Summer Loving

Summer is taking its sweet time in arriving here in the Pacific Northwest. But with temps finally exceeding 70 degrees, I’ll be putting away the cozy mysteries and cracking open a few beach reads.  

Crying in the Bathroom by  Erika Sánchez

Invisible Things by Mat Johnson

Olga Dies Dreaming  by Xochitl Gonzalez

Sabrina and Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine

The Hotel Nantucket by Elin Hilderbrand

Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri,

True Biz by Sara Nović,

Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour

 

Thanks to the following lists for the above suggestions:

Books for summer 2022 (Chicago Tribune)

Book recommendations for 50 states  (NPR)

21 books to read this summer (The Washington Post)

Keeping the Spheres in Alignment

 It’s been awhile since my daughter looked up from her book and said, “Listen to this.” But somehow the book I had put in my son’s Easter basket this year ended up on her TBR pile. As she was reading Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence by Michael Marshall Smith -while savoring her 15 ingredient salad (another thing I love about her)- she smiled and said those magic words.

It's now making the rounds from my nightstand to my husband's. Fans of  Neil Gaiman take note. You won't be disappointed by the premise, humor, or observations about life. 

“And so later Hannah was back at the kitchen table in her house. Sitting where she’d sat earlier. Her place. Hannah didn’t know that humankind has a deep-set belief in the idea that we create and maintain reality through ritual, that repeated actions are what keep the spheres in alignment. She also didn’t know that it doesn’t work, and that there are far older, more complex, and much darker designs in motion, ones that override ours as effortlessly as a crack of thunder blotting out birdsong.”

"you'll only ruin each other"

Did you fantasize about attending boarding school when you were young? No, me either. (I did, however, long to have a turret bedroom like Anastasia Krupnik.)

For some reason, I’ve been drawn to books about the boarding school experience lately. Here are three I recommend that delve into the privilege, drama, and microaggressions of these elite institutions.

Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School by Kendra James

All These Beautiful Strangers by Elizabeth Klehfoth

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by e. Lockhart