July 2020 Reads

I read a lot this month! Thank you, vacation week! Here are my thoughts on these 8 titles:

You know how every once in a while there's a book that moves you to take pictures of different pages so you can later refer to facts or quotes, and/or you keep bringing up things you learned with other people? That's what Cathy Park Hong's Minor Feelings was for me. This was a fascinating read; a memoir, yes, but also part cultural commentary and history.

First time (finally) reading Curtis Sittenfeld. I actually didn't realize You Think It I'll Say It was a series of short stories until I received it and that was a nice change of pace! Her writing is wonderful, though I will say that after focusing on a lot of POC novels the privileged lens of the characters was sometimes a little hard to stomach.

I know I'm also late to the party reading Maid by Stephanie Land, and it's unusual for me to read two memoirs in a month but WOW my eyes were opened considerably to the multidimensional challenges of poverty. I couldn't stop thinking about her statement about how the system makes it incredibly laborious to prove that you are poor.

Conviction by Denise Mina is a very engaging thriller, and was especially fun to read as a podcaster, since the story is based around a podcast!

I often cringe once I start reading a book and realize that it's going to be a story about Internet life. It's similar to how I brace myself for movies with actors attempting Boston accents! But Big Summer by Jennifer Wiener was a really fun read, with Instagram influencer life (sometimes painfully) well portrayed.

I was rooting for Tyson Trice the whole time in A Love Hate Thing by Whitney Grandison.

This summer I decided I wanted to read a novel aloud with Violet and wow, did it end up being so lovely and cuddly. We read Wonder by R.J. Palacio )which I did not read when Laurel read it) and my eyes may or may not have been leaking at various points in the book. Violet loved it too.

The only problem with Katherine Center's books is that they don't last long enough! Yet again, I could not put her new novel What You Wish For down and I devoured it within 24 hours. More please, Katherine!