August Reading Recap
13 reads? or is it 11? including women in translation and diversifying my reading (meaning: I Read an Oprah's Book Club Pick Written By A White Man)
In this issue: reviews for my 13 August Reads!
If you’re getting this in your inbox, it’s chock-full of my book yapping and, because of that, will appear clipped in your email— hop onto a computer or view it in the Substack app for a more ideal reading experience. :)
EVERYBODY’S FAVORITE: TALES FROM THE WORLD’S WORST PERFECTIONIST by Lillian Stone | 5 stars | audio
Shut up, everyone. I’ve got a new writer crush. Lillian Stone is about my age, and she’s also one of my favorite follows on Substack. I’d already mentioned her in my Virgo season reads because of her perfectionist-adjacent vibe, but didn’t yet give it a full review. This was a five-star read for me, and easily my favorite of the month. I binge-listened on audio straight through on a car drive up to North Carolina, and I literally laughed out loud to myself. Multiples times.
If you grew up in the South or the Ozarks, or really anywhere Bible Belt–ish in the early to mid-2000s, Stone’s collection will feel instantly familiar. Her essays weave together themes of religious trauma (evangelical and Baptist culture especially), small-town quirks, family life, and the absurdities of tween girlhood shaped by Seventeen magazine and AOL. If you don’t have any sort of tie to purity ring culture, messy college sorority life, or the Missouri theme park Silver Dollar City, you may not find it as relatable, but I guarantee you’ll still love it. Some essay titles that got me immediately: “I’m A Clog Bitch Now, Part 2” and “The Poor Man’s Steve Irwin.”
Beyond the humor, the book also touches on Lillian’s struggles with OCD and how that intersects with perfectionism, which made it a bit deeper than just a reflection on Y2K cringe. While the whole thing gave me the nostalgic vibe of a middle school sleepover: personality quizzes, Lisa Frank stickers, and asking someone if they had gum, it also exposed a lot of self-deprecating vulnerability that I found deeply relatable. Totally delightful, and easily one of the most fun and affirming reads I’ve had in a while.
Similar reads: LITTLE WEIRDS by Jenny Slate, ONE IN A MILLENNIAL by Kate Kennedy, TEXTS FROM JANE EYRE by Mallory Ortberg
THE DEEPEST LAKE by Andromeda Romano-Lax | 4.25 stars | audio
If the words “writing retreat,”“luxury,” or “travel gone wrong” are mentioned in a blurb for a thriller, I’m there. This one had all three! AND it was good, which doesn’t always happen! The Deepest Lake is an atmospheric thriller set at a luxury memoir-writing workshop on the shores of Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. When Rose’s daughter Jules, an aspiring writer, drowns under suspicious circumstances, Rose goes undercover at the retreat to figure out what really happened.
I thought this was really well done. In addition to all the buzzwords above, I also looooove a chaotic person with a cult of personality, which is exactly what the writer running this retreat brings to the table. Jules and Rose’s perspectives were deep and well fleshed-out, and for the most part I felt like it was perfectly balanced between description, introspection, and realistic dialogue. I ate it up.
Overall, it’s still a thriller, but more literary as thrillers go. Not necessarily something that will stick with me forever, but it was juicy. Very well-written, well above your average popcorn thriller, and I want more like this!!
Similar reads: THE GOD OF THE WOODS by Liz Moore, WHO IS MAUD DIXON? by Alexandra Andrews, WHAT HAPPENED TO NINA? by Dervla McTiernan
COLORED TELEVISION by Danzy Senna | 4.25 stars | Libby ebook
Jane, an academic who’s just finished a book project she calls her “mulatto War and Peace.” She’s convinced it’s going to be her big break, but her editor and agent hate it. Jane lies to her husband about its prospects and then gets herself tangled further by trying to use her friend’s connections to get in with a television agent. Basically, all she does is write book and lie.
If you’ve read Percival Everett’s ERASURE, you know that it was turned into the hit movie AMERICAN FICTION. Knowing that Danzy Senna is Everett’s wife, who likely sat front-seat to the adaptation process, gives this book some cool meta-context that I think helps deepen the work. The book is essentially about the cascading consequences of poor choices: Jane keeps digging herself into deeper and deeper holes. It’s cringe-inducing, darkly funny, and insanely infuriating to watch, but I quite liked it.
It was a bit slow to start and the “stolen story/imposter author” angle does feel like it’s edging the end of overdone in the book business (YELLOWFACE, WHO IS MAUD DIXON?, and ERASURE itself have done it already; I don’t know if they’ve all done it ~better, but certainly before). Still, Senna brings her own sharp voice and perspective, and that mix of wryness and chaotic consequences made it a highly entertaining read.
Similar books: YELLOWFACE by R. F. Kuang, AMERICAN MERMAID by Julia Langbein, JULIE CHAN IS DEAD by Liann Zhang
I FOUND YOU by Lisa Jewell | 3.75 stars | audio
Set in a seaside British town, the story opens with a single mom discovering a man on the beach—no name, no jacket, no memory of how he got there. Meanwhile, in London, newlywed Lily grows anxious when her husband doesn’t return from work, only to learn from the police that he supposedly never existed.
Lisa Jewell can do no wrong! This is just a straight-up well-crafted thriller! The novel follows multiple interconnected characters in a small town, unraveling mysteries about the man on the beach, Lily’s husband, and the town’s past. The writing is polished, the characters are believable, and the twists land effectively. I found it to be a mystery with substance, moreso than THE CLUB, which is later on this list, and my test for a solid thriller was surpassed: I was kept guessing and couldn’t predict too much of what happened!
Similar books: 56 DAYS by Catherine Ryan Howard, JUST ANOTHER MISSING PERSON by Gillian McAllister, any other Lisa Jewell books
STANDING HEAVY by GauZ’ (translated from the French by Frank Wynne) | 3.75 stars | Libby ebook
This has been on my radar for a while and I was pumped when my Libby hold came in! Told through kaleidoscopic vignettes and observations, the novel shifts between different points-of-view of Ivorian immigrants in Paris, many of whom are undocumented and working as security guards. GauZ’ holds no punches with his sharp, sardonic commentary on consumer culture, racism, and human behavior. One storyline I especially liked was a guard observing everyone who comes into a Sephora on the Champs-Élysées, categorizing them into types of customers and predicting their behaviors like an armchair anthropologist. Let me get real postcolonial nerd for a moment: that shift in gaze, of a formerly colonized, now independent constituency (Côte d'Ivoire) being able to migrate to, surveil, and skate the rules of the heart of the former colonist (Paris), was chef’s kiss.
The book spans decades—from the 1960s to the 1990s to the 2010s—showing how French immigration policy has shifted over time. Some of the “discussion” sections where students are debating policy got a bit dense for me, and I sometimes felt the book veered back and forth too much, but never to the point where I felt whiplash or didn’t know what we were talking about. GauZ’’s (how do you apostrophe an apostrophe?) voice was bitingly strong, and the book gave me a lot of context about migration in France and its shifting population.
Similar reads: HOW TO KIDNAP THE RICH by Rahul Raina; not a read, but the television show LUPIN; and BEHOLD THE DREAMERS by Imbolo Mbue for a more straight-novel depiction of similar themes.
BITTER ORANGE TREE by Jokha Alharthi (translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Booth) | 3.75 stars | audio
I picked this one up on audio for Women in Translation Month! It’s a very character-driven book that follows Zuhour, a young Omani woman studying at a British university, as she reflects on the relationships and histories that shaped her life.
Much of the book centers on her memories of Bint Amir, the woman she considered a grandmother. Through a fragmented, mosaic-like narrative, we see Bint Amir’s struggles with poverty, gender roles, and social status in Oman, and how those struggles ultimately laid the groundwork for Zuhour’s family’s greater success and for Zuhour’s present-day understanding of the world. The writing was gorgeous and tender, full of organic reflection and delicious imagery that I thought beautifully captured how one generation’s sacrifices ripple into the lives of the next.
That said, Zuhour’s timeline was kinda wack? The fragmented structure sometimes left me adrift, especially as she kept voyeuristically inhabiting the love story of her wealthy college classmate’s sister and that sister’s forbidden marriage to a lower-status man. I couldn’t quite parse what was happening there? Did Zuhour want to get with the friend’s husband…? Or was it a true “lost in translation” moment?
Still, the prose was striking and poetic, and the interwoven lives of Zuhour and Bint Amir resonated in images that I won’t soon forget.
Similar books: SALT HOUSES by Hala Alyan, THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET by Sandra Cisneros, A WOMAN IS NO MAN by Etaf Rum
SHANGHAILANDERS by Juli Min | 3.75 stars | audio
SHANGHAILANDERS is a vignette-driven story told in retrospect beginning in 2040, starting with Leo, a real estate investor in Shanghai, then moving to his wife Eko (who’s Japanese and French), and their three daughters, Yumi, Yoko, and Kiko. The chapters continue back to 2014, when Leo and Eko married, and gradually unpacks the secrets and intertwined lives of the family members and those around them, including their household help and grandparents.
Lots of positives in this one: the Shanghai of this book is a cool slightly speculative setting, the writing is lyrical and beautiful, the storytelling was layered, and the reverse timeline intrigued me. But what got me was that I felt DUPED into a short story collection rather than interconnected narrative novel. I love the latter trope— distinct perspectives that fit back together and inform characters’ actions or worldviews in retrospect, like in Alina Grabowski’s WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST— but I felt the Yangs’ separate stories lacked some connective tissue. If I had gone into it thinking it was a short story collection, maybe I would have liked it more! But as it stood, I wanted a bit more resolution rather than so much slice-of-life storytelling.
I particularly enjoyed the perspectives of the nanny, the driver, and even Eko toward the end, who grew on me—they brought depth and nuance to characters in a way that I didn’t feel I got with Leo or the sisters. While Min’s book didn’t satisfy my desire for tied-up endings, it was still an engaging and thoughtful read. I would read another piece by her!
Similar books: THE OFFICE OF HISTORICAL CORRECTIONS by Danielle Evans, THE FORTUNES OF JADED WOMEN by Carolyn Huynh, — and honestly, CRAZY RICH ASIANS (but this was a little deeper and less saccharine) by Kevin Kwan
THE COPENHAGEN TRILOGY by Tove Ditlevsen (translated from the Danish by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman) | 3.5 stars | audio
Thought daughters of the world, get ready. If you love Sylvia Plath, have I got another depressing-ass white lady for youuuuu! THE COPENHAGEN TRILOGY— composed of CHILDHOOD, YOUTH, AND DEPENDENCY, each around 100-something pages—is a canonical piece of confessional writing that follows Ditlevsen’s trajectory from a misfit little girl in working-class Vesterbro, obsessed with becoming a poet, to a young woman testing independence through sex and work, and finally to her early marriages and harrowing descent into drug addiction, enabled by her gaslighting doctor-husband.
Girls, grab your Lexapro. Born in 1917, Ditlevsen is recounting her years from about the 1920s-1940s, so the depiction of poverty, illness, and survival in Copenhagen is startling, especially when contrasted with how hipster-esque and gentrified Vesterbro feels now a century later. Plus, Ditlevsen’s tone is detached and almost clinical, which makes the devastation hit harder. That perspective—from a working-class woman in mid-20th-century Denmark—must have been a pioneering shock when first published. All I have to say is I simply Would Have Passed Away from some of these medical issues that arise in her childhood! I am not strong enough!
I found the final two volumes stronger than CHILDHOOD, which lingers intensely on her eagerness to shed her early years. Ditlevsen’s writing is difficult to recommend casually because of its heaviness, but it’s undeniably powerful.
Similar books: THE BELL JAR by Sylvia Plath, obvs; for more modern, AESTHETICA by Allie Rowbottom or TRESPASSES by Louise Kennedy would have similar vibes
THE CLUB by Ellery Lloyd | 3.5 stars | audio
The Home Group, an elite chain of celebrity-only members’ clubs where the rich and famous can indulge, misbehave, and disappear from public scrutiny, has opened up its newest project, a resort off the English coast. Its three-day launch party is billed as the A-list event of the year, but behind the scenes, long-serving staff, family members, and execs are stretched to breaking point, each one (of course!) carrying secrets that threaten to boil over as the weekend spirals into murder.
It has all the trappings of a smart social satire—an exclusive setting, spoiled celebrities, power games, and a slow-unraveling body count—but I found it very formulaic. There were too many perspectives without strong distinctions between voices, and much of the plotting felt predictable once the setup was in place. I wish I’d actually made a little cheat sheet of who was who at the beginning. Ultimately, it read like a middle-of-the-road thriller. Fine, but nothing that will stick with me. Even now I don’t really remember anyone’s names.
Similar reads: BAD TOURISTS by Caro Carver, THE MIDNIGHT FEAST by Lucy Foley, THE INHERITANCE by Trisha Sakhlecha
CULPABILITY by Bruce Holsinger | 3 stars | audio
I liked the premise of this one, which starts with a dramatic car crash involving a family whose minivan collides with an oncoming vehicle. The teenage son is driving, his father is supposed to be supervising, the tweens in the back are on their phones, and the mom—an AI expert—is focused on her work. Each family member has secrets that might implicate them in the accident. Afterwards, they retreat to Chesapeake Bay, where the fallout from the crash unfolds in surprising and sometimes bizarre ways.
Conceptually, it was intriguing and had potential! I love to think about the concepts they’re thinking about— culpability, chains of actions that add up to larger consequences, networks of privilege scaffolding the world’s mostly nefarious systems— but maaaaaan, did these people suck!! The protagonist is a self-pitying, whiny white man narrator obsessed with his genius wife and constantly wheedling about how insecure he is and how he wants his son to be a lacrosse star!! His trifling ass made this story very hard to enjoy, and then his kids are no prizes either!!
The plot sometimes felt random, with little real mystery. veered on preachy about AI. I get that it was an issues-focused book, but subtlety gets way further with me than bashing me over the head with “AI BAD.”
Started strong but lost its footing for me. Could be a good book club discussion book!
Similar books: BLACK BUCK by Mateo Askaripour (I didn’t care for this one but lots of other people love it!), INTIMACIES by Katie Kitamura (one I did love!)
BAD SUMMER PEOPLE by Emma Rosenblum | 3 stars | audio
I could have told you that CULPABILITY would leave me disappointed, but y’all, I’m actually kind of upset about this one because it had so much to love about it! The writing itself was super strong—good dialogue, sharp observational details, and solid character work. Once we set up that this was about rich New Yorkers summering in a Fire Island town, I was ready with popcorn for some Housewives-level action.
The plot, however, was a mess. From the top, it’s nonstop drama: affairs, lies, gossip, a murder, high-stakes tennis—you name it. But what really got me was that truly, honestly, these people were BAD. The story could have been a biting, fun satire of the wealthy, but the chaos never quite landed as entertaining. The ending felt hokey, and the “bad people” were just… bad, with no redeeming qualities or cleverness to make it fun. There’s almost no one to root for— except maybe the kids, but we don’t see them except as accessories. It jumps around toward the last half of the book in ways that didn’t fully cohere for me, and the pacing felt off. It had rich-person drama vibes and soap opera energy, so it could work for some people as a beach read, but overall, I’d rate it around 3 stars, maybe 2.5.
Similar (read these instead) books: WAHALA by Nikki May, SALTY by Kate Myers, THE THREE OF US by Ore Agbaje-Williams (actually I didn’t like this one, but could work for you!)