Everyday I Write the Book - It'll help you figure out what to read.

WHO WE ARE NOW by Lauryn Chamberlain

I am a sucker for books about post-college groups of friends. That rootless, confusing time of life, when you’ve left the college cocoon and have to figure out what you want to do and who you want to be, lends itself so well to fiction. And groups of people with changing – often conflicting – goals and desires can make for a compelling story. That’s why I picked up Lauryn Chamberlain’s novel Who We Are Now, which is exactly that type of book. Why I picked it up: See above. When Who We Are Now opens in 2006, Dev, Clarissa,

WHO WE ARE NOW by Lauryn Chamberlain

END CREDITS by Patty Lin

I am naturally drawn to the microgenre of memoirs about people’s jobs/careers – I love digging in on the challenges and joys of what people do for a living, whether it’s acting, working in tech, medicine, or finance. Patty Lin’s memoir End Credits is about her almost two decades spent as a TV screenwriter, taking readers through how she got into the industry and why she eventually left. Like many of the memoirs I’ve read

TOM LAKE by Ann Patchett

A new book from Ann Patchett is always cause for excitement, and her latest came out in early August (unusual for a highly anticipated release) because Patchett wanted it to be a summer read. Tom Lake is a pandemic novel about love, family, and how people and timing can change our ambitions and dreams. The premise of this one didn’t grab me right away when I read about it, but I was definitely willing to

THE OTHER SIDE by Lacy Johnson

Boy, I am really gravitating toward heavy books these days. The most recent was The Other Side, a memoir by Lacy Johnson about an abusive relationship that resulted in a kidnapping and rape. The memoir is a raw, deeply honest account of Johnson’s relationship with the man who assaulted her, as well as the trauma she experienced in the years that followed. Why I picked it up: I learned about The Other Side on an

SOMETHING WILD by Hanna Halperin

Something Wild by Hanna Halperin is a dark novel about two sisters who go to help their mother move out of their childhood home and discover that she is in an abusive relationship with her husband. Their attempts to extricate her from the relationship force them to relive complicated and painful memories from their adolescence that shaped them into who they became as adults. Why I picked it up: I read Halperin’s second novel, I

SPEECH TEAM by Tim Murphy

Speech Team by Tim Murphy is about five people who were members of a speech team at a public high school in Massachusetts in the 1980s. In 2019, one of the members has committed suicide and left a goodbye post on Facebook in which he called out their speech coach for saying something awful to him in high school that he carried through his life. The suicide causes the remaining four members to get back

TALKING AT NIGHT by Claire Daverley

Vacation read #2 was Talking At Night by Claire Daverly. I had seen this book out and about and was intrigued by its premise: a couple meets in high school and experience an intense chemistry that leads them on a windy and often tortured path for years to come. It was compared to Normal People (reviewed here), which I loved, so this was a no-brainer for me. Why I picked it up: Once I read

MAD HONEY by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan

Up until now, I had never read anything by Jodi Picoult. A friend of mine recommended her most recent book. Mad Honey, and walking out of of the library earlier this month, I spied it on the shelf and impulsively grabbed it without even reading what it was about. I started it on audio and finished it in print as my first vacation read this summer. This is one of those books that’s best to

GAMES AND RITUALS by Katherine Heiny

Games And Rituals is a collection of short stories by Katherine Heiny, an author I like quite a bit. I am not always a big fan of short stories, but if she’s the author, I’m in. Heiny has a unique gift for coming up with totally original settings and situations, and then delving in quickly so that you feel totally immersed in the characters and invested in the outcome. Why I picked it up: I

BUSINESS OR PLEASURE by Rachel Lynn Solomon

A few weeks ago, I was feeling a bit weighted down by a series of heavy, serious reads. In need of a palate cleanser, I reached for two light books – The Wife App (reviewed here) and Business Or Pleasure, a romance by Rachel Lynn Solomon. It’s about Chandler, a ghostwriter living in Seattle who has a one night stand with a cute man she meets in a bar. Well, it turns out that the

THE WIFE APP by Carolyn Mackler

In Carolyn Mackler’s The Wife App, three divorced single mothers in New York City create an app called the Wife App, which allows men (or women) to pay hired hands to cover the time-consuming, uncompensated mental load chores that usually fall to wives: school forms, birthday gifts, travel arrangements, medical appointments, etc. The goal is to show that this work is valuable and that the women doing it deserve to be paid – and to

PAGEBOY by Elliot Page

Whether you will like actor Elliot Page’s memoir, Pageboy, may depend on what you expect from memoirs. If you like linear, start-from-childhood memoirs that cover all the grounds and answer all of your burning questions, then Pageboy might not be for you. But if you can tolerate memoirs that jump around in time, skip big swaths, and keep a lot of things private, then give this one a try. Why I picked it up: My

ALL THAT IS MINE I CARRY WITH ME by William Landay

All That Is Mine I Carry With Me by William Landay is a character-driven mystery about Jane Larkin, a wife and mother of three who disappears in the 1970s. Her husband Dan becomes the prime suspect, but the detectives cannot make a strong enough case to bring charges. Many years later, the case is reexamined when a novelist, friend to one of the kids, revisits the facts surrounding Jane’s disappearance. All That Is Mine I

YOU WERE ALWAYS MINE by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza

The writing team of Christine Pride and Jo Piazza is back with another book about race, this time in the context of transracial adoption, in You Were Always Mine. Cinnamon, a married Black woman who spent a chaotic childhood bouncing among foster homes, befriends Daisy, a young white woman who meets her at the park every Friday. One week, Cinnamon shows up for their usual lunch, but instead of Daisy, Cinnamon finds a newborn baby

YELLOWFACE by R. F. Kuang

If you like books about writing, publishing and the question of who owns a story, then you’ll like Yellowface, the latest novel from R. F. Kuang (and one of the hot books this summer). Athena Liu and June Hayward are college classmates and fellow novelists, though Athena has has had a lot more success than her friend. A charismatic, stylish Asian-American writer with several successful novels under her belt, Athena is about to finish her