Jul. 2nd: A Holistic Summer Reading Guide
Happy July readers! I hope you don’t mind a deviation from the regular Trim Pickings formatting today, because that’s what you’re getting. The Bikeriders and A Quiet Place: Day One are both worth seeing, while things on music front have been pretty quiet since Brat released. If you’re not already watching or at least aware new seasons of House of the Dragon and The Bear are back, you might be beyond help from this newsletter.
Despite all of that content, I’ve been reading a lot lately. As I tend to do in the summer. More leisure time for myself, particularly by bodies of water tends to lead to increased time spent with a good book. So I thought in lieu of regular programming, I’d offer a variety of book recommendations. I tend to read one fiction and one nonfiction book at a time, so my recommendations will be a mix of both. Currently I’m working on Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan (maybe THE summer book) and The Arsonists’ City by Hala Alyan. I’d highly recommend both so far in addition to my suggestions below.
Summer Short Stories
The perfect format for summer — read one essay/short story at a time in between dips in a pool or lake. Also great for reading at any pace.
The Works of Hanif Abdurraquib
I can’t remember how I first came across poet, essayist, and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraquib, but in recent years he’s become truly one of my favorite writers. I’ve read most of his published books, most recently There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, and they’re all incredible in their own right. The most summer-vibe being They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, a collection of essays on music and life was my entry point to his works and probably to-date my favorite of his essay collections. I think frequently about his essays on Carly Rae Jepsen, Prince’s halftime performance, and My Chemical Romance contained in this incredible collection.
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
I’ve heard from friends that for some people this was required reading in high school? I wish that had been the case for me, because I didn’t have the delight of reading it until after college. Lahiri’s collection of nine short stories of fictional immigrants feel as important today as they did when she won the Pulitzer Prize for this work in 1999. It’s been a few years since I read Interpreter of Maladies, but I really need to make good on my promise to myself to read more of her writing this year.
The White Album by Joan Didion
Despite Didion being one of the most highly regarded essayists of the past century, I’ve found peoples milage varies on her work. I don’t get that at all — if you’re anything like me and like the intersection of history, culture, and art, you’re bound to enjoy Didion’s musings on the Manson murders, Georgia O’Keefe, and the L.A. water systems. I didn’t enjoy Slouching Towards Bethlehem quite as much, so I’d definitely recommend starting with The White Album as an intro to her works.
Summer Fiction
There are so many novels I could recommend here, but instead of just listing my favorites of all time, I tried to come up with recommendations I feel are particularly well-suited for summer reading.
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
If you grew up reading and loving the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan, put down what you’re reading, and immediately pick up The Song of Achilles. Definitely more adult than The Lightning Thief, but also a surprising twist on an eons old story of the Trojan Age. With a very summer-forward setting, it’s like a more tragic and ancient Call Me by Your Name.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Yaa Gyasi’s sprawling novel, covering generations of Asante women is not only one of my favorite historical fictions, but hands down one of the best novels I’ve read in the past five years. It’s a very quick read that will leave you wanting a whole novel dedicated to each of the generations covered.
Summer Counterprogramming
Nonfiction isn’t inherently harrowing, but for what ever reason I trend towards nonfiction that definitely leans heavier in subject matter. So if you’d like to cut the lightness of fireworks, tanning, and galavanting across Europe with “important” subject matter, here are some great recommendations for balancing out the joyful summer vibe. lol.
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
You’re probably more familiar with Wilkerson’s more recent nonfiction work, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, also great in its own right, but this summer’s recommendation from me is her National Book Critics Circle Award Winner — The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. The journalistic work tells the story of the movement of Black Americans out of the Southern United States to the Midwest, Northeast, and West from the early to late 1900s. Written similarly to Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, focusing on three unique individuals, Wilkerson is able to tell the sprawling story of an extremely important and criminally under-taught period of American history in an extremely accessible way.
Tell Me How it Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions by Valeria Luiselli
Structured around the forty questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin-American children facing deportation, Tell Me How it Ends brings light to a situation as depressingly relevant today as it was when the book was published in 2016. Regardless of what side of the political aisle you might fall, you’ve probably got opinions on the U.S. immigration system. Tell Me How it Ends will help humanize the issue for you and hopefully reshape your thinking to a more empathetic humanized approach.
The Boy Who Was Raised as A Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrists’ Notebook by Bruce D. Perry
Here’s where I out myself as the husband of a Master of Social Work and fellow mental health enthusiast. I actually asked my wife, Korbin, a few months ago if I should read The Body Keeps the Score (very popular in the Barton Springs community last summer), and she actually recommended Bruce D. Perry’s book instead. Not because she dislikes The Body Keeps the Score, but because she found Perry’s book to be more accessible. She told me it would be a better entry point to many of the topics discussed in The Body. It did not disappoint.
Audience Participation
Regardless of whether or not you take my suggestions, I hope you make some time to read this summer! And let me know what you are currently reading or are excited to read in the next few months.
What I’m Looking Forward To
Movies: MaXXXine (7/5), Longlegs (7/11), Sing Sing (7/19), Twisters (7/19)
Shows: N/A
Albums: Big Ideas by Remi Wolf (7/12), Charm by Clairo (7/12), Passage du Desir by Johnny Blue Skies [aka Sturgill Simpson] (7/12)
Barbarian Days is one of my FAVES. If you enjoy the surf world, watch Make or Break on Apple TV+ and anything posted by STAB on youtube. :) Two very different sides of the surf world IMHO.