10 Things I Read and Loved in May
Kicking off a summer of reading! Add the next Book Club for Writers meeting to your calendar.
Upcoming Workshops and Offerings
The Book Club for Writers will discuss Mason Currey’s book Daily Rituals: Women at Work on Sunday, July 30. All paid subscribers are invited to attend book club meetings on Zoom.
Upcoming workshops will be announced in the newsletter soon!
This month, I’ve spent a lot of time working in my yard. I’ve never been much of a yard person, but then I turned 30 and, well, I’m into it.
I cleared the irises out of the flowerbeds and replaced them with native plants. (Big thanks to my friend Amy for the gardening guidance!) Alex and I finished mending the fence that Hurricane Ian obliterated last year. I’ve been watching the birds, especially the baby downy woodpeckers, and I mixed two different types of seed in the feeder. The jasmine is just starting to close up, but we have two blossoms on the lime tree that Alex’s brother gave us for Christmas. It’s paradise out there! 🌞
Tending the flowers and fence gave me a lot of time to listen to new audiobooks. Here’s what I’ve been reading and loving in May.
1. Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
I have an announcement to make: this is a perfect book.
Romantic Comedy is the story of Sally, a writer for an SNL-esque sketch comedy who’s annoyed that dorky men get to date models, but dorky women (like herself) can barely get a date. So when she starts to fall for heartthrob musician Noah Brewster when he comes on the show as the musical guest, she knows there’s no future with him. But years later, out of the blue during the pandemic, Noah emails Sally, and… well, you’ll have to read the rest to find out.
This book is everything I love. Funny! Snarky! Smart! Hot! And, at one point, there’s even a mention of a library in Jacksonville, FL! If you’re looking for a book to bring on your summer vacation, this is it.
2. Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas
This debut novel is packed with some of the most stunning prose I’ve ever read. I’m excited about Madelaine Lucas’s career and can’t wait to read everything she writes.
3. this essay by Prince Harry’s ghostwriter for The New Yorker
This is a great Trojan Horse essay: masquerading as a piece about writing Prince Harry’s book, it’s really an essay about the power of writing one’s story at all.
Take these lines, for instance, which completely sum up the reasons why any writer who writes their own story is drawn to doing so:
“If you don’t tell your story you lose it—or, what might be worse, you get lost inside it. Telling is how we cement details, preserve continuity, stay sane. We say ourselves into being every day, or else.”
4. Florida Woman by Deb Rogers
Confession #1: I started reading this novel because I was envious of the title.
Confession #2: I could not have written a book as fit for this title as Deb Rogers’s debut novel. I loved this wacky story of an ex-con who volunteers at a monkey sanctuary in the middle of the Sunshine State. Rogers is writing Florida the right way!
5. Happy Place by Emily Henry
I jumped on the Emily Henry train back when Beach Read first came out, and now, it doesn’t feel like summer is here until I read her newest book.
I was endlessly charmed by the college friend group in this novel—such a fun ensemble cast to follow. Plus, no one writes a lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers rom com quite like Emily Henry!
6. 12 Bytes by Jeanette Winterson
If you’re going to read a book about AI, make it this one. Jeanette Winterson provides an insightful examination of our technological future, though not without laying out the historical factors that contribute to where we are today.
I’m honestly surprised that I liked this collection of essays as much as I did. Usually, the minute a sentence begins with the words “In 19th century Britain,” I am totally passed out, sound asleep. But the history Winterson addresses in these essays is both crucial and compelling, and my understanding of technology is better because of it.
7. this conversation with writer Mary H.K. Choi for The Creative Independent
I’m always eager to hear how any artist sets boundaries with social media, and I appreciated the frankness with which Emergency Contact author Mary H.K. Choi speaks about this topic. A highlight:
Any time I’m really, really stuck on that recursive thing of instant gratification and instant empty adoration, I have to check myself, because it makes me super sick. It makes all the tabs in the browser of my mind open. It makes every single browser have pinwheel of death.
8. this short story by Ariel Ranieri
My friend Ariel has a story in Rejection Letters this month. It’s dark and gritty and intense, all the way up to the last word. When I read it, it reminds me how big of a splash writers can make on the page in a very short space.
9. Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club by J. Ryan Stradal
I heard about this novel on Here and Now while I was running errands on a humid afternoon. I sat in the Trader Joe’s parking lot to listen to the full interview with J. Ryan Stradal, who spoke so tenderly about his love for the Midwest. I was so charmed that I immediately put the book on hold at the library.
I’m pleased to report that I was equally charmed by the novel, which follows the women who run a family supper club in upper Minnesota. I admire the way Stradal writes across decades, filling in essential backstory without bogging down the story. How does he do it?!
10. Caitlin Kunkel’s newsletter on project stacking
I’m a big fan of Caitlin Kunkel’s newsletter Input/Output, where she shares tips for a full creative well.
This month, she wrote about project stacking, a new-to-me term that spoke right to my juggling-multiple-projects-at-once tendencies. Kunkel highlights the power viewing individual projects in different stages. Read about each stage in the newsletter issue:
There’s also a free project-stacking template available here!
Summer Book Club Meeting: July 30
The Book Club for Writers will discuss Mason Currey’s book Daily Rituals: Women at Work in July. If you’re a creative process nerd like me, you’ll love this book, which provides the routines of 143 artists working in different mediums, including writing.
All paid subscribers are invited to attend book club meetings on Zoom. Starting with our next meeting, book club recordings will be made available for paid subscribers who can’t make it live. Paid subscribers also receive 10% off my writing workshops, which will open for enrollment again later this summer. Upgrade to paid by clicking the subscribe button below.
Thanks for reading!
💛 Hurley
100% two thumbs up for Romantic Comedy. I wish I could forget the whole thing and reread it right now. I listened to it and kept finding more things to clean in order to listen longer. I hate cleaning so that says a lot.
Thanks so much for the shoutout, Hurley!!