The Great Summer Books Round Up

Things I Loved Lately: Only Books!

Hello! Welcome to the Big Summer Books Round Up! I hope you find what you need here! 

I have basically tried to give, like, pairings (yes Casey McQuiston is on this list) and triplets, with further reading if you want? Basically these are like little menus for you. What I love is when I read books in a row that kind of seem to speak to each other, and I wind up feeling bigger and better and more coherent and full of ideas, even when those books are different. 

These are all things I have read in the last 6 months, not necessarily a list of my lifetime classics! These are mostly new-ish books, with a couple of notable exceptions because I just read them for the first time and loved them. It is worth noting that those exceptions are here because someone at the library put them in a prominent place. Go to your local library! More than anything else, I think, libraries encourage wide and bonkers ways to read. I take out anything that takes my fancy– no second guessing– and don’t feel guilt about abandoning any of them because they were all free. Libraries! Use them! Libraries get funding based on use! 

Other things to know: none of these books are vegetables, as in, eat your vegetables. Or maybe they are vegetables but the time that you discover that vegetables can also be a major and delicious treat? Like the greens at Dishoom or a honey-roasted carrot. Every single one is a page-turner, genuinely, and I do not have the patience to read a book because I think I ought to read it. No: these are all genuinely fun books you will have a fun and interesting time reading! 

***

Books To Read When Everyone Else Is Going Away Except You:

So listen, you know that bit of the summer when it feels like you have no friends? This used to get me deep in the blues when I was a kid. Everyone is on holiday! Everyone except you is at Centreparcs! Everyone except you is going down the big slide and learning archery and living under the huge glass dome of Centreparcs! (Did anyone else believe this? I thought for some reason Centreparcs were all under huge glass domes. No, I have never been.) Anyway: everyone is out of town except you and nobody is around and you hit this moment of summer where you think: I have no friends! But you do. They are just all on holiday. Until they come back, though, here’s three books full of friends for you. The first one is Greta & Valdin, by Rebecca K. Reilly, which is my book of the summer. It is so funny and good and sad and full of family in all forms. Do you want to be part of a messy-sweet-stupid-gorgeous-chaos Maori-Russian household where everyone is arguing and falling in love and reading and dating and getting so lost in the woods that they have to call their ex-boyfriend on Find My Friends to come and get them out? Greta & Valdin are siblings who suck at dating and live together and both are trying so hard to be happy and I loved them so much, I cannot believe I don’t know them. To sell you this book I must tell you that I have bought it in hardback twice and now have to buy a third copy because I have given away both others.