Eight Books in Maycember (Don't Ask)

What I read in May

Do not ask me how I read eight books this month. It’s Maycember. There were recitals and awards ceremony. Felix graduated from elementary school and played flag football. I was getting summer organized. I had a crazy month when it came to work, including but not limited to launching a massive project that I can’t wait to share. And yet, apparently I still found time to read. The more accurate description is that I needed time to read. It’s how I settle my mind and relax. So, I guess it makes perfect sense that I read so many books this month.

Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden

And doesn’t it all look different, wouldn’t your own story look different, if you knew how it was going to end?

I started this memoir at 8pm, read until about 11pm, woke up the next morning at 5am, and finished it by 8am. This is a pattern for me when it comes to memoirs. I stayed up until 3am finishing Educated and neglected my family to read I’m Glad My Mom Died. I love them. I love people. I love their stories. I love people reflecting back on their stories. I love it all.

On the off chance you live under a rock and know nothing about this particular blockbuster memoir, Strangers is the story of Belle Burden’s marriage and its collapse. It is based on her viral Modern Love column, which I remember reading when it came out. (Weird for me because I rarely read Modern Love.) Marriages collapse all the time but this particular collapse was sudden and shocking. It also took place in the rarified world of New York elites. Burden is a Vanderbilt descendent and her husband was a hedge fund manager. What makes Burden’s memoir different than the regular high society tale is it’s not filled with dishy details or peeks behind the curtain. Quite the opposite, Burden’s writing is so vulnerable and clear that she feels like a friend sharing the story with you over coffee.

In the past few weeks, there’s been a minor amount of controversy aimed at Burden for “hiding” the reality of her wealth in the book and making her financial situation seem more precarious than it really was. Maybe. I do think the decision to make the financial aspect of the divorce so central to the plot of the memoir was an interesting one. However, Burden’s wisdom and care are much more affecting than any drama over a prenup. Burden lives in a world of wealth and privilege that most of us can never imagine. None of that was really at risk during her divorce. But her pain we can understand no matter how or where we live and it’s her ability to put voice to that pain that makes this memoir such a stunner.

Famesick: A Memoir by Lena Dunham

If you make yourself out to be a bottomless resource, people will frack. They can’t help it.

My devotion to Lena Dunham is well-established at this point. She is, in fact, a voice of a generation and I would argue one of the best.

Famesick covers her rise to fame as the creator of Girls and the internet’s favorite punching bag. She recounts her harrowing medical journey through chronic illness and the falling apart of both her longtime relationship with Jack Antonoff and creative partnership with Jenni Konner. As with all her work, she is unrelenting and vulnerable. Not surprisingly, since she’s approaching forty, and has had time to process so much of what she went through, I found this some of her most mature and insightful writing. I read everything Dunham writes, but her personal writing is always exceptional. Famesick was no different.

Regeneration by Pat Barker

A society that devours its own young deserves no automatic or unquestioning allegiance.

One of Footnotes and Tangents 2026 reads, I knew absolutely nothing about this novel when I picked it up except Simon Haisell recommended it and that was good enugh for me. So little I assumed Pat Barker was a man.

Regeneration is the first in a series of three highly acclaimed historical fiction novels focusing on the psychological trauma of World War I. The first focuses on Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland and psychiatrist Dr. William Rivers, a very real Englishman who treated shell-shocked soldiers, including poet and famous conscientious objector Siegfried Sassoon.

With careful guidance from Simon Haisell, I was completely caught up with these men and their trauma. Reading their stories while our own country continues a completely unnecessary war was particularly difficult and impactful.

Heart the Lover by Lily King

Eternalism is the belief that everything that is, has been, and will be exists right now and forever, all at once. Presentism is the belief that only what exists in the present exists at all.

I adored Writers and Lovers, Lily King’s novel about Casey Peabody and her pursuit of the creative life. Heart the Lover serves as both a prequel and postquel to Casey’s story in Writers and Lovers. I found it as beautifully and carefully written as W&L. Lily King’s ability to write convincingly real characters while sharing heartbreaking thoughts on life, death, and more is really something to behold. I loved this novel.

Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow

It was evident to him that the world composed and recomposed itself constantly in an endless process of dissatisfaction.

The second pick in the America250 Book Club, Ragtime is considered one of the greatest novels of the 20th Century. It is a wild mix of real people and fictional characters, historical events and storytelling, a self-referential ride through the American Dream and how it propels and excludes. I have just returned from a trip to NYC with fellow book clubbers where we saw the musical based on the book, visited the Tenement Museum, and the Morgan Library, which is predominantly featured in the book.

I can’t wait to discuss the novel and much more during our discussion on Thursday, June 25th at 7pm CST on Zoom. Subscribe to join us!

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

Pain is easy to write. In pain we're all happily individual. But what can one write about happiness?

The May pick for Well-Read Mom, I had no idea what to expect from The End of the Affair, a novel telling the story of an affair between Maurice and Sarah in post-World War II London. It’s an intense examination of the thin place between love/infatuation and passion and hate/toxicity. It is within that thin place that one of the main characters, Sarah, undergoes a transformation from atheist to believer.

Greene’s writing is consuming, even as his characters are unsympathetic. The novel felt very much of another time and place. I’m not sure I enjoyed my trip there, but I don’t regret it.

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What I Didn’t Finish

Go Gentle by Maria Semple

I saw “a novel about a divorced Stoic philosopher” and was all in. I didn’t even realize it was written by Maria Sample of Where’d You Go Bernadette fame. I enjoyed getting to know Adora Hazzard, but once the action picked up I lost interest. I find Semple’s writing frenetic and difficult to follow. I felt this with WYGB, which I did push through and finish, but which I barely remember. I gave up about 30% of the way through.

What did you read (or quite reading) in May?