Hello and welcome to “the dream.” I’m living it.
I did not think I would ever in my life have a reading month to rival June, in which I finished 25 books and discovered several new favorites. For someone as picky as myself, this is roughly equivalent to finding a $100 bill on the ground every 10 feet for a mile.
But then July came along, and I read like it was my job — which is to say, for many hours every week and with a grim determination previously unseen outside of Microsoft Outlook users.
The results: I completed 27 books and I even liked some of them.
Update: Hey, it’s me from halfway through summarizing my July reads. Past me lied. This month sucked and I hated many, many, many books.
Also, this post contains affiliate links, so I may receive compensation if you buy a book from a link below. It comes at no additional cost to you.
All of the love and kindness I can afford, plus four posts:
the best books I read this year: A mid-year reading check-in, optimism edition. I ranked the top 50 out of 147.
buy, borrow, avoid: A new game I’ve invented, which is essentially f*ck marry kill but with books. Many have suggestion b-beginning alternatives to “avoid” but I don’t vibe with any of them. Feel free to try your hand at it.
bestsellers worth reading: Generally I don’t love the books that everyone loves, which is why I chase low Goodreads ratings. Crowd-pleasers rarely have anything interesting to say. These are the exceptions.
if you liked that, read this: I haven’t seen enough shows or watched enough movies to do a whole post of recommendations based on either, so I recommended books I like based on things I like.
Generally, weekly book recommendations within topics based on my every whim. In the case of June:
everything I read in June: The aforementioned generational month.
books about people just living: Slice-of-life literary fiction is my idea of an unputdownable good time.
books everyone should read: The novels I’d recommend to anyone.
books that made me stay up late: Reading a book so good you can’t sleep until you finish it…one of life’s perfect experiences.
books I’d recommend if you haven’t read in ages: For all my “I wish I could read”-ers out there.
I’m in the midst of two projects for Substack posts that a) absolutely no one asked for and b) are making me lose my mind. Plus I tracked my reading for a week, if you count that.
Of course I had my monthly project long classics installment, THE JULY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, which made me feel so dumb. It felt similar to reading a novel from a time when people said they were ruining young women’s brains and it’s like…this is homework.
And reading the ARCs I request feels more like a long-term thankless endeavor than ever. Speaking of which.
I’m actively nervous to say this.
Last month, I clambered onto my soap box and told you: I had 13 July releases to read. And six June leftovers.
By the end of the month, I had acquired 5 more July releases.
Eleven of the books I finished last month were ARCs of some variety.
I don’t know how the math results in my untimely demise in this way, but I have 11 overdue releases to read this month, plus 14 August ones.
My NetGalley addiction is officially out of hand.
I started adding this section to these wrap-ups knowing full well all I do is read. Maybe the challenge will count as bettering myself.
I ordered room service with my sister and my husband and we watched Voicemails for Isabelle, a perfect movie for that sort of thing — I feel tempted to say “rom-coms are back!!!”
I am caring a lot about sports these days, because of the baseball trade deadline and the commencement of NFL training camp and my basketball team got LeBron James.
Nothing can come after LeBron.
Enough procrastination. Here’s what I read.
June 29-July 1 | Source: NetGalley
It appears that I will keep reading the installment of this series as long as they keep coming, which is unfortunate because each one unlocks a level of terrible its predecessor could only dream of.
Rating: ✯
June 28-July 2 | Source: NetGalley
I loved Less and found it strange and thrilling that it would win a Pulitzer (so happy and pleasant and straightforward!) but this book was exactly a pale imitation of what made it so good.
Rating: ✯✯
July 2-3 | Source: NetGalley
As crazy as it sounds, which is by and large a compliment.
The first book — of course titled Murder on Sex Island — is better, though.
Rating: ✯✯✯
July 1-5 | Source: Library
Naturally I found an excellent, masterful five-star read the same day I posted about my favorite books of the year. I never could have anticipated the way this makes its arguments, like they’re being taken from your brain but put more eloquently and searingly than you ever could.
Rating: ✯✯✯✯✯
July 6 | Source: NetGalley
Completely pleasant, neutral, fine. Quick. Readable. This is what I would write if I had a sort of “if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all” policy going on.
Rating: ✯✯✯
June 26-July 7 | Source: NetGalley
My enemies are growing stronger. My only explanation for how Ashley Poston could write one romance novel I love enough to unceasingly recommend followed by dud after stinker after nightmare is that she’s an industry plant designed to ruin my life.
Rating: ✯
July 3-8 | Source: NetGalley
This book combined two of my favorite things: family sagas and ghosts. So yeah, I liked it.
Rating: ✯✯✯✯
July 1-9 | Source: Library
I thought I would like this book — memoir, about food — and the people in my comments thought I would like this book — nice illustrations, pleasant style — and I disappointed all of us by barely getting through it.
Rating: ✯✯✯
June 30 - July 10 | Source: Owned
In times of strife and trouble, rereading childhood favorites can soothe one’s sorrows. That’s going to be something of a theme here.
Rating: ✯✯✯✯
July 9-11 | Source: Library
Contrarily, I never read this in childhood, nor did I ever watch the beloved animated film adaptation. And yet now I wish I’d done both. This is fun!
Rating: ✯✯✯✯
July 10-12 | Source: Library
Thank god — we are so back.
I have returned to my roots of ill-advisedly picking up lit fic with low average ratings on Goodreads and having the time of my life. This voice! So funny. So strange. If it never ended I’d be happily reading it still.
Rating: ✯✯✯✯
July 5-13 | Source: Library
And we’re gone again. Or whatever the opposite of being so back is.
This was such a pointless, aggravating, dry read that I can build up a teenage angst just thinking about it.
Rating: ✯✯
July 11-14 | Source: Owned
I warned you attempting to assuage my suffering through rereads of beloved children’s works would be a theme.
Rating: ✯✯✯✯
July 13-15 | Source: Library
I enjoyed my first encounter with Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s voice so much I had to chase the next one. A rare pleasant surprise: I loved the second time even more.
Rating: ✯✯✯✯✯
July 8-16 | Source: NetGalley
I don’t DNF books, and now I know I never will. If it was going to happen it would have been with this.
Rating: ✯✯
July 15-17 | Source: Library
A (modern) classic for a reason. This was a combination of dated (remember vignettes?) and timeless (the relationships!) in a way that was somehow so comforting.
Rating: ✯✯✯✯
July 7-18 | Source: NetGalley
I never picked up Marlena, Buntin’s debut, which is one reason why this smart, fully realized premise, a somehow unique take on a well-tread topic, a beautifully stylized story of an unforgettable character took me completely by surprise.
Rating: ✯✯✯✯
July 14-19 | Source: Library
This is a memoir about the unthinkable and the unwriteable, and it’s stilted and jumpy and tough and manages to convey everything. What a painful and poetic read.
Rating: ✯✯✯✯
July 16-22 | Source: Publisher
Calling all my fellow Sigrid Stans: this debut short story collection is just as good as you’d expect, as thoughtful and subtle and evocative as all of Nunez’s novels.
Rating: ✯✯✯✯
July 22-23 | Source: NetGalley
Sally Rooney recommended it. It’s somber, vaguely anticapitalist lit fic largely about the horrors of modern dating. It has a 3.5 average rating on Goodreads. I read it in roughly a day.
Run, don’t walk.
Rating: ✯✯✯✯
July 14-24 | Source: Owned
Keeping up my reading hot streak with a reread of the heavily annotated and analyzed two-books-in-one edition of my favorite book ever.
Rating: ✯✯✯✯✯
July 15-25 | Source: Library
I put off reading this family saga (one of my favorite subgenres) for years because I got it mixed up with Paper Princess, the dark romance. I wish I had kept it confused. There’s almost no way I could’ve hated its doppelganger more.
Read more: What I read in a week
July 17-26 | Source: NetGalley
Two meh reads in a row, in what would ultimately become a by-and-large chain of them. I am setting myself up for a reading slump and a come to Jesus moment with my NetGalley requests.
Read more: What I read in a week
July 24-27 | Source: Owned
This is an unpleasant, sarcastic, plotless, unrealistic, somewhat pointless story, but what can I say? I like a narrative that hinges on puns and finding things in a room full of filing cabinets.
Read more: What I read in a week
July 26-29 | Source: Library
Every year or two I convince myself I’m one more attempt away from discovering my first enjoyable Abby Jimenez book. Between the shameless cupcake-based self-promotion, the corny jokes, and the baby voices, this is the closest I’ve gotten.
Read more: What I read in a week
July 23-30 | Source: NetGalley
I like reading diaries of all kinds – Grub Street, Money, Sex — for the same reason I love to read: because I’m so fascinated by other people’s lives. Naturally this one made the choice of collating identical lifestyles and forcing me into a situation of hating every page.
Read more: What I read in a week
July 26-31 | Source: NetGalley
I hated, genuinely, everything about this: the plot, the lack of it, the style, the adverbs, the protagonist, the love interest, the rival, the genre-bending, the genres selected, the beginning, the middle, the end. Whenever I remember I’m done with it I feel a shock of gratitude.
Read more: What I read in a week
The highs were high and the lows were low.
Out of the 27 books I read, I would fully recommend…drumroll please…14 of them. Over half is good for me, but at the same time I don’t remember the last time I had so many one star reads. Mixed blessings.
The very best book I read was Perfect Victims. The very worst book I read, though, was a three-way tie.
Your turn!
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.