.

But again. Even if they didn’t. What’s so wrong about marketing reading?

If a book is the hottest accessory of the summer, I’m all for it. One step further away from Dua Lipa going the full Bezos route.

Hannah Connolly wrote this great essay on all the behaviors influencers exhibit, adherences to the aesthetically pleasing and trendy that can go so far past reasonable they reach irresponsible. When you open Instagram, you’ll be confronted by modular sofas still in the pristine ivory they were TaskRabbit’d into existence in, walkable cities traversed safely in matching sets, kitchens with no visible appliances. TikTok will show you Erewhon smoothies and glass skin and viral Whole Foods snacks until you throw your phone at a wall.

In a world where views of the unachievable are so commonplace it feels shameful to fail to live up to them, I appreciate the accessibility and pleasure of a good book recommendation.

Call me if Gracie Abrams posts a Colleen Hoover shoutout.

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As a fundamentally picky person, there have been entire years of my reading career in which I would rather revisit a onetime favorite than undertake the vulnerable, potentially disastrous process of discovering something new.

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Not always, because I’m actually really chill and brave, but on occasion.

That combined with a childhood spent reading the same books over and over again means I have vast experience in rereading. And not all of them have gone well.

Here’s all my reread books, in order of how many times I’ve read them and how that turned out.

This is coming a little late because it turns out ranking over a hundred books takes a while. Who knew! (Me. I’ve done this several times before.)

162-168. The Harry Potter series by JK Rowling (read at least 3 times): I was never the hugest Hogwarts dork on earth, but I dabbled in my youth. What began as a nostalgia reread collapsed completely by the seventh book, which is in truth reprehensibly bad.

159-161. The Selection trilogy by Kiera Cass (read 2 times): The difference two years of frontal lobe development can make…immense.

158. The Help by Kathryn Stockett (read at least 5 times): I got this for Christmas when I was approximately 11 and read it nonstop for several years. Later I learned about the concept of the white savior.

157. The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood (read 2 times): On the strength for my feelings for this book I read a half-dozen more Ali Hazelwood big-guy-small-girl-I’m-so-little romances, each traumatizing me more than the last, and then I returned to this. It actually sucking made a kind of sense in hindsight.

155-156. The Anna and the French Kiss trilogy by Stephanie Perkins (read 2 times): I’m sorry to say I feel a level of personal betrayal here. The first book in this trilogy invented romance according to my teenage self, but as it turns out they’re all…bad? Nightmare.

154. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell (read 3 times): One of these days I will have to issue an apologetic public statement about the ways Rowell’s writing soothes my spirit, but this one, like The Help, became obviously bad the moment I achieved personal consciousness.

152-153. The To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy by Jenny Han (read 2 times): It is nowhere near as bad as the Summer I Turned Pretty clustercuss, the equivalent of publishing a body-melting pool of acid. Nor is it good.

151. Just One Year by Gayle Forman (read 2 times): I love (unfortunately) the first book in this duology, but the second one didn’t hit on either encounter.

150. The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor (read 2 times): For years, in spite of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland being my favorite book, I had to follow up that I hated every retelling except the Looking Glass Wars. Now I say I hate all of them.

149. Attachments by Rainbow Rowell (read 2 times): A lot more stalking-based than I remembered it being.

148. All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven (read 2 times): Damn I loved this suicide porn.

147. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes (read 2 times): The way I stood 10 toes down defending this book against the ableist allegations. Then I reread it like …welp.

146. My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick (read 2 times): There’s a timeline in which my brain never solidified and I’m still reading summer-covered YA contemporaries with author names like Huntley Fitzpatrick. And I say that with love.

145. Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville (read infinite times): I had a really privileged adolescence, which is why I can say confidently that being assigned this in multiple classes is one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me.

144. Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin (read 2 times): I thought this WWII Hitler assassination motorcycle contest fanfiction was a masterpiece on first read. That’s all.

143. On the Fence by Kasie West (read 2 times): How is this not the same book I just mentioned?

141-142. A Court of Thorns & Roses / A Court of Mist & Fury by Sarah J. Maas (read 2 times): Would it surprise you to know that there was an 11 month period, between when I read this book and when the third in the then-trilogy came out, when I actually loved it? Makes you think.

140. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (read 2 times): Loved this as an edgy/angsty teen. Strongly disapproved of it by the time adulthood came around.

139. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer (read 2 times): My first boyfriend bought me a signed early edition of this as a birthday gift, which troubled me greatly post-swift breakup for being a really good present. Rereading it and not liking it helped.

138. Hidden Bodies by Caroline Kepnes (read 2 times): I’m a You defender (see way, way below) but all of its sequels are a scourge on God’s earth.

137. Carry On by Rainbow Rowell (read 2 times): I think writing a book in which you include fanfiction passages from an obvious Harry Potter ripoff and then actually writing and publishing multiple full-length installments of said ripoff may be one of the funniest things you can do.

136. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (read 2 times): Pros — the titular circus (which rocks). Cons — characters, plot, stakes, significance. What I call “literally all the book stuff.”

135. The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson (read 2 times): I didn’t like this much when I first read it, and then I read I’ll Give You the Sun (will make an appearance in the Elite Masterworks phase of this list) a million more times, and then since there were still no new Jandy Nelson releases I circled back here. Still didn’t hit.

134. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (read 2 times): Not amazing historical fiction. Definitely readable historical fiction.

133. The Hating Game by Sally Thorne (read 4 times): Four reads is such a cry for help. I feel like a benevolent witch must have cast a spell on this book to make it seem mid on that last go-round just to cure me of revisiting it.

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For someone who believes that people are kind and life is wonderful and there is beauty and magic in the mundane, I manage to take a negative perspective nearly everywhere I go.

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One thing I do love without issue (minus my criticism and pickiness, which I guess would in fact constitute an issue) is reading. And I extra love books that represent my peculiar worldview: seeing the good in the universe while refusing to be happy about it.

Here are 10 of my favorite books for people who hate everything.

Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin

The title kind of speaks for itself.

In other words: this is the type of aforementioned book I love so much, one that is realistic about how difficult it can be to be alive in this troubled and troubling timelines, but also just as clear-eyed about the beauty of life, how wonderful people are. It’s got all the humor and sadness and loveliness that makes it so.

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

This is a different style of magical book about miserable people — Sonia and Sunny are malcontents, moving between India and America unhappy with the fates that find them wherever they are in the world. There is literal magic, in the form of magical realism, and also in the lushness and beauty of the writing. Many have said this is 100-200 pages too long, but I would have packed up and moved into this book if I could so I do not agree.

Devotions by Lucy Caldwell

I’m still in awe of how much I loved this little collection of happy, optimistic deceptively light stories of paths untaken, hopes dashed, contentment (usually) found anyway. Several of them made me tear up!

Maybe I was just going through something. I don’t know. That would still be evidence though.

Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: COVERCOVERCOVER.

Now that we’ve cleared that up…this book has a lot of discomfiting questions to ask you, about forgiveness, about the worst thing we’ve ever done and whether that’s who we are, about happily ever afters that are realistic but maybe just maybe still happy. It’s a tough, gritty, ultimately optimistic read.

Thirst Trap by Gráinne O’Hare

Lovely, messy reading about being lovely and messy and hedonistic in your 20s. As is each of our god-given right.

It’s also about trying to blur out the world, through immersive friendship or bad relationships or substances (not to sound like your elementary school DARE officer), and how beautiful it can all be when you stop and see it.

Maggie; Or, a Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar by Katie Yee

You know you’re in for a one of a kind read when you’re going for a title with a semicolon and a comma in it.

Appropriately, I did find this to be a completely fresh take on some of life’s most tired and well-tread topics: divorce, infidelity, heartbreak. It stays with the feelings we’d rather move away from, covering guilt and continued love uncomfortably well. With bedtime stories and dumb jokes as coping mechanisms.

Favorite Daughter by Morgan Dick

Kind of a trust exercise, or maybe a Fear Factor challenge. I have not seen the show — bug exposure does not appeal to me — but what I’m saying is this is a delightful book about horrible people. And then it’s the inverse. Well, no, it isn’t horrible.

Okay, let’s take this again. I love books in which everything starts out awful and ends wonderfully, but rarely do they feel as razor sharp and complicated and unforgiving and real as this one.

Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee

Honestly, this one is just affirming. Recommending this to everyone who cannot help but societally pathologize everything — not because that’s what it does, but because reading fiction about the idea that those who are poor or suffering value their pride, while the wealthy expect the world to give them favors they accept without qualm…it feels good.

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

Wait! I can explain! I’m not just achieving my internal Rooney recommendation quota (although it’s never far from my mind…) here. This is exactly what I’m saying it is — two women (and, to a lesser extent, the people in their lives) — inundated by all that is bad in the world, all that the internet contains, and ultimately emerging (as much as you can emerge from life into life) happy, and optimistic, and grateful.

Sorry for all the parentheticals.

Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor

Like many Brandon Taylor protagonists, Wyeth is too smart for his own good and kind of pretentious and miserable about it in a way that drives him further apart from the people he most wants to be close to, etc. (Hmm…offhand synopsis hitting too close to home here…it’s like a Ouija board but I’m haunting myself.)

Anyway, in spite of these circumstances, Wyeth is kind of drawn against his will toward happiness. It makes for a great read.

What books would you recommend for people who hate everyone?

I feel like I could go all day on this.

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On my laptop, I am a control freak. I have no more than 10 tabs open at any time, and if I do have 10, that is a foolproof indicator I’m in the middle of writing a Substack post. I keep my files organized and delete my entire downloads folder often. My body is not my temple (I ate cake three separate times yesterday), because that sounds boring, but my laptop is.

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My phone is the opposite. I hate being on it, and have recently undergone the humiliation ritual that is paying for an object to keep me off of my own device. (Shoutout Brick.) At this point, most of my phone use is picking it up, opening a new Safari tab, googling something, and throwing my phone back down on the nearest soft-adjacent piece of furniture.

A mis-tap has recently brought me to the “All Tabs” window, in which I have seen I have over 400 of them.

Let’s take a journey through them together.

1. John Steinbeck house: I was reading Travels with Charley and suddenly needed to know what his house looked like. Is this relatable?

2. Quentin Tarantino going at Paul Dano: What was that about?

3. my year in books 2025: I opened this reading recap tool but never actually completed the process. Maybe someday!

4. Zena Cardman: An American astronaut I only know about from a dating TikTok.

   

5. Madalie mini dress: I’m here to deinfluence you: I got obsessed with this $229 dress to wear to my wedding welcome drinks. When I bought it it looked weird, and I returned it and wore something I already owned. Feeling powerful.

6. shy girl Mia Ballard: I needed the tea before Marcus wrote a perfect synopsis.

7. yen to dollars: This alone tells you my mindset on my honeymoon.

8. John Kennedy Toole wikipedia: I read A Confederacy of Dunces but this may have been more interesting.

9. hamachi type of fish: Got divided at a dinner I went to on whether hamachi was a specific fish or just a term for “you can eat this guy raw with vinaigrette for $18.”

   

10. Master of the Female Half-Lengths wikipedia: An incredible title for an unknown painter or group of painters who rocked at depicting rich girls at a specific distance.

11. Notname wikipedia: Had to feed my newfound addiction for the made-up means of referencing artists who’ve been forgotten.

12. Mitzi Akaha: Looking for more info after really enjoying her Substack.

13. substitutes for swiss cheese: Bleh.

14. Kanopy: Get your 20th streaming login! This one free from your library.

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When everything is tending towards “very, very poorly indeed,” I read tons.

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In May, I read 28 books.

You fill in the blanks.

Let’s get into it.

What paid subscribers got

Less than usual, I’m sorry to say. If you wanted to choose kindness (and who does?) you could say “quality over quantity” and I’d be wildly grateful for that sweet little lie.

Still, I was sending out my undying love and affection even if you didn’t get an email about it.

Plus these three posts:

• unforgettable books: When you read a lot (much, much more on this soon), people often lash out at you. One of the things they like to say is “I bet you don’t even vividly remember every single book you finish!” And they are right. There are also middling episodes of syndicated television, or Snapchat stories, or cafeteria meals that don’t stick with me. The good stuff does, though, like these.

• blind date with a book: A romantic quiz! You can plan a date and get a book recommendation, and I can pretend that it’s 2011 and I still think I’m going to work at Buzzfeed.

• every BookTok book I’ve read, ranked: I am at a loss for what inspired me to do it, but I read dozens of lists and collated everything that repeated and ranked 100 reads commonly recommended on BookTok. So there’s that.

What all subscribers got

After a bit of a lull, I’m having more fun than ever here on Substack (and I think finally figuring out a difference between free and paid posts beyond “I feel like it”).

Here’s May’s lineup:

• everything I read in April: Not a bad reading month, but certainly no May.

• books about books: I love the idea of reading about bookworms and bookstores and people who work in and with them, but I rarely enjoy the execution. These ones are in my coveted, rarefied good graces.

• the 20 best novels: I hit 20,000 subscribers (???) and The Guardian released a strange best 100 list (intentional) so I celebrated by making my own bizarre suggestions.

• short books to end your reading slump: The fourth installment of a series I have, purely coincidentally, added to every three months. See you in August I guess.

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Projects

I did the unthinkable: something that makes perfect sense.

After four straight (really five) months of average-to-bad reading experiences, I sat down and read the 10 I was most excited to get to.

It went extremely well.

I finished The Penguin Book of the International Short Story, which I’d been reading at a story a day clip for my becoming a genius project.

I also did the even more unthinkable: MAYBY-DICK. Or, I read Moby-Dick throughout May for my long classics project.

I don't want to talk about it.

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Review copies

When May began, I had 15 review copies to read. I read 20.

When June began I was partway through 2 books that came out in May and had two more I had not yet begun.

I don’t know what my problem is but I’m ready to do it all again, with my May leftovers plus 14 more for June alone.

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Other media on my mind

I just began this section last month and I’m already stumped.

Okay, wait, let me Dakota-Johnson-to-Ellen myself: that’s actually not true.

• I have begun a rewatch of The West Wing with my husband (who’s never seen it), a show so powerful that when I was 17 it convinced me I was destined for a career in politics.

  • I’m enjoying it as an adult, but my “it was a different time” count is in the three figures and I’m still on season one.

• Other than that…wow, the Summer House reunion. Now that’s television. That’s journalism.

• And my sister got us tickets to Phoebe Bridgers! I can’t wait to put my phone in a pouch and write a thinkpiece.

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What you should read on Substack

Might start a new tradition where I add yet another non-book-related section to this every month. I’m having fun procrastinating writing about 28 novels.

So I bought a Brick for my phone and it has worked immensely well, which I have been unable to stop proclaiming at every turn. However.

For some reason it does not recognize Substack as an app, so the result as of now is my Instagram time is zero, my TikTok time is zero, my Substack time is higher than it’s ever been.

For now it’s fine and I’m reading so many good articles. Here are three you should read too:

• Ann Patchett Says She’s ’Remarkably Vice-Free,’ Book Gossip — Ever since I finished Whistler the only thing I want to read is Patchett interviews.

• I Traded Streaming Platforms For A DVD Player, Long Live — I am a worshiper at the altar of analog media but DVD players intimidate me. This made them seem charming and almost influenced me to open Facebook marketplace.

• 25 books i love in genres outside of my comfort zone, cool gal writing — Jocelyn and I read very similar lists of books and have about 70% of the same feelings on them, which keeps things fun and interesting.

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The books in question

Alright, enough already. I’ll get to the actual stuff I read.

Here are the 28 books I finished in May:

Leave Your Mess at Home by Tolani Akinola

April 29 - May 1 | Source: NetGalley

This is a very fun title, and a book that is as fun as any book can possibly be while also being extremely depressing.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

Other Women and Other Stories by Nicola Maye Goldberg

April 30 - May 2 | Source: NetGalley

Ostensibly a short story collection from an author whose under-read and low-rated debut I really enjoyed, except it was actually one perfect novella with two other less good stories thrown in. It’s been years since the book only I liked, so I’ll take what I can get.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

Selfish by Kerry Docherty

April 26 - May 3 | Source: NetGalley

A memoir about a semi-self aware, very well-off white woman navigating a troubled marriage with an unfeeling and ambitious husband. I would say I feel bad that it’s doomed to share a publishing cycle with Strangers, but this is not in the same league. It would benefit from riding some coattails.

Rating: ✯✯✯

Harmless by Miranda Shulman

April 28 - May 3 | Source: NetGalley

Gave me the heebie-jeebies and the same feeling as putting off textbook chapters until your whole night is going to be homework. Trying to think of a worse combo and coming up blank.

Rating: ✯✯

The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald (reread)

May 1-4 | Source: Owned

This was nice and all, but I am befuddled by the level to which teenage me loved it. It’s promising, but it’s an unfinished novel. It’s got its moments of brilliance, but ot’s both bloated and underdone.

This is what happens when you raise young women on the concept of being not like other girls.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

Liar’s Dice by Juliet Faithfull

April 25 - May 5 | Source: Publisher

It took me ages to get into this, but once I did, I cared about the characters. Still, life is short and this was long.

Rating: ✯✯✯

A Long and Speaking Silence by Nghi Vo

May 3-6 | Source: NetGalley

Now this series, on the other hand: can be read out of order, always short, doesn’t matter if you don’t love one — you’re just as likely to enjoy the next. Their releases are always welcome.

Rating: ✯✯✯

Brazen by Penelope Bagieu (reread)

May 5-7 | Source: Publisher

Teenage me was onto something here. This wasn’t the five star read it was when I was in high school, but it’s funny and edgy and beautifully illustrated and entertaining (if error-ridden). Sorry but I read fiction, so I’ll take that trade.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You by Julián Delgado Lopera

May 2-7 | Source: NetGalley

This is not a bad book, but I didn’t like any of it as much as I enjoyed the title.

It’s not saying that much since it’s a really good title.

Rating: ✯✯✯

The Forester’s Daughter by Claire Keegan

May 6-8 | Source: Publisher

I love Claire Keegan and I love short books and I love fairytales, but I could not track down this book for the life of me.

I might as well be under some sort of witch’s punishment to the publisher for how grateful I am that they sent it to me. All of it would be worth it — this is so good.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

The Girl with a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean

May 4-11 | Source: NetGalley

That cover! It’s too good. There was both too much and not enough going on in this book and all I wanted to do was gaze into those creepy non-eyes <3

Rating: ✯✯✯

Devotions by Lucy Caldwell

May 11-12 | Source: Publisher

I am shocked by how much I enjoyed this small book and how much I didn’t want it to end. Some of these stories may very well stay with me for the rest of my life — sweet and deceptively light tales of paths untaken and hopes dashed and happiness, or the chance of it, found anyway. What better themes to read of right now?

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

Change of Plans by Sarah Dessen

May 7-13 | Source: NetGalley

I’m not in the right age group and this was not her finest and I couldn’t summon up the level of nostalgia it would have taken to have a rip-roaring good time, but there is no book that feels as summery as a Sarah Dessen YA contemporary.

Rating: ✯✯✯

The Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket (reread)

May 10-14 | Source: Owned

Similarly this did not reach the level of nostalgia I expected on reread, but at least it gave me one of my all time favorite words.

I sound like an absolute grump in this post. I liked this, I swear! I don’t know why I have a bad attitude!

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

The Hill by Harriet Clark

May 12-19 | Source: Publisher

The whole time I read this book, I had no idea what was going on, and when I finished it and learned that it’s based on the author’s life I felt that even more strongly.

What a one-of-a-kind-level strange read. That’s a compliment.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

Honey by Imani Thompson

May 8-20 | Source: NetGalley

I don’t feel like I have really high expectations — no, that’s not true, I have some level of self-awareness, but I’m going to go on with my point anyway — but I do expect that books about women becoming serial killers in the name of taking out gross men should be interesting.

Rating: ✯✯

On Witness and Respair by Jesmyn Ward

May 13-21 | Source: Publisher

Between Jesmyn Ward and Yiyun Li, I don’t know how we have such wise, eloquent, unforgettable writing about unthinkable tragedy.

And I’ve fallen in love with the word respair.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

Mostly Hero by Anna Burns

May 20-22 | Source: Publisher

I mean, it’s a superhero book. In hindsight I don’t know what I expected.

Rating: ✯✯

Rachel West and the Fallen Starlet by Emma Mills

May 19-23 | Source: NetGalley

What happens when an author you really like suddenly writes a novel in a genre you really don’t? Nothing good, as it turns out.

Rating: ✯✯

Turn (W)here by Chet’la Sebree

May 14-16 | Source: NetGalley

I generally really enjoy memoirs by people I’ve never heard of. I read memoirs for introspection and reflection and truth, which your average joe is more capable of than a celebrity anyway.

But when they are neither completely honest nor cohesive, it can make for a tough read.

Rating: ✯✯✯

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

May 18-26 | Source: Library

At this point, I gave up. I was more than halfway through what was shaping up to be yet another nightmare of a reading month, full of self-assigned books and forgettable reads and honest-to-goodness duds.

So I decided to read the 10 books that excited me most, beginning with this one. And oh my god, what relief.

Read more: Reading the books I’m most excited about

Mother Tongue by Sara Novic

May 21-27 | Source: NetGalley

Now THIS is a good memoir. Wide-ranging, well-researched, complex, truthful to a fault, interesting, offering a unique perspective, set in Philly. What more could you need.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

May 23-27 | Source: Library

Everybody and their mothers loves this book so of course I was excited to read it. And I mean, I do get the appeal.

Read more: Reading the books I’m most excited about

Strangers by Belle Burden

May 26-28 | Source: Library

I’m nosy, I’m obsessed with breakups, I have a love/hate relationship with grotesque exhibitions of excessive wealth. I could not wait to read this book.

Read more: Reading the books I’m most excited about

Tar Baby by Toni Morrison

May 22-29 | Source: Library

As long as I have Toni Morrison books left to read, those will be the ones I’m most excited for. If there is a Morrison fan club, religion, cult, or sponsored cruise I can join, just let me know.

Read more: Reading the books I’m most excited about

June Baby by Shannon Garvey

May 26-30 | Source: Publisher

Reading this felt like Summertime Upmarket Beach Read mad libs, like every key aspect of an oceanside bestseller was tossed between two covers, shaken up, and published. I guess there are worse things.

Rating: ✯✯✯

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

May 1-31 | Source: Library

You kick off this long book with a love story between a whaler and a cannibal and you think “Oh, this isn’t so bad.” And then it’s a million pages of whale baiting.

Wait. Because it’s clickbait…but whales.

Rating: ✯✯✯

Summing things up

Rough start, but we got there in the end. Kinda.

Out of the 28 books I read, I would truly madly deeply urge you to read 12 of them. That 42.8% is better than I’ve had to offer you in ages.

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The very best book I read was REDACTED. Read to find out! But I’ll just go ahead and tell you the worst book was Harmless. Nothing fun or exciting about that.

Now it’s your turn.

What were the best and worst books you read in May? Have you read any of these? What’s your favorite book of the year so far?

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I will now be reading all of the books that I am most excited about.

Not necessarily the books that I think are most likely to be five stars, or the reads that have been on my TBR the longest time or the shortest, or the buzzy novels and memoirs recommended to me most (although all of those categories will be represented).

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Just books that I feel a happy sort of anticipation about.

I’ve been treating reading like homework, so I want to revisit mood reading in its purest form.

And, okay, yes, I’m also trying to find a new favorite. Sue me. I’m not a monk.

1. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

Why I’m excited: For some reason I keep calling this “The Ballad of Sonia and Sunny.” Not sure what that’s about.

Anyway, this has been recommended to me repeatedly in a way that really piques my interest: as a gloomy, polarizing, strange family saga, and with reservations. I’m as likely to have the nice kind of unpopular opinion (liking an unliked book) as the inverse, and I have a good feeling about this one.

What I thought: Well. That worked immediately.

I was swept up in this book from the start, and I only grew more so. In spite of trepidation from the people who told me it’s overlong, sagging in the middle, I thought every page of this was a payoff.

A genre-bending, lyrical, beautifully written, compelling, funny, smart, devastating, romantic, gritty, realistic, fantastical dream.

Thank god I have several more exciting books to read. I can feel the post-favorite depression slump coming on.

Rating: 5 stars

2. Strangers by Belle Burden

Why I’m excited: I’m nosy. I love hearing about breakups. I love memoirs. I love reading what everyone’s reading. I love to hate rich people.

In other words, I would find this book in every lifetime.

What I thought: Bleh. I feel like my moral compass needs a bath.

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This has been the username I’ve gone with since I first joined bookstagram 10 (yuck) years ago, but I could not have imagined the prescience displayed by this dumb throwaway joke.

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Every year since I started tracking (also around 10 years ago), I have read over 100 books. Usually much more. On one occasion, in 2022, I averaged a book every day.

Throughout this same time, I have been at some points “known” (inasmuch as anyone who spends time every single day on the borderline defunct website referred to as Goodreads can be perceived) for my unpopular opinions.

I am critical of books, because I think they are art and deserve it, and this brings many people and their ire into my various comment sections. Several of these dissenting reviews have gone somewhat viral, resulting in hundreds of people disagreeing with me, dozens calling me dumb, and a scant few saying I deserve death. (Would it surprise you to know the threats of violence mostly come from Harry Potter fans?)

And yet, no book I’ve ever loved or romantasy release I’ve ever hated or hot take I’ve released into the universe has made people as mad as the simple number of books I read.

Look anywhere on the internet and you’ll likely see claims that people who read more than some arbitrary number of books — 30, or 50, or 100 — are lying. And if not lying, skimming. And if not skimming, DNFing. And if not DNFing, then insert some sort of value judgment about what constitutes “real” reading.

This is where these angry, unprompted diatribes always go: the reveal that their originators have some mean (cough, bigoted) belief that audiobooks or BookTok recommendations or graphic novels or novellas don’t qualify as some sort of elusive definition of true reading. And yes, these targeted categories are often being read primarily by marginalized groups.

What I find most fascinating about it all is that these conversations are one-sided. Those of us who manage to read stacks of books every year are not doing it with our nose in the air and a live-tweeting phone in hand. I personally do not consider myself superior to anyone who reads less than me, nor do I even think I’m more of a reader.

And I think that’s what these debates come down to — some sort of insecurity. It’s the lashing out at audiobooks or at certain genres that’s the tell. Those who are fishing for viral posts (using outlandish claims from left field that everyone with a reading challenge in three figures has made a deal with the devil) secretly believe that they could do it too, if they wanted it — they’re just too morally sound.

The books they do read are objectively better, lengthy works of philosophy or else classics or else dense literary fiction that brushes nowhere near the term “upmarket,” and until Goodreads makes a QUALITY OVER QUANTITY badge, they’ll have to find alternate strategies to make sure each and every one of us knows it.

The fact of the matter is that there is actually one concrete way you can ensure your reading grows exponentially, immediately. There is a get-rich-quick trick to it. Here it is:

Put your phone down.

Sorry! Nobody wants to hear this. I have a lot of tips for reading more, and I’ll share them below, but the biggest thing is reducing your screen time.

I am lucky to be a naturally fast reader — about 100 pages per hour when focused — but I also spend anywhere between two and six hours in a day reading.

The average adult reads 220 to 350 words per minute1, and the average novel is around 70,000 to 100,000 words2. Even a less pacey reader then, in most cases, can read a typical book of fiction in just over eight hours.

All of that is to say: if you read for a little less than 45 minutes every day, you would read more than 30 books per year.

I know we’re all busy, but everyone has a bedtime or a lunch break. I know life is chaos, but there’s not a person on earth in 2026 with a screen time below 45 minutes. You can have a flip phone and find yourself putting an hour a day in on Snake.

When people attack readers, it’s a failure of imagination. Anyone can be a bookworm. It just takes deciding to do it.

How to read more

Okay, now that I’ve given you the lame answer you don’t want to hear (but it really is the big one), here are all of the ways I ensure I prioritize books in my life.

1. Brick your phone. I already had a pretty low screen time for my age group and personality type, but buying a Brick cured me of the time wasted mindlessly opening apps. (I hate spending money and will rarely recommend it, but there it is.) Alternatively, you can set up screen time limits, or not have control issues.

2. Always have a book with you. It’s a big one. You don’t have to carry a hardcover in your tote bag (although that’s my personal favorite), but try reading books in a variety of formats. If you mix up physical books, ebooks, even files on your phone or laptop, you will be able to get a few pages in whenever you have a spare few minutes. You have more spare minutes than you think.

3. Multiple current reads. I know not everyone enjoys this, but I would say I’ve had between 6 and 10 books going at a time for the last several years. It ensures I’m never bored. I vary the genres, I read diversely, I balance new releases with backlist novels and classics, so whatever interests me at any moment I can pick up. It’s taking mood reading to the next level. Try two or three to start.

4. Reframe your time. I read while I brush my teeth, while I make smoothies, while I tidy my apartment. You don’t have to do that. What you should do is, when you’re about to begin a pastime that doesn’t make you feel good (doom scrolling, TV bingeing, whatever it may be), challenge yourself to read 10 or 20 pages first. You will be surprised how often you don’t want to do the mindless thing anymore.

5. Give yourself permission. You should read absolutely whatever you want. If you want to pick up only nostalgic childhood favorites, do that. If you feel the need to reread a book you’ve read 10 times before, run with it. Whatever genre or age range appeals, indulge your instincts. There are no guilty pleasures in reading. You’re feeding your brain. Don’t plan a TBR. Read whatever sounds good.

6. Try a project. I like reading a short story a day, or a classic a chapter at a time, or a poem every morning. It’s a low-pressure way to finish intimidating books, and to make finding time to read less stressful.

7. Have a tracker. I have a reading spreadsheet I use to track genres, authors, pages read…all the analytics that spark joy for me. If this sounds like homework to you, skip it, but I love seeing my stats stack up.

8. DNF. To be honest, I don’t do this. But I like to think that’s part of what makes me such a trustworthy advisor. Abandoning books makes time and space for books that make you excited about reading, and that’s the best way to read more.

I’d love to hear what you think about all this.

I’ve never written a post like this before. So. Tell me if you hate it.

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However: I have been on other bookish corners of the internet for (gag) over 10 years, and one of my countless weaknesses and many skills is my ability to quickly cave to peer pressure.

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That is to say, I’ve been reading popular books for a decade. As it turns out, that includes at least a hundred whose names are tragically associated with the insidious hockey romance engine known as BookTok.

Here are all of them, ranked.

(Note: I pulled the books for this list by reading probably dozens of lists and culling books I’d read that were mentioned at least twice. I know BookTok is not a monolith, and while the genres that get the most engagement aren’t my personal favorites, there are plenty of creators on there whose takes I enjoy.)

100. Alchemised: I can’t believe Terf Hogwarts fanfiction in which the nerd is tortured by a fascist overlord didn’t work for me.

99. Any and all Colleen Hoover: The lowest of the low. I spent too much of my wild and precious youth (read: any of it) on CoHo. Some of the worst reading experiences of my life.

98. Love on the Brain: Ali Hazelwood’s role in the tiny / huge epidemic has made her an enemy of mine.

97. To Kill a Kingdom: There was a time when evil mermaid books kept coming out, and I kept picking them up, and I kept hating them. So at least I can be grateful that era is over.

96. Ready Player One: I used to love this book. I recently reread it. Justice has now been served (I hated it so, so much).

95. The House on the Cerulean Sea: To be fair, I hated this corny and patently unhelpful drivel even before I knew it had the most inexcusable origin story I’ve ever heard of.

94. The Invisible Life of Addie Larue: Life is full of injustices. If I had the chance to make a deal with the devil to live forever I would have whined way less.

93. Fourth Wing: I was terrified this might turn out to be a fun romp, and I’d be forced to do something like three star it. No such luck.

92. Caraval: My one-star review of this error-ridden nonsense from 2017 has 700 comments. I’m sure all vehemently agreeing.

91. The Selection: Remember when all we were allowed to read was dystopian YA trilogies following love triangles between a childhood crush and the guy our quirky protagonist was obviously going to end up with? Take a moment to appreciate our freedom.

90. The Summer I Turned Pretty: The show is borderline unwatchable, and it’s still a generous adaption of this nightmare of a trilogy.

89. Butter: It saddens me to think of all we could have accomplished in this book if we cut the weight checks.

88. Witchcraft for Wayward Girls: This is horrifying in none of the ways it intends to be and every way it doesn’t.

87. Daughter of the Pirate King: One of my earliest unpopular opinions. What a waste of the opportunity to be a pirate princess.

86. The Silent Patient: I haven’t been keeping up on the thriller industry. Are all the books still just 300 page leadups to plot twists?

85. Red Queen: Is this really a BookTok book? I would not have imagined it had staying power after the great YA dystopian reign of the 2010s was finally brought to its bitter end.

84. The Kiss Quotient: I appreciate what this book was trying to do. Let’s leave it at that.

83. Malibu Rising: I am a Taylor Jenkins Reid apologist, but even I am powerless against whatever the hell was happening here.

82. The Spanish Love Deception: A terribly written account of two assholes finding each other. It’s a beautiful thing.

81. Beartown: A book of mugs. Also, what is going on that has brought hockey so pervasively into the zeitgeist??

80. The Cruel Prince: I have hated many books and I have loved slightly fewer books, but I can’t remember many I was as unable to care about as this one.

79. The Love Hypothesis: I loved this book once. Then I tried to revisit it out of fondness. Life can be cruel.

78. The Unhoneymooners: This is the closest I’ve ever gotten to liking a Christina Lauren book. Which is pretty depressing now that I put it that way.

77. Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Addie Larue but with vampires.

76. The Midnight Library: In many ways I’m still not over the cruel and unusual marketing ploy that is claiming this book is at all library-y.

75. My Friends: Has Fredrik Backman always had this intense of a style? I feel like I remember him having less intense of a style.

74. We Were Liars: Nothing more than a plot twist, and even that is relatively unsatisfying.

73. City of Bones: Even in Cassandra Clare’s heyday, I never could get there with her.

72. Throne of Glass: In my younger and more vulnerable years, I would read series to the end without liking a single page. This one defeated me from book one.

71. A Court of Thorns and Roses: I didn’t hate this book completely. It’s what followed that makes me see the purpose of book bans.

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I’m not quite in a reading slump yet…but it’s coming for me.

Here is my evidence, assembled for your thoughts:

• I haven’t been mood reading (I’ve given myself too many assignments, both because of ARCs and because of challenges for this very Substack, for that)

• I haven’t been loving what I’m reading

• Even one of my most tried and true tactics — rereading old favorites — has been failing me.

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It’s time to prepare for the worst.

That means a different, equally tried, equally true tactic: short books. There is nothing that will make you feel powerful and lend you the ability to walk on sunshine and generally convince you that no reading slump can keep you down like finishing a book in a sitting.

These are just a nice little cheat to get you there.

(This is part four of what has become an informal I-write-about-tiny-reads-every-three-months series. Here are books under 100 pages, and here are books under 125, and here are books under 150.)

We Have Always Lived In the Castle by Shirley Jackson

152 pages

Shirley Jackson is incomparable at writing these books that, while not outright horror, have an insidiousness and sense of something being wrong that is more frightening than any jump scare. This is eerie and beautifully written and downright weird, which is an all-star lineup of adjectives. Especially when combined with that page count.

Recommended for: weird girls and their allies, ghost story purposes

The Vet’s Daughter by Barbara Comyns

152 pages

I had many reasons for wanting to read this book — it’s a New York Review Books edition, which combine being well curated with being aesthetically pleasing; it’s a classic-ish book by a forgotten woman author with a strange synopsis — but there was one that really got me, so I will quote it here in case it convinces you too.

“It’s like Song of Solomon and Shirley Jackson with some Flannery O’Connor sprinkled in. I’m floored.”

Recommended for: fans of Toni Morrison and Shirley Jackson and Flannery O’Connor sprinkled in

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

152 pages

I had to double, triple, and quadruple check the page count on this book. I could not believe that this book, which holds so much between its covers, clocks in at just over 150 pages. If you read it, you will feel the same.

Recommended for: morality, literacy

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri

157 pages

Jhumpa Lahiri moves to Italy and suddenly she writes like Ferrante.

This is a 2018 novel that feels very of this era of publishing — it has a reflective, clean, thoughtful quality that reminds me of Sheila Heti or Sigrid Nunez. I still like the earlier stuff more from Lahiri, but it’s endlessly interesting how much one author’s work can vary.

Recommended for: cool girls, those who are making Italiano

Poison for Breakfast by Lemony Snicket

158 pages

Kind of part of the A Series of Unfortunate Events extended universe, this is a witty and aesthetically pleasing tale of detective work and espionage. It also has a satisfactory ending, which distinguishes it from literally every other thing ever published under the name Lemony Snicket.

Recommended for: strange children, puzzlers

Isabella Stewart Gardner: A Life by Nathaniel Silver

159 pages

The best place in the world is inconspicuously located in Boston’s fens, in a palatial home near one of a bajillion college campuses. Go inside and find a jungly greenhouse garden courtyard, paintings layered six to a wall and interspersed with empty frames, furniture for living next to relics not for use, the architecture of an Italian villa, Madame X fanart. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is unparalleled, and the museum-published biography of its visionary lives up to it. I wish I was there right now.

Recommended for: artists, people with eyes

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

160 pages

This is one of the wildest debuts I’ve ever read: fully formed, inventive, unique. It creates searing emotion out of everyday images and tells two stories that somehow come together as one, all while employing what can feel like almost overly simple prose and dialogue. It is so goddamn strange.

Recommended for: weirdos, those susceptible to cult classics

LA Woman by Eve Babitz

160 pages

Not Eve Babitz’s best (that, of course, is Slow Days, Fast Company), but it still has her signature wit, and a lot of lines about how being married to a man must be hell on earth, and at least one very memorable character. Pretty good for the page count!

Recommended for: hedonists, misandrists

Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala

160 pages

This is a polarizing book that many have fairly criticized, but more than that it is immersive and horrific. When you read a lot, you can form a natural barrier against words, and not every book will be able to instill an intense emotional reaction in you. This one will. It broke me down.

Recommended for: the heartless and the heartful

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

160 pages

I’m a Bluets girl, but I see how it’s this one that would be Maggie Nelson’s bestseller. This one leans more academic than it does poetic, which makes it an encyclopedia of interesting tidbits. From All About Love to Conversations on Love, I love when serious research is applied to soft and lovely subjects.

Recommended for: lover girls, Wikipedia readers

Oh Honey by Emily Austin

160 pages

Emily Austin’s villain origin story.

Before a beautiful new age dawned and we got new books about sapphic weirdos finding themselves annually, I read Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead and had no other Austin novels to pick up. So I tracked this novella down, which is its darker, scarier ancestor. It’s still worth the read.

Recommended for: Emily Austin completionists, those who have checked the trigger warnings

South and West by Joan Didion

160 pages

Like Didion’s Travels with Charley, this is a more or less undistilled look at a notebook, in this case notes from which one of the greatest authors of the last 100 years drew a novel. They’re as sharply observant and riveting as you’d expect, plus the closest any of us will get to winning a “Trip with Joan!” sweepstakes.

Recommended for: Didionites, voyagers

Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All by Chanel Miller

160 pages

Many know Chanel Miller’s perfect memoir, Know My Name, but do you know she now writes adorable, whimsical children’s lit? This is sweet and fun, inspirational with a little lesson that felt nice and true and not cheesy. I wish for everyone as wonderful a happy ending as that.

Recommended for: children both current and former

The White Book by Han Kang

161 pages

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Han Kang’s books come in two types — strange, unforgettable literary fiction (like The Vegetarian) and haunting portrayals of violence and tragedy. This is one of the very best of the latter category.

Recommended for: the sad, prose poets

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

162 pages

It’s become trendy these days to write dark, feminist versions of fairytales, but Angela Carter was doing it in the 1970s — and to a much deeper extent. These are eerie, addictive, subversive still today.

Recommended for: Disney adults, Carmen Maria Machado appreciators

The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket

162 pages

I’ve been slowly and selectively reading this series, and it hasn’t gone how I expected — what I remembered as edgy, funny, intense children’s lit is a bit repetitive and irritating in adulthood. But I do think these are more clever by half than the average middle grade, plus you can read it in an afternoon. And the later ones are worth working toward.

Recommended for: the young at heart, dark senses of humor

Revenge by Yoko Ogawa

162 pages

Yoko Ogawa’s range…astonishing. Sublime. As the title and subtitle implies, this is a collection of eleven dark stories of vengeance, loosely related. If you ever think about how being alive is a constantly violent and dark and horrifying experience, and that we only forget that because we have to in order to function in a world that perceives that as normal, this one’s for you.

Recommended for: grudge-holders, edgelords

Welcome Home by Lucia Berlin

162 pages

After finishing A Manual for Cleaning Women, I entered a state of denial that could only be alleviated by reading every other Lucia Berlin collection. The fact that she was underappreciated in her lifetime and forgotten for some years after is a shock. This book, which documents the thirty-three places Berlin considered home, is the closest to achieving the gritty, charming reality of that posthumous collection.

Recommended for: movers, shakers

Self-Help by Lorrie Moore

163 pages

It’s been my solemn intention to read more Lorrie Moore since before I’d even finished this collection. Case in point: I try to always write mini-reviews when I read short stories, but as I flew through this one, I couldn’t bring myself to put the book down between installments in order to try to encapsulate them. Clever, wry, accurate.

Recommended for: short story hobbyists, the pleasantly surprised

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

163 pages

I have probably talked about this book enough. For example, here. And here. Here, here, and here. Can’t forget about here. And finally, of course, here.

I just feel so fondly toward this book, the pleasant oddity of it and the inexorable truth of its depiction of the world.

Recommended for: viewers of 7-Eleven mukbangs, pavers of new paths through life

In this wide array of little books, I hope you can find one you like! I’d love to hear if you’ve read any, or if there are any you can share:

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Two things: The Guardian released a list of the 100 best novels, and it sucks. That part is not surprising — how else will you get clicks from people furiously disagreeing / counting how many they’ve read — but Mansfield Park being on there is. I’m a pretty big Austen fan but even I am ready to call it on that one getting lost to time.

And two: I just hit 20,000 Substack subscribers.

It’s been just over a year on here, and nearly 6 months of having doubled my weekly posts, and I can’t imagine having more fun. What a relief that there are people out there (somehow, impossibly, twenty thousand of them) who find some value in reading my unhinged strategies for recommending my favorite books over and over, because I’m enjoying myself too much to stop.

Anyway. Those events occurring in the same week can only mean one thing.

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I have to list my personal favorite novels.

Here are my criteria:

1. I read it.

2. I thought it was worth the classic-of-the-canon-required-reading-for-all-time banner.

3. I personally loved it. And I mean loved it — not just “this was pretty good for a school assignment” pleasant surprise, but that AND an enjoyable reading experience AND a connection through time and space that made me wonder how a dead Russian guy could portray exactly how I feel scrolling in 2026.

Explanation complete. This is my list:

20. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

I think this book has staying power, as a family saga, as a time capsule from our era, and as an explanation for how we could end up where we are. It captures both the everyday nature of our lives and the immense, inhuman processes working behind the scenes to keep them moving, or staying still.

19. The Secret History by Donna Tartt

It always feels like cheating to call this one of the great novels, because it’s such an unputdownable read. This is a genre-bender, with elements of thriller and mystery, the deceptively smooth and meaning-laden style of literary fiction, and the rich themes of the classics (a double meaning I double intend).

18. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

I wholeheartedly love Baldwin’s nonfiction, its layered arguments, undeniable truth, heady intellectualism, contagious rage. His fiction can be more hit or miss for me, with occasional uneven patches (not to mention the way women are written) that are hard to look past. Giovanni’s Room is tight and sharp, racing to a conclusion that you equally dread and await. It also contains one of my favorite passages ever.

17. Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

I know this will come as a shock, that I had the wherewithal to criticize the Guardian’s weird but undeniably distinguished list and then throw a broadly maligned millennial author immediately in my ranking. We all have our lots in life, and my duty is to defend Rooney. Of the thousands of books I’ve read, none rival hers in the injustices and disappointments and hopes of being alive when we are.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

16. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

It feels like Jane has gone out of style lately. Left to her own devices, she has all the lively charm and vivaciousness of the cousin-loving ward from Mansfield Park — and yet life will not just let her hang out with those dang devices. Even some of the criticisms (the afterthought romance, the way Mr. Rochester plainly sucks) add to what makes this book so great: it is unapologetically Jane’s story, and boy does she live it.

15. Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

Throughout history, across space, for all time, our fates have come down to one minor detail: where we were born. But for the place we happen to be from, our lives could be anything, and the lucky among us have fortune we’ve done nothing to earn. In the age of the internet, routine means reading the worst thing you can imagine, and then sending an email, shopping for groceries, making dinner. These everyday hauntings are what this book is about.

14. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

This may not be Austen’s best novel, but it’s better than 99% of them. It deserves its reputation as potentially the greatest romance of all time, could earn the Original Rom-Com title, and is as valuable as a historic text as it is funny and swoon-worthy. Not a list of credentials to scoff at.

13. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The fact that this is the perfect book to universally assign to high school sophomores — those obvious themes! the oft-repeated motifs! — obscures the equal truth that it’s incredibly good. What a gift, that we can all have references as beautiful as “and so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

12. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I am both on a never-ending quest to attain the title “well-read” and, shamefully, a big fan of the crisp, clean writing style perpetuated by men in the 20th century. Those two traits mean I have read a lot of fiction about war. This is by far the best of all of it.

11. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Of course my favorite book was going to make an appearance on this list. I’m not some kind of intellectual saint.

You can argue with the wall about whether children’s books count as novels. I’ll be over here enjoying a reading experience that’s whimsical and entertaining AND thematically layered.

10. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Even the most cold-hearted, walls-up, frequent-flyer readers will not be able to steel their psycho selves against the sheer emotional power of this book. I know because I tried. And I proudly hold all of those titles. This is excellent historical fiction, and also touching, and also populated with unforgettable characters.

9. Persuasion by Jane Austen

Sorry to all the hype that’s being funneled directly to Pride & Prejudice, including by me because I got carried away, but: this is an even better love story (that letter!), and an even better encapsulation of society at the time (that old maid status!), and an even more mature and complete novel from Austen.

8. Native Son by Richard Wright

I read this book over the course of a month as part of my long classics project, and it haunted me the entire time. I could not escape Bigger and his fate, who stayed with me every moment. Foolishly I thought once I finished the book I would move on, but this story has not left my mind. Complex and unforgettable.

7. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

This book is what Gatsby had me training for. Everything about Pecola’s story, and the symbols that draw us through it, is a thoughtful and considered choice, creating fully fleshed depictions of race, beauty, the cruelty of society, the way we carry past wounds with us, the attempt to love selflessly.

6. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

This is a beautifully written, brilliantly characterized, and consuming read. In its story of one woman’s life it depicts so many of the experiences that make up all of ours: happiness and disappointment, dreams lived and dashed. I was assigned to read it in school and did not do that, and I am sorry to this day for the lost years.

5. Sula by Toni Morrison

The second Toni Morrison in the top 10. Who’s surprised. (Silence reverberates through the world.)

Morrison's writing is up in the clouds, filled with turns of phrase and plot that in any other narrative would be nonsensical, and yet it is unceasingly, unmercifully, constantly grounded in reality. The ways in which it moves toward the fantastical serve only to tell us in full detail of the pain of life — the selfish foolishness of people, the cruel machinations of an unequal society, the moving target of contentment.

4. Emma by Jane Austen

Even without taking name-based vanity into account, this is both my favorite and what I consider the best of Austen’s works. The spine of steel it must have taken to write this bratty, spoiled charmer of a protagonist and deliver her only growth and forgiveness and happiness. Unlikable female characters are still a jailable offense in 2026.

3. Middlemarch by George Eliot

I have read a lot of classics at this point. I’ve been reading at least one per month for over four years, and usually tackling the longest and most intimidating on purpose. This is the book that started that effort, and I still blame it.

This is so readable and charming, on top of being edifying and complex. I have no personal sights set on authorship, but for those who do, I’d say this is required reading. And trying not to cry knowing you’ll never read, let alone write, anything like it is a rite of passage. (Write of passage? Is that anything?)

2. Beloved by Toni Morrison

This was my first ever Morrison (and the third in the top ten of this list) but that’s only one of the many reasons behind my undying love for it.

It’s beautifully written, cleverly constructed, filled with unforgettable moments and characters. It takes a true and tragic scene, one flattened by prejudice and history, and somehow through making it surreal makes it more real. Beloved is required reading.

1. East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Whatever insane, optimistic public high school teacher put this tome on the summer reading list for rising sophomores in the 2010s: thank you. You changed me.

I’m so glad this book has found a wave of popularity in the last year or two, because somehow a lengthy biblical retelling by a dead white guy is the truest, kindest, most life-affirming and life-altering novel I have ever read. And the very best.

Honorable Mentions

I have, as I mentioned/bragged about/bemoaned several times in this list, read many classics (and even more contemporary literary fiction).

These books didn’t have the same level of personal connection to me that I require for my favorite books, but they are all masterpieces:

• The Count of Monte Cristo

• One Hundred Years of Solitude

• War and Peace

• Don Quixote

• Anna Karenina

• To the Lighthouse

• Invisible Man

• The Catcher in the Rye

• Things Fall Apart

• Les Miserables

• Frankenstein

• Play It As It Lays

• The Trial

• Dracula

• The Underground Railroad

• The Sellout

• Lolita

Now the fun part.

What did I miss? Where do you agree with me? Where do you disagree?

Also, how many books on the Guardian’s list have you read? I’m at 51.

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Unfortunately this little life-hack, which somehow makes me feel like I’m multitasking in my bibliophilia, has one catch:

Books about books are often book club-y. And not to make things somehow more confusing, but I don’t love book club fiction.

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I want books with real edge and darkness and realness, which more fluffy stuff can avoid.

Still, through the power of perseverance and immense courage, I have managed to find 18 books about books I would recommend in any context — reads that are funny or serious or witty or wise and also supremely literary.

books about writers

This is one of my husband’s pet peeves — how many books are either written by writers about writers or by writers about a thinly veiled metaphor for writers.

Me personally? I love it. Maybe it’s lazy, but it also leads to a depth and authenticity and natural interest. I can’t get enough of reading about writing.

Writers & Lovers by Lily King

There was never going to be a different opening book for this post.

Casey is struggling to make it as a writer, armed with a post-grad degree and a high-end serving job in Boston. Her commitment to herself and her craft is a delight to read, and imbues the character-driven and somewhat plotless (just how I like it) story with intensity and stakes.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

In a society where objects are disappearing — from the world and from its memory — those who can recall what’s lost are persecuted. A novelist protecting her editor clings to her ability to write.

This book is a rare combination: riveting and thought-provoking. It’s as plot-driven as it is thoughtful and significant, a win/win situation lit fic readers will know is hard to find. A love of books fuels its story.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Kind of a shocking choice for the Pulitzer, in that this is charming and humorous and upbeat and well-written rather than gloomy and ominous and unreadable and well-written. We follow a failing novelist on a slapped-together world book tour, and he falls in love and falls into a sort of success and also falls of the prat variety.

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

I love Ann Patchett and I love family sagas, and I love the novelist twist this one has to it. When Franny begins an affair with a famous author, she tells him the story of her messy and magical childhood — which becomes the basis for a bestseller, bringing all of this sprawling family back together and drawing them further apart.

Bunny by Mona Awad

I am hesitant to recommend this book, because I hated its sequel so much that I question whether I was completely wrong about the whole thing, but this satirical hazing of monoculture MFAs and the types of people who are drawn to them fits this list too well to resist.

books about publishing

For most of my adolescence, I dreamed about going into publishing — and in fact I majored in as close to “Publishing As A Concept” that an overpriced bachelor’s degree could get you at the time.

I’ve since determined I’d rather read books and write about them than have to decide which exist, but I still enjoy immersing myself in that path not taken through novels.

Book Lovers by Emily Henry

Ms. Henry is guilty of writing books about the bookish — librarians, and writers, and travel bloggers — over and over, but to me that’s part of the appeal. Until I receive the welcome and well-awaited shock of a lifetime when she returns to YA magical realism, I enjoy the sameness. Still, I think the publishing industry enemies-to-lovers plotline is more successfully landed than some of the others.

Luster by Raven Leilani

It is impossible to remember that this book follows an editor at a publisher of children’s books, because the vibe could not be further from the sense whimsy and playfulness that 2000s romcom job summons. Fittingly, it’s one of the many aspects of life our protagonist finds dissatisfying, and the contrast works.

Severance by Ling Ma

I see your “we’ll still be writing emails at the end of the world” and raise you “we’ll be ushering coffee table books through the manufacturing process until the apocalypse stops us.” This is a nonsense job perfect for this novel’s disgust with capitalistic meaninglessness.

Yellowface by RF Kuang

What if the worst person in the world was a writer (realistic) and used the death of a more successful friend as an opportunity to steal their work (less so)? This is a really annoying, really fun read about authorship (in more ways than one). Because of the whole plagiarism element kind of getting in the way of any “writing,” it’s more of a mocking send-up of publishing.

Bitter Sweet by Hattie Williams

Charlie is happy with the life she’s making for herself, one with lovely rich friends and a nice home and a prestigious if essentially unpaid role in publishing, when a famous and much older author begins pursuing her. It’s a frustrating, sad, too real read.

books about bookworms

Representation matters. It’s so important to see yourself on page.

Sometimes nerdy protagonists can feel like they’re meant to skip a step so you care about them right away…but these ones I actually like.

Matilda by Roald Dahl

It’s cruel and unusual that this book is given to so many young readers so early in their bookish career. I have long had some small belief that someday I will develop the magical powers that Matilda does…although as I’m writing this the metaphor is dawning on me.

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Now, the pain caused to me by the introduction and confiscation of book-related fantasy in this one will not be soothed so easily. Zachary, a graduate student in New England, stumbles upon a secret literary society with a hidden land for readers. Insights into the elegant and unforgettable world that once was alternate with the danger Zachary is now in, in the midst of its timeworn remains.

What You Are Looking For Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama

Not to brag, but this particular charming metaphor was clear to me from the start. As the suffering come to a library, they are given unexpected book recommendations by a mysterious librarian — ones that, once checked out, contain exactly the solutions their readers needed.

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Reading causes all of Catherine’s problems, but also it changes her life and helps her land her romantic lead so it’s not all bad.

Our girl is obsessed with Gothic horror (I can only imagine how unscary 19th century Thrillers for Girls were), which, as she experiences society for the first time, leads her to think every house is haunted and every grumpy gentleman a monstrous criminal. We’ve all stayed up too late reading and gone insane about it.

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

I’m only just realizing…this book also follows a Catherine whose first experiences in grown-up society are marred by how naïve and dorky endless reading has made her.

This is no Austen, but it does a good job of capturing the particular anxieties of going to college and coming of age, and its knockoff Harry Potter is a core (if, in my case, unwelcome) presence.

books about bookstores

This one is the biggest culprit. My albatross. My white whale. My animal burdens from overlong school-assigned texts.

I want to read any and every book about bookstores, and I have. I’ve read romances set in bookstores and about the people who work in them. I’ve read about cats in bookshops and mysteries amid the shelves and tales of self discovery while selling tomes. And I’ve liked almost none of them.

In fact, it may just be these three:

The Storied Life of AJ Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

Zevin’s mega bestseller could not have been more middling for me, but this story about a curmudgeonly bookseller finding happiness worked. Although now that I think of it…I read it in 2019. Is it an old wives’ tale that your cells are fully replaced every 7 years? Because I don’t think I have anything in common with then-me, let alone reading taste. And who are the old wives?

You by Caroline Kepnes

This thriller is much edgier and more interesting than its miserable horde of sequels or soapy Netflix adaptation would indicate. (To be honest, I watch very little TV and yet I’ve seen every episode of the show. And also have read all the sequels.) Joe Goldberg is a handsome, charming bookseller who falls in love with a beautiful poetry-writing shopper and spends the rest of the twisty narrative revealing himself to be a creepy little freak.

Jane Austen’s Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney

I know I said this would be a list of novels, but 17 out of 18 ain’t bad — and if I ever recommend nonfiction, you should know it’s as readable as lit fic. My brain does not work during info-dumps.

Romney is an Austenite and rare book dealer who started getting frustrated with how Austen’s place in the canon was being used to the detriment of other female writers, and set out to read and collect her influences. It grew my TBR considerably with old ass books I have never heard of (and honestly will probably never read).

What are some of your favorite books about books? Which category (about writers, readers, publishing, or bookstores) are you fondest of?

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I was staring down the proverbial barrel of yet another grumpy Substack post, in which I recommend the same 10 books I love dearly (like I always do) and complain about not finding any new favorites so far this year.

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But then I thought…what if I become an angel? What if I put out so much kindness, and love, and generosity into the universe that the powers that be are no longer able to deny me my next five-star read?

So I’m going to set you up on a blind date with a book, thereby causing so many of you to fall in love that I will unlock the ability to do the same. And I’m doing it with a quiz!

You can take it here, and then scroll to get the full results below.

Take the Quiz

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Okay, did you take it?

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Don't keep scrolling if you haven’t taken it yet.

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There is no fancy technology preventing you from spoilers.

…

…

Just these ellipses.

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Ready? Here we go…

Read more

I am not known for my patience — I eat cookies so soon out of the oven they fall apart in my hand, I have a Brick magneted to my fridge because I can’t stop mindlessly scrolling, I read 10 books at any given time — and so I guess it’s not surprising I’m running out of it.

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I have been waiting to hit my stride with my reading this year, and it has not happened. I still only have one five star. I still am encountering what feels like an unending stream of books in the 2.5-3.5 range. I still can’t stop requesting books on NetGalley I know I will not like.

This month was no exception. Come along for the disappointing ride.

What paid subscribers got

My love and gratitude and beaming affection, mostly, but also:

• reading books I don’t remember adding: Finding myself completely bamboozled by my own TBR, I challenged myself to read 10 books I could not even remotely recall being interested in. It went…well, you’ll see.

• my favorite characters ever: Someone (I’m sorry I didn’t note who!) pointed out that I talk all the time about unlikable, unreliable characters ruining their lives and going insane, and asked if I can write about the ones I actually like. Here they are!

• books I wish I could read for the first time: This reading year, as I am obsessed with pointing out, is not going well for me. I yearn for the first-read feeling these books gave me.

• the 25 best books from 5 years of reading: I am picky about my books in a way that could qualify as clinically unwell, but even I typically have at least 5-10 new favorites in any given year. This one? Not on track. So I’m living in the past.

What all subscribers got

Month #4 of sending out both free and paid posts, albeit not fully — I took a break for my honeymoon.

I’m not quite out of ideas or fully reduced to recommending the same 20 books over and over in different orders…but I can see it getting there.

Here’s what April looked like:

• everything I read in March: It was a middling month. Just like they’ve all been. Sorry for the grumpiness but vibes are low.

• books about women having a good time: There is enough bad stuff going on in the world to read about. Let’s take a quick break and pick up books about women being happy.

• the best opening lines: I love me a good opening sentence. These are some of my favorites, both classic picks and some less appreciated ones.

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Projects

As mentioned, I forced myself through calmly read 10 books I didn’t remember adding to my TBR, so. That’s the headline.

I have begun a secret challenge/project which, if I keep up with it, will take me probably a year to complete. There is a huge chance this is the first and last you ever hear of it.

And of course I completed my monthly project long classics installment: THE GRAPRILS OF WRATH. This is a really good book and absolutely less than zero fun. The closest I came to smiling over hundreds of pages was when I thought of the pun.

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Review copies

Exactly two-thirds of the books I read in April were review copies, and I still didn’t finish them all.

Is it charming/funny/adorable that I keep saying “I request way too many ARCs, and simultaneously but unrelatedly I’m not loving my reading”? Or is it just annoying. I feel like an adorkable YA protagonist tripping over stuff and experiencing a love triangle and refusing to put two and two together.

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Other media on my mind

I’m always procrastinating actually writing about the books I read, so I’m happy to say I’m adding a new section, where I talk about the art outside of literature that had an impact on my month.

Quick rundown:

• The Drama: I’ve seen so much discourse about this on Substack that I alternated between avowing I wouldn’t watch it and thinking I’d probably love it to a multi-rewatch level. Ultimately I saw it in theaters, because I love eating popcorn and drinking fountain soda from tote bag-sized cups, and it was a great viewing experience. Funny and sharp and cringey and interesting.

• Summer House: It is physically difficult for me to think about anything that isn’t Ciara Miller. Also physically difficult to get through these filler episodes of outdated plotlines until the reunion.

• My own wedding playlist: It took me about eleven hours to make so I’m glad I’m getting so much repetitive listening out of it.

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The books in question

Okay, I’ve done all I can to delay us. Let’s get into it.

Here are the 21 troubling books I read in April:

Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur

March 23-April 1 | Source: Library

The final boss of the reading books I don’t remember wanting to read challenge I subjected myself to. I set myself up to have no reading material but this on a 20+ hour travel day so I’d be forced to finish it and have a post to share, and it was yet one more cruel and unusual itinerary item on a nightmarish flight.

Read more: Reading books I don’t remember adding

Cherry, Baby by Rainbow Rowell

April 2 | Source: NetGalley

I allowed myself a major break from reading on my honeymoon, and just mood read a couple pages here and there. I did get through this book, but mostly out of frustration. This is kind of a love triangle situation between a woman, her ex-husband (who sucks and is fatphobic), and her friend’s college boyfriend who she had a crush on (who sucks and is fatphobic). I made my husband listen to my 15-minute summary of its plot, which is never a good sign.

Rating: ✯✯✯

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe

April 8-9 | Source: NetGalley

I really hate true crime, and in fact it is one of the few things I actually feel superior about in this life, but I have heard very good things about Radden Keefe from Leah — one of the few reviewers I trust implicitly. I’m glad I ignored myself and listened to her, because this is an empathetic and wide-ranging and fundamentally interesting book.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (reread)

March 22-April 13 | Source: Owned

The version of myself that five starred this book ten years ago is completely dead. RIP. We share no cells and no opinions in common.

This was an unbearable read. I can’t believe I ever loved it. I’m getting heated just thinking about this incel manifesto.

Rating: ✯

Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead by Mai Nguyen

April 13-14 | Source: NetGalley

I did not like this author’s debut, but what can I say. The title charmed me.

This is still not a book I’ll carry with me for all my days, but it was sweet and funny and felt a lot more real and emotional than my first encounter with Nguyen’s writing.

Rating: ✯✯✯

Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran

March 20-April 15 | Source: NetGalley

I wanted to read this book for the demonic posh old-timey boarding school vibes, which is good, because the vibes are really all this book had. I can only thank the heavens that I get such a kick out of 1920s-style dialogue. Still it took me nearly a month to finish.

Rating: ✯✯✯

The Complex by Karan Mahajan

March 17-April 16 | Source: Publisher

Another book that took me a month to read, but for opposite reasons. It took me ages to settle into this sprawling, slow book, rocking the combo of a massive cast of characters and not much of a plot, but it grew on me by the end.

Rating: ✯✯✯

Love by the Book by Jessica George

April 10-17 | Source: NetGalley

Another case of “I did not read the author’s beloved first book, which everyone loves, and yet I will read their unknown and as yet less popular sophomore release.” This instance worked out reasonably well for me — a slow start and a lot of melodrama, but a lot of heart too.

Rating: ✯✯✯

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norman Juster (reread)

April 14-19 | Source: Owned

If I can’t find a new five star book, I’ll reread my old ones. And then discover that my childhood favorites don’t perfectly become my adulthood favorites. And then I’ll feel even worse.

At least this still had some charms.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

Enemies to Lovers by Alisha Rai

April 8-20 | Source: NetGalley

In times of trouble, I turn to romance…because I have bad instincts. A good romance lights up my desire to read, but I am more picky about them than any other genre. I’ve enjoyed Alisha Rai books in the past and thought this could be promising, but I’m ready to call it: romantic suspense, a combination of two genres I don’t care for, is not for me. Who knew.

Rating: ✯✯

My Dear You by Rachel Khong

April 15-21 | Source: NetGalley

Just for a quick change of pace: My reasoning for wanting to read this book was faulty at best (I’ve had a mixed history with Khong’s books and am extremely selective about short story collections, by which I mean I read many and dislike most), and yet I loved reading this. So do you see how it’s hard for me to be logical?

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

Paradiso 17 by Hannah Lilith Assadi

April 7-22 | Source: NetGalley

Now this…I thought I was destined to love this. A quiet, tragic, character-driven story of a life, one that begins with a family being driven out of Palestine, it sounds similar to some of the only books that have broken through my pickiness and made me Feel. But there was something off about this, a shallowness or strangeness. I’m still trying to determine how to review it.

Rating: ✯✯✯

The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket (reread)

April 19-23 | Source: Owned

I feel like at this point my reading selections alone are indicating how my brain is doing.

As with the Phantom Tollbooth, I revisited a beloved book from childhood…and was almost broken in half to discover it wasn’t quite as excellent as it was in elementary or middle or high school. But it still was better than most of what I’ve been picking up as a grown-up, so.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

Like This But Funnier by Hallie Cantor

April 19-23 | Source: NetGalley

I might have liked this if it was funnier.

Rating: ✯✯✯

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

April 12-26 | Source: Owned

I read this for my April project long classics installment (“The Graprils of Wrath”) and it confirmed everything I already knew about Steinbeck: his writing is deceptively simple and deeply evocative, he is preoccupied with the suffering of humanity and excellent at conveying it, and East of Eden is his best book.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley

April 16-26 | Source: Publisher

This at least brought some warmth and happiness to my cold, unfeeling heart: a book I would have added to my guide to literary romance, my new favorite made-up niche subgenre, if I had read it at the time. I was pleased enough to almost ignore how annoying these characters are <3 And I say that with love.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

Go Gentle by Maria Semple

April 21-27 | Source: NetGalley

What a completely weird book! This is literary fiction + contemporary fiction + book club fiction + a mystery + a thriller + a romance. It’s filled with feminist SNL-esque flashbacks and mentions of an apartment building-based coven. I often thought I had opened the wrong book when reading it on my Kindle, but when I could get it together I had fun.

Rating: ✯✯✯

The Reptile Room by Lemony Snicket (reread)

April 24-27 | Source: Owned

Circled back on hurting my own feelings/reminding myself of my bygone childlike whimsy by continuing my reread of this series. This went similarly: good, fun, but not as good or as fun as I thought. I’m 28 and yet I thought this would be a five star. What a cry for help.

Rating: ✯✯✯✯

Last Night in Brooklyn by Xochitl Gonzalez

April 27-28 | Source: Publisher

Xochitl Gonzalez officially has one book I like, one book I don’t like, and one book I don’t feel much of anything about. This is about Brooklyn on the cusp of gentrification, and all of its characters are going through metaphors for gentrification in careers directly involved with or related to gentrification. I have to imagine we had room somewhere to mix it up a bit. Let’s get complicated!

Rating: ✯✯✯

Somewhere Soft to Land by kai alonte

April 23-30 | Source: NetGalley

I might be able to get away with blaming my whole bad reading mood solely on how much this book got on my nerves. At the very least, I can credit it with nearly convincing me that I should make a habit of DNFing, a thought I have never had before.

Rating: ✯✯

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire (reread)

April 28-30 | Source: Owned

If I can’t blame my bad mood on Somewhere Soft to Land, this is my next target. Once upon a time I was obsessed with this book, but since then the series it kicked off (now going 10 novellas strong) has become one of my opps. It has completely lost its charm, to an extent that I was wondering if I made up the charm in the first place…hence the reread. Results are alarmingly inconclusive.

Rating: ✯✯✯

Summing things up

I’m in a weird place, if my endless complaining and objectively bizarre April lineup didn’t give it away.

I’m not in a reading slump, per se…I’m still reading a lot. I’m in a favorite-books slump, a great-reads slump, a memorable-novels slump. I hope May can cure me of it!

Anyway. I read 21 books, and I would fully, whole-heartedly, genuinely and with excitement recommend that you read 7 of them.

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That’s a third, which is (I believe) the lowest this proportion has ever been. I love when I have numerical evidence for my whining.

The very best book I read was The Grapes of Wrath, and the very worst book I read was (besides my Ready Player One reread) Somewhere Soft to Land. Sorry.

Now I want to hear from you!

What were the best and worst books you read in April? Have you read any of these? What’s your favorite book of the year so far?

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I do not think that. If anything, the opposite. The amount I read clearly indicates there is something wrong with my life and/or me.

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Still, it happens, and one of the claims levied at me is that there is no way I remember every book I’ve finished. This is true, and in fact it gets to the bottom of things so accurately that it is true of everyone. No one of us can vividly recall every novel we’ve ever completed, and that is a good thing. It makes the unforgettable special.

I’m having a year of forgettable reads, so I think of these ones that stay with me through time extra fondly.

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

It’s one of the several burdens I carry in life to know many lawyers, and not in a rich/morally questionable person way that would imply they help me out with my malfeasance. More like sometimes when they drink a surprising number of beers I’m nearby with a drink that tastes good.

Anyway, whenever they’re talking about the bizarrely powerful work that they do, I’m thinking about this book: The injustice and suffering and heartbreaking mercilessness it portrays, and the hope it still has.

Real Life by Brandon Taylor

I’ve mentioned this many, many times before — which, if anything, just proves that it’s true I can’t stop thinking about it — but in this book there is a potluck. Our protagonist goes to this event carrying a family recipe, and…almost nothing happens. But it haunts me. It’s a perfect illustration of loneliness and the kind of shame it evokes when no one understands you. I’m working myself up just writing about it.

Old Flame by Molly Prentiss

This book kind of changed my life. Or at least my goals in life. Or at least how I see my goals in life.

This begins with such a funny, charming, cynical depiction of being young and having an email job, and I didn’t want it to end. When our protagonist is stunned by an unplanned pregnancy and the book shifts to be about her decision, I was rooting for … no. I fell so hard for the stasis of what you know (EVEN IN A BOOK!) that I was unable to see what the potential…just the fear. This novel truly opens up, allowing our main character to find family and love and real dreams for herself, and I was holding myself back from all it could be. Which surely doesn’t signify anything outside of reading.

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Half of why I read — okay, not really, but it’s a motivator — is to chase that feeling when you pick up a book and you just know, right away, that this is it. This is going to be a favorite forever.

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I’ve been writing about that love at first page a lot lately, calling it “books I wish I could read for the first time” or “books that stopped me from scrolling,” because it feels like ages since I’ve had that unputdownable, five-star, I-neither-want-to-stop-reading-or-finish-this book sensation.

So here’s another way to say it: I knew I loved these novels from their very first (perfect) sentence.

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

I never claimed each and every one of these would be exciting and new. This is a well known intro for good reason, even if I don’t think it’s true. I’ve read a lot of books about unhappy families who find a way to put the same old spin on it…but I get what Tolstoy means anyway. I think we all do, and it’s that knee-jerk recognition that makes it great.

“Before my wife turned vegetarian, I’d always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way.”

Impossible to imagine an opening that could make me cast my allegiance toward the wife in question more than that one. It also is the kind of statement that becomes stranger the more you think about it, the sort of thing that if you heard it at a dinner party you might response “What an odd thing to say” (a good response to have in your back pocket whenever anyone is being a little freak). All feelings you should get used to.

“Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, ‘and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice ‘without pictures or conversation?’”

This is just a story telling you, hey, by the way, you are in for a good time. We’ll have pictures and conversations to spare. The boredom is about to be interrupted never to return. This is my favorite book of all, and I love that it starts with letting you know that you’ll love it.

“After the End came the Beginning.”

What a clever first sentence for a book about life after the apocalypse.

I love this creepy-prescient-pre-covid predictor of what the pandemic would feel like, and I’m sorry its SEO is permanently destroyed by other creepy-prescient dystopian content now.

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”

When my ship comes in I’m going to quit my job and just write about and take pictures of books. What a great line and a fitting start to a novel about dreams and ambition and womanhood and the path untaken.

“Didn’t seem fair on the young lad.”

Back in the dead time between Beautiful World, Where Are You and Intermezzo, when I was fiending for any Rooney scraps I could find (this describes my resting state), I remember reading this opening passage on FSG’s Instagram and thinking what…the hell?

Sally lands the plane in my opinion, and dropping us right into shades of the dynamic between these two brothers helps that.

“When shall we three meet again? / In thunder, lightning, or in rain?”

Ignore my lame high school annotations. This is the same girl who scrawled “BUT SHE WAS TRUE!!!” next to Othello’s rantings about Desdemona in purple pen.

I’ve read very little Shakespeare since I was told to do so, but if more of what I’d picked up had been like Macbeth I sure would. Beginning with witches speaking in riddley rhyme? Love it.

“I’m still a child, only as tall as my father’s shotgun.”

Violence is a relative in this family saga, and it’s introduced as soon as our protagonist is. For a book described by the quote “A girl comes of age against the knife,” it’s a fitting beginning.

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

Y’all mind if I commit sacrilege?

Rebecca is not quite as good as everyone says it is. Sorry. It’s got an arduous beginning and an inconsistent middle and a back half that makes you realize how the film adaptations always turn out so corny…but the beginning and the ending are just as good as the claim. In fact, part of the reason why this works so well is its little juxtaposed loop with the final words.

“If you want to know how poor somebody was growing up, ask them how many windows they had.”

Mieko Kawakami books…you never quite know where they’ll take you. This is a bit of a fakeout, beginning with a diatribe on measuring poverty in a novel about the patriarchy, but it’s an observant, sharp story led by an unusual protagonist prone to comparison. Plus it’s just a good strategy.

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

A classic for a reason. This line, this perspective, the words “firing squad” alone are enough to propel you through a dense, lengthy book with a family tree and a description of a century in the title.

“My name is Cara Romero, and I came to this country because my husband wanted to kill me.”

This entire book is a series of Cara Romero’s monologues, and she comes in hot to start off…and then continues to come in hot every single time. It’s so much drama. It’s so much fun.

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydid are supposed, by some, to dream.”

Just out the gate like “yeah, so…the house is alive and it’s absolutely crazy.” But what a pretty and eerie (and dare I say haunting?) way to put it. I have been cruelly mocked for finding this genuinely terrifying, but it all comes down to this atmosphere and this transcendent writing. Both are there from the start.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

Iconic. I do not understand necessarily why people want to wear T-shirts or drink out of mugs with this quote on it, but what a testament to Austen’s sly sense of humor and commitment to the bit. She lets Mrs. Bennet open this love story up! More romcoms should be so dedicated to the com.

“I am an invisible man.”

Yuuuup. Tell em! Why dilly-dally! Cut to the chase! Name drop Poe and ridicule superhero movies in sentence two while you’re at it!

“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.”

Wild that the book begins this way and people still insist on criticizing it on the premise of…claiming it’s glorifying these main characters. Sorry, this ragtag group of classics majors uses pleasure and hedonism as an explanation for why they’re allowed to do murders and you think the author is romanticizing that? Please. Only I am. Don’t blame Donna.

“All this happened, more or less.”

I have many of the same favorite books as guys in movies who are demonstrating red flags (see also: I narrowly avoided putting The Catcher in the Rye on this list), but can you blame me? Vonnegut plays with truth here, and its beside-the-point-ness. This dwells on war and humanity and story-truth, much like The Things They Carried, but with a bit more imagination.

“You better not never tell nobody but God.”

We, the reader, are about to silently witness so much secret suffering over this book. Alice Walker tells us right away, and yet the story to follow will break us all in half anyway.

“In certain latitudes there comes a span of time approaching and following the summer solstice, some weeks in all, when the twilights turn long and blue.”

Joan Didion went through the unfathomable and managed to write two of the most incredible works on grief because of it. She can bring her characteristic erudition to even the most unthinkable sadness. I have never seen another of these electric cerulean evenings she describes without thinking of that.

“You are about to begin reading a new book, and to be honest, you are a little tense.”

This is me these days. I yearn for a book like Margo, funny and charming and weird and addictive from the jump, to cure my pre-reading slump (I shouldn’t even mention it) stresses.

What are your favorite opening lines?

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This year, reading has felt like dancing in jello, or running a 5K through honey, or “quitting sugar” — needlessly arduous in a way that almost jolts me into self-awareness. In spite of reading my five-star predictions until I found a new favorite, I have not had much success lately.

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To be vulnerable…I have had four five-star reads this year, and three of them were rereads, and it makes me want to die.

To try to turn my luck around, I’m going to talk about books I’ve loved most, 2021-2025. Because I don’t have anything nice to say about this year.

2025

252 books read | 8 five stars

This is what we in the industry call “the easy part,” because I already did a much more effortful thing in ranking every single book I read in 2025. But I’m not going to turn down a chance to write about the best books of the best reading year.

5. Native Son by Richard Wright

This may have been my favorite installment I’ve ever done of my project long classics. It’s at least tied at #1. I spent a month reading it and in that time could never stop thinking about it, much as I may have wanted to. It haunts me still.

4. Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor

Brandon Taylor has this way of making a quiet and unassuming moment so searing that the word “potluck” will make you tear up for the rest of your life. On top of that emotional intelligence, he is also just really…book intelligent (?), which makes all of his novels rich in feeling and in detail. This is the best one.

3. The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo

The feeling I had while reading this book is the exact feeling I would currently give $200 and/or a less important toe for. From nearly the first page, I knew I would love it. Halfway through, I got up and bought a copy. I was addicted to it and am still sad it’s over.

2. One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

This title is just as powerful and resonant and evocative and emotional and perfect as every page contained within it. This helps and hurts in equal measure, as well it should.

1. Heart the Lover by Lily King

Emma try to write a book recommendations post without mentioning this book challenge…level: impossible. I loved Writers & Lovers so much it was hard to imagine anything more perfect for me, and this came along. Just as clever thematically, just as beautifully written, populated with even more unforgettable characters and emotions so strong I wanted to lay on the ground. Everything to me.

2024

264 books read | 7 five stars

2024 was not bad either. In fact, it rocked: I discovered two new authors, a nervously anticipated new release from a beloved favorite lived up (almost) to the impossible standard of my mind palace, and I read a lot.

What I wouldn’t give, she wails melodramatically.

5. Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

The impossible standard in question. Sally Rooney appears twice in my top three books ever, to the chagrin of Instagram at large, so to say I had high hopes here would be an insulting understatement. This was a strange, unexpected, but worthy book. In spite of misogynistic viral Substack posts about how Rooney uses immense skill solely to write books in which Rooney inserts sleep with guys she wants to sleep with, she is not content to sit on her laurels. Every book released represents a challenge undertaken and another level achieved.

4. Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin

In many other years of reading — certainly, for example, the one we’re in — this would have been my favorite book of the year. It was my first Colwin and it remained my favorite. This title is well earned, and conveys perfect happiness without feeling fluffy or paltry. This is serious about contentment.

3-1. Beloved, Song of Solomon, & Sula by Toni Morrison

2024 was the year of Toni Morrison for me. I felt like I loved each book of hers I picked up more than the last, except even today I can’t pick favorites and I just switch according to my mood. I didn’t even mention The Bluest Eye this time. The way her magical realism is grounded in painful, truthful renderings of our world — I’ve never encountered anything like it.

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I’ve done women dirty in my past recommendation lists. I love dark literary fiction and I chase depressing vibes, which is the explanation I’m going with for why I have posts dedicated to both books about women ruining their lives and books about women going insane.

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But even the most unlikable characters deserve to have fun. Maybe even especially them. And we’re fast approaching the time of year for debauchery and malfeasance and hedonism of all kinds, so.

Here are some of my favorite books about women experiencing joy and pleasure and silliness and good times.

Happy Hour by Marlowe Granados

I first read this book four years ago (on an Amtrak along the Northeast corridor, which seals it in my good graces forever) but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. Isa and Gala are 21 and scraping their way through a New York summer, doing all the things twenty-one-year-olds should: light scamming and heavy partying and flirting and exploring and fucking up and, above all, having fun doing it. This is a never boring book about a never boring season of life.

Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz

Nobody had fun like Eve Babitz had fun — and somehow she manages to imbue her writing with her messy, funny, sexy refusal to take anything seriously. Least of all life. Most of her books don’t work because of that lack of both stakes and hard work, but this one is always enjoyable.

The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan

Just the peace and happiness of having a backyard full of birds and the skills to draw them. Minus a few hints of the current sociopolitical landscape (hell on earth), this is a positive, lovely collection of journal entries from a woman obsessed with looking at little birdies.

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

Very bad vibes in the beginning, but a group of gloomy Englishwomen heads to Italy in springtime to soak in sunlight and flowers and cure their lives of all that ails them. I was hoping no men would show up but you can’t have it all.

Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly

Greta has all the usual problems of our dystopian society — a pointless and expensive degree, too little money, a crush who doesn’t care if she lives or dies — but that doesn’t ruin her fun. Similarly, this book gets real, but it stays funny. That’s what I like about both of them.

Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin

It’s a title and also a synopsis and also a promise. These two married couples really are content constantly — and I want it on the record that if I lived in a charming apartment in New York City and was somehow in love with my job and my friends and cooking every meal I’d be perpetually pleased too. Although maybe not as witty as entertaining as this group.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

I have forever appreciated this story of alternate paths and simple happinesses through the fulfillment of one woman as a convenience store clerk, but since spending much of my honeymoon in Japan inside of 7-Elevens and Family Marts I get it on a whole other level. Our protagonist resists the trappings of societally approved achievement and is happy because of it.

My Life in France by Julia Child

It will come as no surprise that Julia Child seemed to have really enjoyed living in France. Very few trials and tribulations in this story of eating and making delicious food and being obsessed with your husband while living in dilapidated and charming homes.

Tiny Moons by Nina Mingya Powles

Putting the foodie books back to back in the hopes you don’t realize this is an easy out for recommendations. A woman having good food = a woman having a good time. This is a year’s worth of both in Shanghai.

Anne of Avonlea by LM Montgomery

The way Anne Shirley sees the world is contagiously joyful, and all of the the first three entries in this series (all five stars for me, none of which I actually read in childhood) are like happiness injections. I’m choosing this one in particular because it’s before the arrival of the looming specter of adulthood and after the orphan stuff.

What books about women being happy would you add to this list?

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