Volume 2, No. 31: Awesome Bookish People Recommend Their Favorite Summer Reads + It's Too Hot to Bake

Greetings, book and treat people! I am back home in my little corner of Western Mass and happy to be here. I’ve been swimming in the river every day and eating tomatoes at every meal. But, despite how much I love tomatoes and the river, it’s no secret that summer is Not My Time. I am so over it. If I could teleport forward to mid-October, I would. I am literally counting down the days. 51 days until October 1st. If I keep repeating this to myself, will August go by faster?

Alas, it is only August 10th, and while every day that brings us closer to fall fills me with joy, I know the opposite is true for many of you, and that the end of summer brings with it a sense of dread. Happily for everyone in the “yay summer” camp, there’s still plenty of summer left, which means there’s still plenty of time for summer reading.

Summer reading means something different to everyone you ask. So I asked four of my bookish friends and colleagues for a summer reading rec—and they delivered! They all have incredible taste. Two of these books are on my TBR, and the other two I’ve read—and I love them as much as I love winter.

Huge thanks to Rebecca, Kendra, Lupita, and Cassie for these fantastic guest recs. They all have bookish newsletters I wholeheartedly recommend—so go show them some love!

The Books

Rebecca Hussey recommends Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam (Fiction, 2021)

Rebecca writes Reading Indie, a newsletter I love for the new books it introduces me to! She highlights indie press books, with a focus on nonfiction and books in translation. Her reviews are always thoughtful—I enjoy reading them for their own sake even when they’re about books I’m not especially excited about. Of course, I’ve also added a ton of books to my TBR thanks to her. At the top of my list: The Second Body, Blackfishing the IUD, and In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. And it’s always a treat when she reviews books I’ve also loved—such as White Magic and Breasts and Eggs. Here’s her summer reading rec—I’m terrified to pick this one up, but I am definitely intrigued:

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam is my idea of a great summer read: it’s atmospheric, absorbing, and a thought-provoking page-turner. I forget the book’s exact timeframe, but it tells the story of a vacation, and the summer vibes are strong. The characters go swimming, hang out on the beach, and eat ice cream.

But this is no escapist novel. The main characters are trying to escape Brooklyn to a luxury Airbnb on Long Island. At first all goes well. The early sections of the novel are deliciously satirical: Alam perfectly captures upper-middle-class New Yorkers in all their self-absorbed glory.

And then strange things begin to happen. A couple unexpectedly shows up at their door, and it turns out that they are the home’s owners. They report that New York City is under a blackout, and they want to stay in their house to wait it out. The house loses wifi and phone service. And then nature goes haywire; deer flock together and flamingoes hang out on the lawn. They hear a frighteningly loud boom. They are desperate to know what is going on, but have no way to find out.

As a blend of literary fiction and horror, Leave the World Behind is gorgeously written and impossible to put down. It will make you think and feel things and then look around you to make sure everything is okay. It will leave you disturbed and satisfied and ready for some peaceful, reassuring time in the sun. 

Kendra Winchester recommends Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (Fiction, 2012)

My fellow Rioter and audiophile Kendra writes the fantastic Winchester Ave, a newsletter about ‘living life as a disabled millennial”, books, Appalachia, and a whole lot more. I really appreciate her blend of book reviews and personal writing—and, it goes without saying if you follow Kendra anywhere on the internet, unparalleled Corgi content. A few books on my TBR thanks to her: Giving Up the Ghost and A Face for Picasso. Here’s her rec for a summer read—one that I’ve been meaning to get to forever:

When I think about summer reading, my mind always returns to Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward. From the first few paragraphs, Salvage the Bones transports you to the days leading up to when Hurricane Katrina made landfall in the late summer of 2005. 

Near a bayou on the coast of Mississippi, Esch lives with her motherless family—three brothers and a father who constantly escapes his life through alcohol. They live in the house dust with red clay, surrounded by a junk yard, a place her family calls “The Pit.” Esch escapes The Pit through the books she reads, specifically identifying with Medea in the book Mythology. Like Medea’s passion for Jason, Esch loves Manny, a boy who, to her, shines like the golden sun. Unable to bear confessing her love, she lets him have whatever he wants, the act embodying her silent wish for him to love her. 

While the story is often harrowing, the prose winds its way through your mind, making the violent descriptions seem simultaneously harsh and beautiful. Ward writes with the confidence of her protagonist, imbuing Esch with such complexity and emotional depth. You can’t help but know you are reading a master at her craft.

Lupita Aquino recommends All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankan Mathews (Fiction, 2022)

Lupita of Lupita Reads is one of the first bookstagramers I followed way back before I even knew what Bookstagram was. Her reviews are warm and personal and often funny, and yes, my TBR of Latinx books is positively overflowing thanks to her. In her newsletter, Nuevas Páginas con Lupita, she interviews Hispanic/Latinx/e authors about their recent books. Her interview questions are a fantastic blend of silly and serious. I always come away either wanting to read the book, or with a new perspective on a book I’ve read. I enjoyed her interviews with Alejandro Varela and Edgar Gomez (both of whose books I loved) and I can’t wait to read You Sound Like a White Girl and Breathe and Count Back From Ten.

She obviously has the best taste in books, because her summer reading rec is one of my all-time favorites. Here’s what she has to say about it:

The perfect summer book I would recommend is All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankan Mathews. Sneha, the main protagonist, is a queer Indian immigrant navigating that often messy gap between finishing college and figuring out what comes next. Which threw me back to that awkwardness that was my own 20s and for that I really appreciated reading this novel in the heat of the summer! I cringed, laughed, cried when it ended, which is what made is such a perfect summer book for me. But ultimately, I ended up falling in love with the book because we get to witness this really messy and complicated character heal and “grow up” and that made my heart grow three sizes bigger.

Cassie Gutman recommends The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka (Fiction, 2022)

My fellow Rioter Cassie writes Reading Under the Radar, a lovely little newsletter full of recommendations for books you’ve likely never heard of. I’d never heard of Rough Magic (a book about a 1,000 mile horse race across Mongolia) until she wrote about it, and now I must have it. She reads widely across genres, including some I rarely venture into, namely mysteries and thrillers. So if you’re looking for great recs you probably won’t find here, head on over to Cassie’s newsletter! She also sometimes reads books I love (check out her great review of We Play Ourselves), as evidenced by her summer reading pick. I read The Swimmers last fall, so if you’re new here, you might have missed my review. Happily, Cassie is here to remind you that this book is absolutely brilliant and not to be missed:

This slim novel packs a hell of a punch, and the words I use to talk about it don't do it a bit of justice. It's a book about swimmers and swimming, but it's also not about that at all. I picked up lap swimming during the pandemic and found it to be incredibly meditative, which is why I knew this book would draw me in instantly. It begins with a discussion about the various swimmers who attend the pool, but it also moves away into their separate lives and how the water affects them. As a person who absolutely cannot live without water (by which I mean a body of, not the hydrating source, which we all, of course, need), no other book this summer has felt so personal and so profound. 

The Bake

I was going to make chocolate zucchini bread, because it’s summer, and there’s always zucchini around, and honestly, it’s always delicious (with the right recipe, anyway). But, my friends, I could not make myself turn on the oven. I just couldn’t do it.

I was going to make something else, something that doesn’t require an oven, like this dreamy-sounding no churn crème fraîche and blueberry ice cream or these key lime popsicles. But I didn’t have the right ingredients, and, you guessed it—too hot to get in my car and go to the store.

There is no bake at the end of this story. Sometimes that’s the way it goes. Instead, here are three more reasons to get excited about fall—cookbooks I can’t wait to get my hands on!

• Justice of the Pies by Maya-Camille Broussard: Do you really need to know anything about this besides the title? I don’t.

• Diasporican by Illyanna Maisonet: This cookbook of Puerto Rican recipes traces the history of the Puerto Rican diaspora in the US as well as the cultures that have shaped Puerto Rican cuisine. It’s not a baking book, but it sounds amazing.

• Smitten Kitchen Keepers by Deb Perelman: I do use her blog more often than I turn to her cookbooks, but will that stop me from buying this? No. It sounds excellent.

The Bowl & The Beat

The Bowl: Beautiful Summer Veg Bowl

Look, I love a lot of things that happen in summer, okay? I just wish it never got above 65 or was only a month long. Sometimes I go here and dream about spending a few weeks writing in a place where the average summer temperature is 50 degrees. Anyway, vegetables are pretty great.

Open a can of chickpeas and fry them in some hot olive oil until they get nice and crispy. Sprinkle with salt and red pepper flakes and transfer to a bowl. Add a small cucumber, sliced; a bunch of cherry tomatoes, halved; a handful of chopped parsley; a hardboiled egg or two, chopped; a bunch of crumbled feta; and a few more glugs of olive oil. What a bright and beautiful lunch (or dinner).

The Beat: Calling for a Blanket Dance by Oscar Hokeah, read by Oscar Hokeah and Rainy Fields

I love this so far! It’s a kaleidoscopic novel about Ever Geimausaddle, an Indigenous man making his way through the world, trying to figure out who he is and what he wants and where he fits inside the story of his family, culture, people, place. It moves around in time and POV—so far I’ve listened to sections centering his grandfather, grandmother, mother, and cousin. The narration is fantastic. I’m especially impressed with Hokeah, who narrates all the sections told in male POVs. He uses a distinct voice for each character, but there’s an underlying similarity in his narration that also highlights the connections between them.

The Bookshelf

A Picture

I need to set aside a whole weekend for working on my commonplace book; the stack of books I’ve finished and need to copy down passages from is getting unwieldy.

Around the Internet

For Audiofile, I wrote about three audiobooks that beautifully blend grief and joy. On Book Riot, I wrote about how much I love books about queer parenthood, even though I don’t want kids.

Bonus: My Summer Reading Recs

You knew it was coming. Here are a few of my favorite anti-summer reading recs to keep you cool and dreaming of snow: An African in Greenland By Tété-Michel Kpomassie, tr. by James Kirkup (memoir); Rising From Ash by Jax Meyer (sapphic romance set in Antarctica!); and Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice (post-apocalyptic fiction).

The Boost

Disability activist, author, founder of the Disability Visibility Project, and all-around fierce visionary leader Alice Wong experienced several medical crises this summer. Her community is organizing a fundraiser to pay for her home care needs, which, infuriatingly, aren’t covered by insurance. Please donate here if you can.

It’s August, and August means The Sealey Challenge! This is the second year I’ve done it and it’s one of the things that makes August bearable. August is when my deepest summer fatigue and depression sets in. Surrounding myself with poetry is a way to counteract it—to make space for wonder.

Some poems I love by new-to-me poets I’ve read this month:

• Entire Known World So Far by Carl Phillips

• Consider the Hands that Write This Letter by Aracelis Girmay

• Photosynthesis by Ashely M. Jones

• Strology Capricorn by Shauna Barbosa (I loved all of her strology poems but this is my sign, so)

As always, a little bit of beauty to send you on your way: It was a joy to come home for a thousand reasons, and one of them is my rubber tree, which is apparently unstoppable!

Catch you next week, bookish friends!