This was a light reading month! I made my way through three books (two of them I finished in the past few days) and I’m not mad about it at all. According to Goodreads, I’m still on track to reach my goal of reading 50 books before the end of the year!

(Okay, so I just checked and I need to read 9 books in the next two months to meet my goal. So… we’ll see! COVID brain is real and not allowing me a whole lot of attention for books. If I don’t meet my goal, I won’t be upset about it.)

As usual, every link in this post will help support our bookstore! But if you want to help Jeff Bezos colonize the moon, you can order your books from him. I won’t judge you.

Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert
Get the paperback copy here.
Get the audiobook version here.

What do you know? Another romance book! I’m telling you–my brain wants to read romance these days! It’s predictable. It’s fun. I know it’s going to end well–and this one really did. I read the first one in this series last Christmas and fell in love with Talia Hibbert’s writing. And Dani Brown was such a fun character. A little witchy. Super bi. I’m in!! This delivered and I gave it 5 stars.
Fun fact about me, I can’t listen to romance novels on audiobook. They make me blush too much. So I read all my romance novels in hard copy and I’ve already got another one on deck. Up next for me is Ties That Tether by Jane Igharo.

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth
Snag the hardcover copy here.
Get the audiobook version here.

This book was super fun and super spooky and super queer and super, super satisfying. It’s a wild ride–it goes back in time between the early 1900’s where we learn about the Brookhants Boarding School for Girls and tragedies that befell students there and present day where some Hollywood filmmakers are telling the story of what happened at Brookhants. This book was longer than I usually listen to–and I had to listen to it, I had 8 hours in the car alone for a road trip I took this month.
Someone asked me if this was a ghost story and my honest answer was, “Um… I… don’t… know?”
Even though I listened to this on audiobook, I’d love to get it in print because I’ve heard the hardcover copy has a lot of illustrations–not unlike those in turn-of-the-century boarding school texts. FIVE STARS!

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the 21st Century edited by Alice Wong
Get the paperback version here.
Here’s the audiobook version.

I read this book with a book club that I’m a part of. It’s a collection of essays written by different folks who experience disability in one form or another. What I liked about this book is that not everyone who is included in this book is a prominent figure or Capital A Activist. Some were just regular people talking about their regular lives. I think telling our stories is how we make change. And that’s why I’m happy to keep reading these stories and passing them along to others.
This book opened up something brand new in me–something that I’m excited to keep learning about and exploring. Five stars!

Welp! That’s what I read this month! Did you read anything that you really loved?

Well, it finally happened. I skipped writing about what I read for a month. But in my defense it’s just because I didn’t read anything in July. Okay, that’s not entirely true. I read one, singular book in July. And I just didn’t feel like writing a whole post about it. So here we are… a look at what I read in July and August of 2020.

But first… anything to fill you in on? Let’s see..

OH! Twice Told Tales (our used bookstore in McPherson, KS) turned five years old this past weekend! We had a celebration at the store–not as exciting as we had originally fantasized about but it was still fun. And highly successful! We’ve had a few pretty good days since The Pandemic hit, but it felt good to have a really freakin’ great day for once. Whew! Happy Birthday to us!

Okay onto the books! Oh, but a reminder. All of the books that are linked here will go to further support our store. If you’re not a fan of affiliate links or helping small businesses, feel free to seek these books out on Amazon. (LOL)

In July I read:

Most Likely by Sarah Watson
Buy on Audiobook.
Buy in print or e-book.

I gave this one five stars! I don’t often give YA novels 5-stars but this one really just hit me in the best place. The book starts out far in the future where a woman is taking the oath of office to become President of the United States. In the chapters following, we go back in time (to 2019) and follow a group of best friends who are navigating their senior year of high school. We know that one of these girls will grow up to become Madame President but we won’t find out until, literally, the very last page.
I hope she’s not reading this right now because I’ll probably send a copy of this to my oldest niece for Christmas.

IN AUGUST I READ:

One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London
Buy on Audiobook.
Buy in print or e-book.

Another five star read for me!! What we have here is a really fun, light read. So, basically, a plus-size blogger snags a spot on The Bachelorette (or, whatever it is that they called their version in this alternate universe). What I like about the fat representation here is that, yeah, she has some insecurities but that isn’t the main focus. She’s a woman who’s proud of her body and proud of her life and also is ready to make some changes in her world! Now, I’ve never seen an episode of The Bachelorette but I know enough to understand the vibe of this book. It was so fun to read about her outfits and how she was relating to the people she met on the show.
I don’t know if Kate Stayman-London is reading my blog or not (lol she isn’t) but just in case, I want to use this opportunity to beg her to write a sequel based on Bea’s BFF. I wanted more of her on these pages!

The Guest List by Lucy Foley
Buy it on Audiobook.
Buy it in print or e-book.

Yet another five stars!! I think I’ve just been very easy to please this summer. This was just a classic psychological thriller. A wedding takes place on a remote island off the coast of Ireland. Something happens and someone did it but we don’t know what or who for quite a while. It’s riveting! Also, I super recommend this one on audiobook because there are so many incredible accents.

Notes from a Young Black Chef by Kwame Onwuachi
Buy on Audiobook.
Buy in print or e-book.

I gave this one four stars. I liked it a lot. Kwame Onwuachi has so many stories and has lived in so many different places in his short life. It’s such an exciting book and, honestly, I really couldn’t wait to find out where he was going to go next and what would lead him to his dream of owning his audacious restaurant in Washington D.C.
The only thing that kept it from getting five stars, for me, was basically just the fact that while there was no shortage of stories to tell, I couldn’t feel a ton of insight gleaned from those stories. Which is my favorite part of a memoir, to be honest. I hopes he keeps writing, though. I’ll keep reading it as he ages.

I also tried to read Luster by Raven Leilani but I couldn’t finish it. It’s not bad! It’s just not to my taste. I think that if you loved books like My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh, you might like it? I can appreciate it but I do not do well with books that focus on someone’s mental health descent–I can watch tv shows (in fact, I just finished “I May Destroy You” on HBO and it is soooooo good!) and I can watch movies but I can not do it with books lest I get dragged down, as well.

And that’s what I read!! What did you read?

There’s so much going on right now. As I type this, riots are taking over Minneapolis. Dear friends are planning a protest from their small town in the center of Kansas. The deaths of unarmed black people have made national news at least once a week for the past few months. It’s all reaching a fever pitch. And I can only hope that change will come. That change is on the way.

Related: Sonya Renee Taylor on her answer to when White People ask, “What can I do???”

On top of that, tensions are high re: COVID-19. Everything is re-opening. Our store has been opened for almost three weeks at this point. For a while I was having daily disagreements with people about whether or not they needed to wear a mask in our shop. It was wearing me down. Today I’m not feeling quite so worn down but it’s probably because I’ve gotten better at listening to the way my body gives me cues about what it needs. Like this morning when my body told me to quit scrolling Facebook after I found out about the latest, violent, despicable thing our president tweeted.

With all of that going on, it really does feel like kind of an asshole move to write about all the books I read this month! But also, my brain needs a break or it will break. We rest and then we keep fighting. We rest and then we keep fighting. This is a moment of rest. Here’s what I read in May.

(Reminder, all the links to these books go to support our store through libro.fm.)

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The Imperfects by Amy Meyerson, 4-Stars
This was a really fun family story. In the beginning, it started off a little bit like This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Trooper (another one of my all time favorites). It’s got some family drama but it’s also got a bit of WW2 survival and at the center of it all is some kind of jewel heist? I’d love to hear Amy Meyerson’s pitch for this book because there’s a lot but I feel like she made it all work! I only gave it 4-stars though because there were times that I couldn’t tell what the author was going for. Was I reading a dark family drama? Or was it a fun romp? Because it was definitely both? And that was confusing to me.

The Knockout Queen by Rufi Thorpe, 5-stars
I… loved… this… book. It made me feel some things. As I’ve mentioned in my previous What I Read This Month Posts, I haven’t been able to read anything with much heft to it since Coronavirus hit. My brain needs light and fluffy. This book… is not light and fluffy in the least bit and yet somehow I was sucked into it. And it felt so good to feel that again. To feel like, “this is why we read!”
In fact I basically wrote a love letter to Rufi Thorpe on instagram and then she DM’d me to tell me that what I’d said meant so much to her.

While this book takes place in high-school, it’s not a YA book at all. It doesn’t read like YA to me. It’s the story of a friendship–and some traumatic things that took place during that friendship, as told from an adult perspective looking back.

Beach Read by Emily Henry 5-stars
Here’s another book that wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I see “beach read” and I think, “OKAY! Get ready for some mindless, predictable literature!” Which, I believe, completely has its place. This book, though… had so much depth to it. It had some real sexy sex scenes, too, don’t get me wrong. But this book is not all cotton candy. It’s the best of both worlds–a book that won’t traumatize me in an already challenging time while also singing to my high-literature-loving heart.

All Adults Here by Emma Straub, 5-stars
Another 5-star book for me. This month was a GOOD ONE for reading, finally!! I have loved Emma Straub since I read Modern Lovers a few years ago. If I had to tell you the one central thing that this story is about, I’m not sure I could do it. It’s the way that everyone in a family has their own story and the contributes to the bigger story as a whole–as a family. I don’t know if you can tell but an epic family drama is my favorite. That’s not what this is. It’s not epic–it takes place over the course of a few months. It’s not a drama–there is a lot of comedy and light. There’s conflict but that’s necissary to driving a plot along. I love it. I feel like Emma Straub writes different ages effortlessly and blends in queer stories as if they’re *gasp* just, like, normal human stories! Not something to be wedged into a book to make it “relevant”. Ugh. I just really liked this.

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In retrospect, I read only white stories written by only white people this month. I hadn’t even noticed that until just now. WOW. My blind spots are real. I’m going to make a point to read more books by people of color in June. Starting with Wandering in Strange Lands by Morgan Jerkins.

I’m also looking forward to engaging with the Summer Listening Challenge that Libro.fm is hosting starting June 1! It’s so great. Basically there’s a bingo card and you try to get a bingo! The winner gets… I think a year’s worth of free audiobooks! Let me know if you plan to join in!!