September by the numbers

• Books finished: 8

• Dollars spent on books: 0, all free from the library

• Google searches: 9 rabbit holes, including a 1955 pill that got called “emotional aspirin”, whether a fantasy animal I read about for hundreds of pages was actually real, and a war over coal I was never taught in school

• Emotional essays incoming: 1, about the seeds that grow inside you for years before you notice they have branches, going out Sunday

• Reading trees growing: 4, including a brand new one planted by a single word I had to look up

• Stars: three 5 star, three 4 star, one 3 star, and one 2 star

• Format split: 5 audiobooks, 3 ebooks

• Narrators: a thirteen voice full cast on The Correspondent, Charlie Thurston on Demon Copperhead, Susan Bennett on The Mad Wife, Nikki Massoud on I Who Have Never Known Men, and Barrie Kreinik on Ariadne. No Julia Whelan for the second month in a row

• Listening time: 57 hours 26 minutes at normal speed, or 38 hours 17 minutes at my usual 1.5x

• Pages: 3,486 across all eight

• Days of my life: about 2.9 days spent with a book this month

• Top genre: a tie, literary fiction and fantasy with 2 each

• Currently reading: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry on ebook and A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara on audio, both from the library

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

🎧 Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I told you last month I was ninety percent through this one. Here is the other ten percent: I did not think it was the kind of book that would make me cry, and then I spent its last hour vacuuming my house and crying at the same time. It is a novel told entirely in letters, from Sybil Van Antwerp, a retired lawyer in her seventies who has been writing to family, friends and strangers for decades. It turns in a direction I did not see coming, and a lot of what came before looks different afterward.

One honest thing about the audio. The narration reads out the full mailing address and ZIP code at the top of every letter, which your eye would skip right past in print, and that got a little annoying partway through. It never ruined anything, though, and what you get in exchange is a full cast with a different narrator for each person Sybil writes to, which in a book made of nothing but letters really works. It is Virginia Evans’s debut, so there is no backlist to go read yet, but I will read whatever she writes next.

Where this book is sending me next: Lonesome Dove. My library finally let me have it, and I’m about 10 percent into it while writing this recap.

Reading Trees: the letter writing in Such a Fun Age is part of what sent me here, so this is the first branch on a brand new tree about letters. The next branches are the books Sybil names in her own letters, starting with Lonesome Dove.

The Will of the Many by James Islington

📱 eBook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Last month I was sixty percent through this one. It is long, and it took me a while to figure out how Will works in this world, but once it clicked I loved it. The world building is some of the best I have read, basically ancient Rome turned into a power system where the rules you learn early keep coming back later. I picked it up because it was everywhere, and I liked it so much I went straight into book two.

Things I Googled: whether “vek” is a real curse word and whether alupi are real animals. Both answers are in this month’s Things I Googled.

Where this book is sending me next: the only place it is sending me is the rest of the series.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

🎧 Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Twenty one hours with Damon Fields, a kid born in a trailer in Lee County, Virginia, talking straight into my ears through foster care, football and the arrival of OxyContin. I picked it up because I kept seeing it recommended as a great audiobook. I had never really read a book like it, and the closest thing it reminded me of was Educated by Tara Westover. I will be reading more Kingsolver.

Things I Googled: the word Melungeon, which the book uses for Damon and his father like everyone already knows what it means, and a line about the second biggest war in American history being fought over coal. Both are in this month’s Things I Googled article, so be sure to check it out.

Where this book is sending me next: an emotional essay about the seeds that grow inside you for years before you notice they have branches, going out Sunday.

Reading Trees: this one didn't grow off any of my existing trees, but it planted a brand new one. The word Melungeon is the seed, and Demon Copperhead is the root.

The Mad Wife by Meagan Church

🎧 Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

It is 1955, Lulu Mayfield has the perfect house in a perfect suburb and a brand new baby, and something is slipping. I did not see the ending coming until it was already there. Looking back there was a little foreshadowing, but I never put the full picture together, and I am not going to give you any more than that here.

Things I Googled: a pile of them, starting with “housewife syndrome” and a little pill called Miltown that went on sale the same year the book is set. Some of what I looked up gives away the ending, so in this month’s Things I Googled that part sits behind a clear spoiler warning.

Reading Trees: this one grew straight off The Yellow Wallpaper, which makes it the third book on the tree that started with Mad Honey, and I can finally see what that tree is about.

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

🎧 Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐

I picked this one for the least romantic reason there is: it was popular and it was available on Libby the night I needed a new book. Thirty nine women and one girl in an underground cage, watched by guards who never speak. It was a good palate cleanser. I did not love it and I did not hate it, but the premise is a really interesting one.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

📱 eBook (Library) ⭐⭐

A café in Tokyo where one seat takes you into the past, as long as you stay in the chair and come back before your coffee goes cold. I love that premise. I keep it short here for books that land under three stars for me. A book that didn’t hit for me could easily be someone else’s favorite, and I’d rather you decide for yourself than skip it because of me.

Reading Trees: not a branch on any of my trees, more like a sibling growing right next to one. It is the third book about getting a second chance by walking into a magic place that I have rated low, which is starting to tell me something about myself.

The Strength of the Few by James Islington

📱 eBook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Book two of the Hierarchy series, and I read a few hours every night because it is so easy to fall right back into this world. Keeping track of three different synchronous worlds bugged me at first, but once it got moving I really enjoyed it. Fair warning if you are starting the series: Islington always seems to kill off the character who breaks your heart, and he did it again.

Where this book is sending me next: I highlighted two passages I am still thinking through, so one of them may turn into an essay down the road. After that, book three in the series scheduled to be released in 2027.

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint

🎧 Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Minotaur myth told by the princess who helps Theseus through the labyrinth, and by her sister Phaedra. The start takes some work, since a lot of names come at you at once and on audio you cannot flip back to check who is who. Once the family tree settles, it moves. I had two and a half hours left one morning and finished it through a shower, getting ready and a round of errands, and it ended just as I was pulling out of the Target parking lot. I said “wait, that’s how it ends?” out loud to nobody, which is how I knew it had me.

Where this book is sending me next: Elektra or Atalanta, depending on what my library has.

Reading Trees: a new branch on my Greek myth tree, growing off Stone Blind, and the first one on that tree by a different author.

All eight of these got a full review on Goodreads too, along with everything else I finish, including the books that never turn into an article here. If reading the reviews is the part you like, that is where all of them live. Come follow me over there.

The thread running through September

Three books this month ended somewhere I was not ready for. The Correspondent turned in its last hour and had me crying over the vacuum, and the ending of The Mad Wife had been sitting right in front of me the whole time without me putting it together. Ariadne just stopped, while I was pulling out of a parking lot still braced for another hour of it.

That is my favorite thing a book can do to me, and it is the one thing I can never plan for. I can follow a reading tree or a hunch or a Libby waitlist, but nobody can hand me a book and promise the ending will catch me off guard. The two books I was still in the middle of when August closed both paid off at five stars, which is the other lesson of the month: finishing is sometimes the whole trick.

The best book I read in September, and I am calling it a tie

Demon Copperhead and the Hierarchy series. Demon Copperhead was unlike anything I had read before, and it handed me an essay and a brand new reading tree. The Will of the Many and The Strength of the Few are the two books I kept falling right back into every night, and book three can’t come soon enough.

Reading Trees

A reading tree starts with one root book and the itch it leaves behind, a topic, a place, a feeling you are not done with yet. From there it grows branches, other books that reach back to that same root, whether it is a direct mention in the text, the same region, or just chasing the same gut punch. It is not a genre list and it is not an author’s backlist. It is a line you can trace from root to newest branch.

Four of them grew in September. One is brand new and started with a single word I had to look up, and another is sending me into a book I have been meaning to read for years.

Trees keep growing every time one book hands me the next one. Paid subscribers get the full tree, root to newest branch, plus a new tree every month, and founding members get a personalized tree of their own once a year. Everything else, the rabbit holes, the essays, all of it, stays free right here.

Free and paid

This recap is free, always will be. The reading trees are the one thing that lives behind the paywall, one new tree a month plus the full growing vault, and founding members get a personalized tree of their own once a year. Everything else, the Google rabbit holes, the essays, all of it, stays right here for everyone.

I don’t have a shelf yet. I have a map.

A note on my links: I’m a library person first, always. If you can borrow it, borrow it. But if you’re a book buyer and you’re going to own a copy anyway, my Bookshop.org links support indie bookstores and send a little back my way. Both can be true.

Tell me in the comments: what is the last book whose ending caught you completely off guard?

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August by the numbers

• Books finished: 7

• Dollars spent on books: 0, all free from the library

• Google searches: 6 rabbit holes, including a goddess who asked Zeus to start a war because the weight of too many humans had gotten too heavy to hold up, the real 126 day siege that Bel Canto is built on, and why the Mona Lisa is brown

• Emotional essays incoming: 3

• Reading trees growing: 2, plus two clusters that turned out not to be trees at all once I looked at them properly

• Stars: three 5 star, three 4 star, and one 2 star, my first 2 star of the entire year

• Format split: 5 audiobooks, 2 ebooks

• Narrators: Marin Ireland twice, on My Friends and Beartown, Anna Fields on Bel Canto, and two authors reading their own work, Natalie Haynes and Ann Patchett. No Julia Whelan this month, which almost never happens

• Listening time: 57 hours 7 minutes at normal speed, or 38 hours 5 minutes at my usual 1.5x

• Days of my life: about 2.1 days spent with a book this month

• Top genre: literary fiction, 4 of the 7

• Currently reading: as August closed I was about 90 percent through The Correspondent by Virginia Evans on audio, and about 60 percent through The Will of the Many by James Islington on ebook, both from the library

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

🎧 Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I came to this one straight off Stone Blind, because I loved Stone Blind and immediately wanted more Haynes, and a Twitter thread about Medusa kept pushing me the same direction. What I loved was that it gives every woman in the Trojan War her own space instead of treating them as scenery around the men. I went in blind and did not realize it was a lot of smaller stories handing off to each other and overlapping as they go, and being caught off guard by that is most of why this landed at four for me instead of five. It never quite gutted me the way the five stars did.

Two things sent me googling. One was the goddess who holds up the earth asking Zeus to start a war because the weight of too many humans had become too much to carry, and that is a genuinely unhinged origin story for a war. The other was a section about men wasting and taking more land and resources than they need, and that one hit hard enough that there may be an emotional essay in it eventually, just not yet.

Things I Googled: the goddess who asked Zeus for a war because people had gotten too heavy to carry. That one is in this month’s Things I Googled. The other rabbit hole, about men taking more land and resources than they need, is going into a piece about the ancient world.

Where this book is sending me next: an emotional essay eventually, once I work out what I actually want to say about that greedy tidbit.

Reading Trees: Stone Blind is what sent me here, so this is a new branch on the Greek myth tree, still the healthiest tree I have growing.

My Friends by Fredrik Backman

🎧 Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I picked this up for the least interesting reason there is, because it was everywhere and everyone kept telling me to. My first Backman, and now one of my favorite books of the year and honestly one of my favorites ever. What got me was the writing itself, the cadence of the sentences, the way they carried me along instead of just delivering information. I found out afterward that it is translated from Swedish, and suddenly the whole thing made sense. I have been thinking about the translator ever since. The story is a girl piecing together what happened around a famous painting and the four teenagers who were there when it was made, and I was as impatient for the next piece of the story as she was. It also made me want to go stand in front of a painting that does not exist, and I was legitimately annoyed that I could not. This one gets a spot on the shelf the day I have a shelf.

Things I Googled: the translation, the translator, and how much of what I loved was actually his doing. That one is in this month’s Things I Googled, and it is also the newest entry in a words and etymology grouping I have been building.

Beartown by Fredrik Backman

🎧 Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I went straight from My Friends into this one because I wanted more of whatever that was, and I went in knowing absolutely nothing about the story, and that turned out to matter a lot. It is a small town in the forest where a junior hockey team is the last thing anybody there has left to be proud of, and then something happens that forces the whole town to pick a side. It is heavy, and I would go in knowing that much and nothing more. What I kept noticing while I listened was that the sentences were not carrying me the way My Friends had, and I assumed the translation was the difference, since the translation was the entire reason the last one worked on me. It is not. Same translator on both, Neil Smith, and the same narrator, Marin Ireland. So the gap is the book itself, a stranger and better answer than the one I walked in with. My Friends carries you along on the sentences and this one puts you in a room and makes you stay there.

Things I Googled: whether da Vinci really got a discount on brown paint, after a sarcastic line about it in the book. That one is in this month’s Things I Googled.

Where this book is sending me next: nothing yet, though there is something the mother says about wanting a thirty six to forty eight hour day that I am not finished thinking about.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

📱 eBook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I read this because it was popular, not much of a reason, and then I almost quit it, not much of an endorsement either. The opening drops you into a city that does not exist with names that do not sound like names and slang nobody bothers to explain, and I have read a lot of fantasy without ever hitting that particular wall. I stayed past the point where I would normally have bailed and it turned into a genuinely great story. What got me was the way it is built, the heist running in the present and then a whole chapter peeling back into one character’s history, timed so that every person I thought I had figured out became somebody else. The cliffhanger annoyed me, I get why it is there, and Crooked Kingdom is now on my Libby holds.

Where this book is sending me next: another essay about my rules for quitting books, the nine it has cost me, and what happened when this one made me break it. Then Crooked Kingdom, eventually, once I forgive the ending for Six of Crows.

Whistler by Ann Patchett

🎧 Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I almost did not read this one. I DNF’d Tom Lake earlier this year, decided Patchett and I were not going to work out, and then asked Threads about it anyway, and Threads told me to go audio and start with The Dutch House. That worked, so I kept going, through Bel Canto and then into this one. Whistler is now one of my all time top tier books, above both of them, and honestly up there with the TJR and Kristin Hannah books I have loved most. It is a woman and the stepfather she lost for forty five years, one night in 1980, and a horse in a story inside the story. Patchett narrates it herself and does the thing almost no narrator does. She gets quieter in the big moments. Two paragraphs are still following me around, one about a house being sold and never getting to walk back in, and one toast at a fiftieth anniversary party that counts a family forward instead of backward.

Where this book is sending me next: two essays, one about the farmhouse I grew up in and the friends I was never allowed to bring home, and one about the dumb logistical accident my entire family is standing on. After that, back to Tom Lake, the book that started all of this by being the one I could not finish, this time on audio with Meryl Streep reading it.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

🎧 Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Third stop on the Patchett tour I only took because Threads told me to. I went into this one knowing nothing at all, and I now think that is the correct way to read it, so I will keep it vague. A birthday party in an unnamed South American country, a famous opera singer, a Japanese businessman who came only to hear her sing, and then terrorists coming through the air vents after a president who did not show up. It hooked me fast and then did something I was not expecting. The siege goes on so long that the book stops being about a siege and becomes about people learning each other’s languages and cooking together and falling in love inside a bubble where the usual rules stopped applying. About a third of the way in I paused it to google whether any of this was real. It is. What it never did was gut me, though, and that is the whole difference between this one and the five stars this month. Very good, and not the kind of good that follows you around after.

Things I Googled: whether the siege actually happened, which I stopped the book a third of the way in to find out. It did. That one is in this month’s Things I Googled.

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

📱 eBook (Library) ⭐⭐

This one was not for me. Two agents on opposite sides of a war across time leaving each other letters, very short, very ambitious, and the writing itself is the entire point. I could not get into it, and the opening never handed me anything to hold onto before the language started asking me to work for it. I finished it and never found the door in. Plenty of readers I trust adore this book, so take my two stars as a mismatch rather than a verdict. What I actually got out of it is about me, because the two things that lose me in a book are a story told in fragments and no early hook, and this is deliberately both, so I may have walked straight into my own known trap.

Where this book is sending me next: the harder question, whether you keep following a reading tree after the branch breaks. I have not answered that one yet.

Reading Trees: this branch grew off two books I had already loved, and it is the first one on any of my trees where a branch broke like this. I am leaving it right where it fell for now. Whether you keep climbing after a branch breaks is the harder question, and I have not answered that one yet.

All seven of these got a full review on Goodreads too, along with everything else I finish, including the books that never turn into an article here. If reading the reviews is the part you like, that is where all of them live. Come follow me over there.

The thread running through August

I was wrong twice this month, in both directions. I had written off Ann Patchett after I could not finish Tom Lake, and she went and wrote one of my favorite books I have ever read. And I had been following one book to the next, trusting it the way you trust a friend with good taste, and it handed me the first book all year I could not find my way into.

So what I keep turning over is how much to trust the way a book gets to me. A book that grew out of another book feels like the reliable route and a hunch about an author feels like the risky one, and August says neither comes with a guarantee. It also says the miss was worth having. A tree where every branch is a five star is a marketing brochure, not a reading life.

The best book I read in August, and I am picking two

Whistler and My Friends, and I am not going to break the tie. Whistler broke something open about family and time that I am still carrying around and will be writing about twice before I am done with it. My Friends is the one whose sentences I would read out loud to a stranger in a parking lot. One of them changed how I think about my own people and the other one changed how I think about sentences, so take whichever of those you need more right now. Ask me again in a year and I will probably still be stalling.

Reading Trees

A reading tree starts with one root book and the itch it leaves behind, a topic, a place, a feeling you are not done with yet. From there it grows branches, other books that reach back to that same root, whether it is a direct mention in the text, the same region, or just chasing the same gut punch. It is not a genre list and it is not an author's backlist. It is a line you can trace from root to newest branch.

Two of them added new branches in August, while the 2 star book broke its branch clean off, and I am leaving right where it is.

Trees keep growing every time one book hands me the next one. Paid subscribers get the full tree, root to newest branch, plus a new tree every month, and founding members get a personalized tree of their own once a year. Everything else, the rabbit holes, the essays, all of it, stays free right here.

Subscribe now

Free and paid

This recap is free, always will be. The reading trees are the one thing that lives behind the paywall, one new tree a month plus the full growing vault, and founding members get a personalized tree of their own once a year. Everything else, the Google rabbit holes, the essays, all of it, stays right here for everyone.

I don’t have a shelf yet. I have a map.

A note on my links: I’m a library person first, always. If you can borrow it, borrow it. But if you’re a book buyer and you’re going to own a copy anyway, my Bookshop.org links support indie bookstores and send a little back my way. Both can be true.

Tell me in the comments: has an author you previously gave up on ever turned around and given you a favorite?

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By the numbers

• Books finished: 6, all free from the library

• Google searches: 3 rabbit holes, including one on the My Lai massacre I somehow never learned about in school, and a whole tangle of misspelled Irish mermaid folklore

• Emotional essays incoming: 1

• Reading trees growing: 1 new branch this month (I, Medusa extends the Stone Blind tree)

• Stars: one 5 star, one 4.5 star, one 3.5 star, three 3 star

• Format split: 3 audiobooks, 2 ebooks, 1 physical

• Narrators: Mara Wilson (Women’s Hotel), Barrie Kreinik (The Sirens), Nicole Lewis (Such a Fun Age)

• Listening time: just under 30 hours at normal speed, about 19.7 hours at my usual 1.5x

• Days of my life: roughly a day and a half spent with a book this month

• Top genre: literary fiction

• Currently reading: A Thousand Ships (audiobook, 75%) and Six of Crows (ebook, 20%)

Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy

📖 Physical (Library) ⭐⭐⭐

I didn’t know much going in beyond a few social accounts recommending it, and that was probably better. Fast read, heavy topic, a teenage girl and her relationship with her teacher, handled without flinching and without letting you off easy either. I read it as a break from a much heavier WWII audiobook, and it still ended up sitting with me more than a filler read should. Landed at three stars, mostly because the ending did not resolve quite as much as I wanted.

Coming up: no article for this one, just the review. It was a palate cleanser, not a rabbit hole. (Quick note: I actually finished this one in June. June’s recap had already gone out by the time I processed the dump, so it’s living here instead.)

Women’s Hotel by Daniel M. Lavery

🎧 Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐

Picked this up because it was sitting there on Libby and I’d seen it floating around social somewhere. Slow, patient ensemble novel set in a 1960s women’s residential hotel modeled on the real Barbizon. Wasn’t blown away, but the ending caught me more off guard than I expected from a book that spent most of its runtime just introducing people to me.

Coming up: a Things I Googled article about the hygiene rules these hotels actually enforced, and a Who I Became piece about the strange split feeling of reading how limited women’s choices were then versus now.

Buckeye by Patrick Ryan

📱 eBook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I only picked this up because it was popular a while back, had great reviews, and there was no wait for it at the library, so no excuse not to. It’s told in parts, and I almost bailed early because the start felt slow, but by Part II I was completely hooked, and I finished it bawling on the last night. This might end up being a top tier read for me this year. I still need to sit with it a little longer before I can say that for sure.

Coming up: a Things I Googled article, since a passage about Tom’s teenage years sent me down two different holes, whether there were ever any famous redheads before a certain era, and later the My Lai massacre, which I somehow never learned about in school.

The Sirens by Emilia Hart

🎧 Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐

Several storylines were running at once with flashbacks woven through, and it kept my attention the whole way, even though I wished the ending had leaned harder into the art thread since I love artists and their whole live your passion existence. What really stuck with me was the thread connecting mermaid folklore to Ireland. I came out of it with a list of googled terms, an Irish word for mermaid, a sea lullaby the characters kept singing, and the name for an underwater world in Irish myth.

Coming up: a Things I Googled article untangling all of that Irish mermaid folklore, since half of what I searched for was spelled wrong and I need to actually get it right.

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

🎧 Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4.5)

No reading tree connection on this one, just a book that kept showing up with good reviews and was sitting there available on Libby, so I grabbed it. It juggles several storylines at once and never lost me, and the narrator’s voice for Briar, the little girl at the center of it, was one of my favorite parts of the whole listen. It handles race in a way that felt honest without turning into a lecture, and I’m already planning to read more from Kiley Reid because of it.

Coming up: no article this time, it was just a genuinely good read.

I, Medusa by Ayana Gray

📱 eBook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐ (3.5)

This one grew out of the same tree as Stone Blind, my Natalie Haynes read back in March, with a few Twitter recommendations pointing me toward it too. With a Greek mythology retelling you already know where the story ends, Medusa becomes Medusa, but you never know how or when, and this book kept me anxious to find out, just not in quite the same way Stone Blind did. It read a little young to me, almost YA in tone, though I’m not sure it was actually marketed that way. It moved fast, and overall it was a good read.

Coming up: a Reading Tree update connecting it back to Stone Blind.

What is a reading tree?

A reading tree starts with one root book and the itch it leaves behind, a topic, a place, a feeling you’re not done with yet. From there it grows branches, other books that connect to that same thread, whether it’s a direct mention in the text, the same region, or just chasing the same gut punch. It’s not a genre list and it’s not a same-author backlist. It’s a chain you can actually follow. Trees keep growing over time as I read more into the thread, and paid subscribers get the full tree, root to newest branch, plus a new one every month.

This month’s only branch was small: I, Medusa hanging off Stone Blind, both of them different angles on the same myth. Not much of a thread to pull this month, but that tracks. A slow reading month means a slow tree month too.

The one I can’t quite pick

If you’re asking me to name a favorite, I genuinely can’t. Buckeye earned every one of its five stars and wrecked me in the best way, the kind of book I’m still turning over a week later. But Such a Fun Age was the one I looked forward to picking back up every single day, in a lighter, more purely fun way. One gutted me, one delighted me. I’m not choosing.

Free and paid

This recap is free, always will be. The reading trees are the one thing that lives behind the paywall, one new tree a month plus the full growing vault, and founding members get a personalized tree of their own once a year. Everything else, the Google rabbit holes, the Who I Became pieces, the essays, stays right here for everyone.

Tell me in the comments, did you read anything great in July? Anyone else take a real break from books this summer and not feel bad about it?

Leave a comment

By the numbers

• 7 books, all free from the library

• 12 Google searches, from Lilith to the Siege of Sarajevo to a well in Italy named after an Irish saint

• 4 emotional essays incoming

• 3 reading trees growing

• 6 four-star reads and 1 three-star

• 5 on audio, 2 in print, 3 of them narrated by Julia Whelan

• 39.3 hours in my headphones at 1.5x speed, which would be 58 hours and 54 minutes at normal speed

• 1.9 days of my life spent inside a book this month

• Top genre: historical fiction, obviously

• Currently reading: Buckeye (Patrick Ryan) at 20 percent and The Sirens (Emillia Hart) at 66 percent

  I do this every month: every book I read, every Google hole it sent me down, and what each one is turning into. Subscribe and the next one lands in your inbox, free.

The Villa by Rachel Hawkins

Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

One book that handed me three essays and a research rabbit hole, so it punches above its rating. Childhood best friends at an Italian villa with a buried 1974 murder, told through song lyrics and podcast transcripts, all about ambition and friendship and who gets to own a woman’s work. Julia Whelan narrates, which is an automatic yes for me now. Closer to a 4.75 than a 4 for me.

Coming up: the busiest book of my month. A Things I Googled, plus three essays, one on friendship anniversaries, one on women’s horror and travel safety, and one on the work voice my family makes fun of.

The Astral Library by Kate Quinn

Physical (Library) ⭐⭐⭐

Kate Quinn’s first swing at magical realism: a hidden library where books are doors you can live inside and time in the real world stops while you’re gone. Alix moves through Austen, Sherlock, and Gatsby in a love letter to libraries and readers. The concept and the bookish charm carried it for me, but the emotional middle stayed a little distant, so it landed at a fond three stars rather than the gut-punch I get from her historical fiction. Still sent me down four Google holes, which tells you how much fun it is to read.

Coming up: a Things I Googled from those four holes, and a custom essay called Bookmark Your Life.

Pretty as a Picture by Elizabeth Little

Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I came for Julia Whelan and left attached to Marissa Dahl, a film editor who narrates her own life in movie scenes because that is genuinely how she works out what she is feeling. She is an introvert who says the wrong thing, knows it, and has stopped caring, right down to a bedtime routine of small specific rituals. I felt so seen by her it was almost uncomfortable. The murder mystery on a chaotic island film shoot is fun, but the voice is the whole thing. I knocked it out in two days over a long drive and a rained-out weekend. First Elizabeth Little for me, and not the last.

Coming up: nothing formal yet, but Marissa is living in my head rent free, so do not be surprised if she turns into an essay.

The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation by Rosemary Sullivan

Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Narrated by Julia Whelan, who was honestly part of why I picked it up. This reads like a true crime podcast about who betrayed the Frank family. A team including a retired FBI agent uses modern technology and old records to investigate a question that has been open for decades. The part that stuck with me most is the possibility that Otto Frank knew who was responsible and chose silence to protect that person’s family. Quick listen, well paced, and a great companion to any Anne Frank fiction.

Coming up: no piece of its own, but it’s another branch on the Anne Frank reading tree that started with When We Flew Away by Alice Hoffman. That tree is still growing.

Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris

Physical (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I read this because Girl at War made me want to understand wars I was never taught, and this one took me inside the Siege of Sarajevo. It is quiet and human and gorgeous, one painter staying behind in a city that keeps closing around her. The title is the ash of a million library books raining down over the city after the National Library was shelled, and I have not stopped thinking about it.

Coming up: a piece from the Bosnian War rabbit hole it pulled me into, and a new branch on the Girl at War reading tree about the wars I was never taught.

The Glass Ocean by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White

Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Comfort-zone historical fiction with a love story braided through the danger, split between the doomed Lusitania in 1915 and a present-day writer chasing a family secret. Solid and cozy, a little predictable in the modern half, and I will admit I was halfway in before I clocked that the Lusitania sank in WWI, not WWII. Just ok on audio, so I would point you toward print.

Coming up: something short, still taking shape.

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I DNF’d Tom Lake and almost wrote Patchett off, then Threads talked me into trying The Dutch House on audio for the Tom Hanks narration, and it made me a convert. Danny and Maeve are a brother and sister locked out of their childhood mansion by their stepmother, circling that house for decades. Patchett turns the house into a character and makes ordinary family resentment feel epic. A warm, aching four stars.

Coming up: no piece of its own, but it kicked off a whole Patchett reading tree, and Tom Lake is next, so that thread is just beginning.

What is a reading tree?

It’s my favorite thing I make, and I haven’t actually published one yet, so here’s the short version. A reading tree is the chain of how one book pulls me into the next. Girl at War made me want to understand wars I was never taught, which led me to Black Butterflies, which sent me down the Bosnian War. That’s a tree, and it keeps growing as I read. I’m building these into a series for paid subscribers, and the first ones land soon. So when I say a tree is growing, that’s the thread I’m following.

The thread running through it all

Three of these books quietly grew reading trees this month: the Anne Frank tree that started with When We Flew Away and a brand new Patchett tree that begins with The Dutch House. That’s the part I love most, watching one book pull me straight into the next.

If you make me pick a favorite, I can’t, but The Villa, Black Butterflies, and Pretty as a Picture are the three still living in my head.

Tell me what you read in June. I want the one that wrecked you and the one you couldn’t finish.

Leave a comment

Seven books finished. One DNF. 2,623 pages. 53 hours of reading and listening. Historical fiction dominated with four out of seven books, which wasn’t intentional but also wasn’t surprising once I realized that one little piece in The Latecomer had sent me down a Mormon history rabbit hole that led directly to The Nineteenth Wife. That’s the thing about reading: one book opens a door and suddenly you’re three books deep in a topic you didn’t know you cared about.

Here’s everything I read this month, ranked.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Latecomer by Jean Hanff Korelitz

🎧 Audiobook (narrated by Julia Whelan)

Picked this up strictly because Julia Whelan narrated it and it was available when I needed a new audiobook. Didn’t do any research beforehand becuases rarely does a Julia Whelan narration let me down, which turned out to be the right call. The first half builds this portrait of a family held together by grief and obligation, three triplets conceived through IVF after their parents lost their first child, and you think you know what kind of book this is. Then the second half takes a turn you don’t see coming and the whole thing opens up into something much bigger and stranger and more interesting than a family drama.

I Googled Stendhal syndrome (the phenomenon where tourists faint or get dizzy in front of great art because it moves them so deeply) and went down a rabbit hole on Mormon temple sealings and the belief that families are bound together for eternity. That rabbit hole led me to add several Mormon historical fiction books to my TBR, which is how The Nineteenth Wife ended up on this list. The Latecomer also sparked two personal essays I’m working on: one about the fear that your kids will drift apart as adults, and one about memories and whether we remember our childhoods the way they actually happened.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Far from the Tree by Robin Benway

🎧 Audiobook (narrated by Julia Whelan)

Listened to this on vacation and could not stop. On the plane, in the hotel, getting ready for dinner, getting ready for bed. Three siblings separated by adoption finding each other for the first time, each dealing with their own version of what it means to have been given away. The writing is emotionally precise without being heavy-handed, and Julia Whelan gives each sibling a distinct voice that makes you care about all three equally.

The moment that stuck with me: a foster kid named Joaquin talks about getting a bike as a little boy and how even after he learned to ride, he never wanted the training wheels taken off. Because training wheels always catch you, no matter what. And he’d never had anyone in his life who always caught him. That metaphor inspired a custom essay I just released earlier this week called “Training Wheels” about what catches us at different stages of life and what happens when you have to ride without that safety net. One of those books that finishes and then just sits with you.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Strangers by Belle Burden

📕 Physical (Library)

A memoir about a marriage that quietly unravels. Belle Burden doesn’t dramatize or blame. She just tells the truth, and the truth is that sometimes the person you married becomes a stranger so slowly you don’t notice until it’s already happened. I had to get the physical copy because the audiobook wait was months long and this book has been everywhere on social media lately.

The writing is gorgeous and it reads fast despite the weight of it. One passage on page 222 stopped me: she Googles “swarm of dragonflies” expecting to find something wrong with her house, and instead discovers that dragonflies are symbolic of self-actualization. That moment connected directly to what I do with my “Things I Googled” series. Seeing an author go through the same instinct of Googling something to make sense of her life felt like looking in a mirror. Highly recommend for women in long marriages. Not sure how it would land for men, and I’m not going to pretend to know.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Cleopatra by Saara El-Arifi

📕 Physical (Library)

A historical epic told from Cleopatra’s perspective, written as though someone who truly knew her was finally telling the real story. El-Arifi has a master’s thesis on Cleopatra’s myth, and that academic depth shows up in a feature I’ve never seen in historical fiction before: footnotes that flag historically exaggerated events while Cleopatra corrects the record inside the narrative. It’s clever and it works.

Sent me down five Google rabbit holes including the Egyptian harvest season Shemu, the Arabic storytelling tradition of the Hakawati, and some breathtaking classical paintings that may have lied about how Cleopatra actually died. Also a love story, but one that never overshadows the politics. Didn’t quite reach five stars because it released me when I put it down rather than pulling me to think about it for weeks after, but I’d recommend it to anyone who loved Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati, Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes or even Mistress of Rome by Kate Quinn.

⭐⭐⭐

We Must Not Think of Ourselves by Lauren Grodstein

📱 eBook (Library)

WWII historical fiction set in the Warsaw Ghetto. A quiet, devastating book about a man who joins a secret group of archivists documenting life inside the ghetto while trying to hold onto something worth living for. Picked it up because it was available on Libby and I know I enjoy this genre. If Goodreads had half stars, this would have been a 3.5.

The things I Googled were almost as interesting as the book: the Warner Brothers were originally the Wonskolaser family and changed their name when they immigrated to the United States. A Wordsworth poem called “Surprised by Joy” that, despite the title, is actually about the strange experience of feeling unexpected joy in the middle of grief. And the connection between the death of Tsar Alexander and the blame placed on Jewish communities. The book also introduced me to the Portuguese word saudade, which describes a sorrowful happiness or a wish for something that was and can never be again. That quote wrecked me. Things I Googled series coming soon.

⭐⭐⭐

Isola by Allegra Goodman

📱 eBook (Library)

A Reese’s Book Club pick that didn’t quite land for me. The formal period prose kept me at arm’s length, and I found myself losing focus more often than I was locked in. I finished it because so many readers I trust loved it. It did not end how I expected at all and I found myself wanting a little closure or future insight. But I think literary period fiction just isn’t my sweet spot as a reader, and that’s a useful thing to know about yourself. If you love that style of writing, you’ll probably love this book. It just wasn’t the right fit for me.

⭐⭐⭐

The Nineteenth Wife by David Ebershoff

🎧 Audiobook (Library)

This one landed on my TBR because of The Latecomer. The minimal Mormon comments in that book sent me searching for historical fiction about the early Mormon church, and The Nineteenth Wife was the first result. The research is impressive and I learned a ton about Brigham Young, Ann Eliza Young, and the customs and violence of early Mormon communities.

But the book braids three separate timelines (a modern murder mystery, a 19th-century memoir, and academic interludes) and the constant jumping made it hard to follow, especially on audio. The male narrator’s delivery of Brigham Young’s sermons felt like being yelled at, which may have been intentional but wasn’t enjoyable to listen to. I came away with ten separate Things I Googled, including whether Mormons all shared the prophet’s birthday, whether women really got nosebleeds from the weight of their uncut hair, and the Mountain Meadows Massacre so stay tuned for that rabbit hole article coming soon. I’d recommend this one in print for anyone curious about Mormon history, but know that it asks a lot of your attention.

The DNF: The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht (audiobook). Picked it up because after reading Girl at War by Sara Novic I wanted to add more non WWII historical fiction to my TBR, but I just couldn’t get into it. Sometimes the writing style just doesn’t click with how your brain works, and I’ve gotten better at putting a book down instead of forcing my way through.

Still reading: Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris (physical, library). Also ended up on my TBR becuase of how much I loved April’s reading of Girl at War. About 20% in and still deciding how I feel about it.

Still reading: The Betrayal of Anne Frank by Rosemary Sullivan (audiobook, library). Was 90% done by the end of May and finished it on June 3. Full review coming with June’s reading recap.

May gave me 2,623 pages, 29.5 hours of audiobook listening at 1.5x speed, and 2.2 full days of my life spent with a book. Historical fiction dominated, the library funded everything, and two books sparked essays I’m still writing. Not a bad month.

What did you read in May? Tell me in the comments.