i spent all my money on books and oops now i'm poor
everything i'm reading this summer (and beyond)
In the past month or so, like a maniac, I’ve purchased one million books. I’m scared to know the exact number. Twenty-five? Thirty? It’s a lot. My new books join the sixty or so already in stacks all over my house. Like it’s fully insane, it will take me literal years to get through them all.
I’m trying to make a pact with myself not to buy any more books for the rest of the year. This already feels impossible. For one, basically every week my bestie Jeremy and I go to Chili’s and bitch about being artists over queso. And then we wander Half Price Books. When we’re there, I’m in full communion with childhood Adrienne whose mom would take her to the Krochs & Brentano’s at the mall and she’d let me buy one million Sweet Valley Highs. Buying books was our main bonding activity. In the summers we’d drive all the way to the glamorous North Shore to the Brandeis Book Fair and I’d fill big paper grocery bags with all the V.C. Andrews and then we’d go to Hackney’s for lunch. It was heaven!
Ugh, I love bookstores. Jeremy and I also spend a lot of time at Women & Children First in Andersonville, and I love this adorable romance book shop in Roscoe Village, The Last Chapter, and my Evanston independent shop Bookends & Beginnings, and I really want to check out Armadillo’s Pillow in Rogers Park but I’m trying not to buy any more books! Sometimes I’m even guilty of visiting a Barnes & Nobles or <gasp> adding to cart.
Ultimately, though, I think the truth of my book buying obsession is this: I like a book to call to me when it’s time to read it. And I never know when that might be! I like to wander my stacks until something calls to me. Maybe it’s a book that’s in conversation with something I’m writing, or something happening in my life, or I need a pick me up, or I’m desperate to get lost in a 600 page tome. Either way, I love my little ritual because it feels like the books are alive, like I’m alive, and we’re in conversation about, well, life.
I know! You had no idea I was this woo woo!
Anyway, tldr, I hope you find something in my TBR pile you feel compelled to buy immediately because I’d prefer to not be the only maniac in town. Also if you read ten books this summer, you get a personal pan pizza!
i’m drop everything dying to read
The Bee Sting, Same As It Ever Was, and Long Island Compromise are all family dramas that I can’t wait to dive into. I’ve been waiting to read The Bee Sting because it’s long as hell and I want to read it when I have a good amount of time to spend with it, so I’m thinking maybe when we’re in Door County in July. I was absolutely OBSESSED with both Claire Lombardo’s and Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s first books — The Most Fun We Ever Had and Fleishman Is In Trouble — so I’m thrilled that they’re both giving me new books this summer. I will drop whatever I’m reading to spend time with Same As It Ever Was and Long Island Compromise, no woo woo necessary.
books i was a little meh about but other people say are must reads
Miranda July is just cooler and artsier than I am, so I don’t always get it. But everyone is saying that All Fours is not only “the definitive book on perimenopause,” — I mean WHAT — but also it’s like porn. And since I want to put a lot of sex in my next book, I said, fine, here I am Miranda, let’s go. The Husbands has got some magical realism with a bunch of random husbands coming out of the attic, and I can be very literal so I wasn’t sure if it was for me, but people love this book and it takes place in London, so ok, maybe I do want to imagine life with a bunch of different men? In Memoriam is about World War I, so like, I’m out. Except it’s got gay soldiers? I’m back in.
when my friends tell me i’m going to like something, i listen
My boy Michael at work who loves all the same reality shows I love recommended Big Swiss because he says it’s very funny and he knows I like to laugh. Also, this cover! Sold! Bestie Taylor recommended The Confession and I have no idea what it’s about, but I do what she tells me because no one knows me better. And then Jeremy’s husband Andy told me he loved Dear Edward and thought it was even better than Hello, Beautiful, which I adored, so, oops, *adds to cart*.
books my instagram and podcast feeds said i had to read immediately
Everyone is talking about I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself, which is the true story of a middle aged woman in Paris doing whatever the fuck she wants. YES, PLEASE! I heard about Private Arrangements on a romance podcast and I don’t usually read bodice rippers, but I thought, you know what, this sounds great? Apparently a couple in an arranged marriage lives apart in Britain for like twenty years until one day she asks to be released from the marriage and that’s when the fucking begins. Sign me up! The Atlantic’s insta account told me about In the Act, supposedly a cult classic about an unhappy marriage, and, honestly, I love a dysfunctional marriage and this one’s a novella, so even better.
Some more buzzy books in my stacks:
Aesthetica, in which an influencer type removes all her filler-y type things and regresses to normalcy.
Before Sex and the City there was 1958’s The Best of Everything, a classic about women trying to make it in New York’s cut throat world of publishing!
North Woods is one of those books written by a doctor, which just makes me mad, like do you have to be good at everything???? But people say it’s amazing. It’s about a cabin and the people who live there over the course of centuries.
books i bought two seconds after i committed to not buying books for the rest of the year
This was not my fault!!! Even though I told him about my dream of making it through the rest of the year without buying more books, after Chili’s Jeremy wanted to go to Barnes & Nobles and I saw The One and Only Family and I knew my kid would want it because he loves The One and Only Ivan, so once I decided I was going to buy that, it was like a gateway drug!!!! Then I couldn’t resist The Paris Novel because it’s about a single woman in Paris and it’s my dream to be a single woman in Paris. GAH, NOW I HAVE TWO BOOKS ABOUT MIDDLE AGED WOMEN EATING CHEESE IN PARIS. And Jeremy bought nothing.
Thank you for going on this journey with me. Your reward is the funniest lit meme of all time:
I'm sitting at my dining room table and staring at a million books I did not mention, lol. Kevin Kwan's Lies and Weddings; Seven Days in June, Tia Williams; The Divorcees, Rowan Beaird; Dear Girls, Ali Wong; The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver; The Unhoneymooners, Christina Lauren; This Summer Will be Different, Carley Fortune
I will follow you to the end of the Earth, but if Miranda July shows up ... IM OUT. Also I'm going to B&N today -- should I Instagram Live it?? I'm going to actually buy some things. PROMISE. x