Summer Books
I'm here to recommend summer reads and raise $ for LGBTQ+ youth!
🏳️⚧️ Buy Books and Say Gay 🏳️🌈
Throughout the month of June, I’m donating 100% of my Bookshop.org affiliate commissions to JASMYN, an organization that supports the empowerment of LGBTQIA+ young people here in Northeast Florida.
As our trans and queer youth continue to be compromised here in the Sunshine State and beyond, organizations like JASMYN are more critical than ever.
Here’s how you can help: purchase books on Bookshop using any of the links in this newsletter or donate to JASMYN directly. Put your 💸 where your 🌈 is this Pride Month!
Happy (Almost) Summer! ⛱
It’s felt like summer since April here in Florida. Here’s what I’ve been tossing in my beach bag (along with my fave sunscreen ever and lots and lots of seltzer—I’ve been on a coconut + pineapple Bubly kick). 🐬
Summer Books I’ve Devoured (So Far)
Either/Or by Elif Batuman — I loooooved Batuman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel, The Idiot. Her second novel has been my most-anticipated book of the summer, if not the year. The novel continues the point of view of Selin, Batuman’s semi-autobiographical narrator. Selin might be my favorite narrator of all time—she’s brilliant and hilarious and so very eager to figure out how to lead an “aesthetic life.” When she’s not recounting her sophomore year at Harvard, she’s interrogating classic literature, asking why so many books depict so many “crazy, abandoned women.”
If you’re wondering if you can read Either/Or without reading The Idiot—I mean, you probably could, I guess, but why would you? After you read Batuman’s latest novel, you’re going to be ~dying~ to read The Idiot.
Mother Noise by Cindy House — Cindy has continued to blow me away with her frankness and honesty on the page since we met in grad school in 2015. I was so moved by her debut memoir, which chronicles her decision to open up to her young son about her past as a heroin addict.
This book pushes the boundaries of the “memoir” genre in a wonderful way. It’s composed of essays, some of which contain Cindy’s original drawings, which may have been my favorite parts of the book. I can’t wait to read what she writes next.
Book Lovers by Emily Henry — Just when I start to think that this author is at the top of her game, she finds another way to level up. I felt that way in 2020 when she released Beach Read and again last year with People We Meet On Vacation.
The world is so lucky that Henry is on a book-a-year streak, once again outdoing herself with the story of Nora, a literary agent who takes a trip with her sister to the mountains of North Carolina and winds up in unexpectedly close proximity with her nemesis book editor. Fun characters, compelling conflict, steamy (and I mean steamy 🥵) romance—this is the perfect vacation novel.
I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston — Okay, speaking of steamy! 🔥 This is the over-the-top queer romance the world needs. I have adored Casey McQuiston’s books for years, but this new release completely blew me away.
I was especially appreciative of the novel’s Alabama setting, which addressed the South’s widespread oppression of queer youth while also taking time to celebrate the uniqueness (and tight-knit-ness!) of Southern queer communities.
In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom — In this breathtaking memoir, Amy Bloom is generous with the details of her husband’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis and his decision to go to Dignitas, a Swiss organization based that “empowers a person to end their own life with dignity and peace.”
It’s one of the most important books I think I’ve ever read. I hope that, as more people read it, we will be able to normalize assisted death here in the United States.
What’s Next in My Summer Books Stack
Break This House by Candice Iloh — I will read anything Candice Iloh writes! Their verse novel Every Body Looking was one of my favorite books of 2020, so I know I’m going to love their new prose novel.
I still think about this sound advice from my interview with Candice about their writing routine:
There are all kinds of ridiculous routines that many authors abide by that will never get you to create meaningful things. And many of those routines leave very little room for self care. Figure out what brings the best and most out of you and try to keep doing that.
Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts by Matt Bell — I’m fascinated by the method proposed in this craft book—a novel in three drafts. Sold.
The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet by Leah Thomas — I’ve been falling down the rabbit hole of climate change as an intersectional issue, so I was pleased to find that there’s a new release devoted to the topic.
Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris — I’m a die-hard Sedaris fan and just started reading his first new essay collection since 2018. I’m finding that the essays are much less ha-ha funny than his typical style, though he set his readers up for this shift in his 2013 essay about his sister’s death by suicide. I’ll go wherever Sedaris wants to take me.
Go on! Buy books! Say gay! Hydrate! SPF! Ily! 🍉
H.A.G.S.,
Hurley