My summer reading continues at a fast pace - just like the summer! I’ve been reading a ton - continuing to make my way through my slow reads while also finishing some books in a day (looking at you, Emily Henry!).
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
I want - I want - I want - was all that she could think about - but just what this real want was she did not know.
Early this month, I was reading Frances Mayes's A Place in the World: Finding the Meaning of Home. Mayes recounts her youthful obsession with twentieth-century Southern writers, and her list felt like a syllabus I must begin tackling immediately. I fired up Amazon and filled my cart with used copies of the Library of America's collections of Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, James Agee, and Carson McCullers.
After making my way through several of O'Connor's short stories (whew, wasn't quite ready for A Good Man Is Hard To Find), I decided to finally read The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, which has been on my TBR pile since college.
It always feels a bit superfluous and silly to add to the praise of a classic novel that has stood the test of time, but Y'ALL, this book is heartbreakingly good. Primarily based on McCullers' childhood, I find it unsurprising that the characters feel so real. And yet, they are also written with such clarity and empathy that the twists and turns of each story will leave you reeling.
Shark Heart: A Love Story by Emily Habeck
All the hours he spent theorizing about magic seemed so naive now. The main ingredient in transformation was not magic, it was pain.
Shark Heart is the story of newlyweds who the husband is mutating into a great white shark. You’re either going to be a person who reads that and can’t get your hands on this novel fast enough, or a person who reads that and thinks, “ughhh, I don’t know.”
I was admittedly in the second camp, and I’m so very glad I overcame my hesitations. Habeck does an incredible job of creating this new reality while also tethering it to our own. This novel is lyrical and poetic, evoking a dreamlike quality.
I absolutely loved it.
Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry
The truth was king, but emotion was the truth’s most valuable adviser.
Recently, I realized that Emily Henry is only 34 years old. That hurt. I don't often feel envious of what others can accomplish early in life, but damn, it's impressive. Her novels are so intelligent, so well-written, so wise, and she's been writing them since her twenties!?!
In Great Big Beautiful Life, you can feel her stretching her legs a bit. This novel also features a multi-generational family saga that I found engaging and well-written. I was rooting for Hayden and Alice (to sleep together), but I was engaged in the other aspects of the story more. Often, I'm race-reading to get to the sexual payoff in her novels, but not this one. It was great - as her love scenes always are - but it didn't feel so central to the story as it has in her other books.
Can't wait to see what she's writing by the time she's in her forties.
Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.
I continue my Wolf Crawl with Footnotes and Tangents. We recently completed the second novel in Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell Trilogy and officially reach the end of Anne Boleyn. Although every time people blow off Anne’s daughter, baby Eliza, I have a nice, long chuckle.
Mantel spent so much of Wolf Hall recreating the image of Cromwell and creating such sympathy for him in the reader that it has been fascinating to see her slowly strip some of that away and poke holes in the rest.
The Mirror and the Light is up next, and it’s a behemoth!
Speaking of romance and England…would you like to go to on one of my Jane Austen pilgrimages but missed the (sold out) Pride & Prejudice one in September?
GREAT NEWS!
I’m going to do another pilgrimage - this time on EMMA! - in May of 2026. You can get all the details and register here by clicking below.
The God of the Woods: A Novel by Liz Moore
Rich people, thought Judy—she thought this then, and she thinks it now—generally become most enraged when they sense they’re about to be held accountable for their wrongs.
Recommended to me a dozen times, I finally got Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods off the holds list, and it was worth the wait. I absolutely loved this atmospheric mystery chock-full of family drama and rich people misbehaving. Throw in a midcentury aesthetic and a woodsy summer camp, and I’m all in. Now, will I remember anything about this book in a couple of years? Probably not, but it was still a blast of a summer read.
Abundance by Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson
Institutional renewal is a labor that every generation faces anew.
I have a confession. The Ezra Klein Show is the only podcast I listen to on a regular basis. I am well-versed in Ezra’s arguments about housing shortages and government inefficiency. So, the first part of this book wasn’t as exciting to me as it would be to someone encountering these arguments for the first time.
The second half of the book about medical research was much more engaging, and overall, the entire abundance philosophy is not only one I find convincing but one I wholeheartedly subscribe to. We are all dissatisfied with the current state of affairs. Klein and Thompson present a convincing vision of what could come next.
The River is Waiting: A Novel by Wally Lamb
Knowing the difference between hope and expectations has helped me ever since.
I’d hoped this book would be as good as I remember Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone (although I can’t recall for the life of me a single plot point or even a character in this book). Now, I realize my expectations were too high.
I hated this novel. It reminds me a lot of Key & Peele’s “Gremlins 2”.
Child death? It’s in the book! Addiction? It’s in the book! Imprisonment? It’s in the book! Abuse by prison guards? It’s in the book!
I’m not even sure why I finished it, but it was the only novel I had on my Kindle for my 18-hour day to pick up Felix from camp in Houston, and I didn’t want to read nonfiction. At a certain point, I was just hate reading. In fairness, I was also listening to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, and this is the constant risk of reading classics—particularly alongside contemporary fiction. It can’t hold up. It looks anemic and sloppy by comparison.
However, I don’t think it would have mattered what I was reading, it wouldn’t have saved this read.
NEW SECTION: What I didn’t finish
I was thrilled to finally get my hands on Arlie Russell Hochschild’s newest book, set in Kentucky. I loved Strangers in their own Land and had high hopes for Hochschild’s examination of Appalachia. However, I found it repetitive and not particularly insightful. Aggressively skimmed the last 40%.
I’ve been working on my own essay collection about home so I was anxious to read Frances Mayes’s take. I’ve never read Under the Tuscan Sun but I know people love it. After a certain point, it started to feel like one Garden & Gun essay after the other and I got bored. Stopped about a third of the way through. However, I will be forever grateful for her inspiring me to finally start reading a long list of Southern classics!
What did you read in July?
I haven't finished anything in July yet because I am reading Under the Dome along with Laura Tremaine for Stephen King Summer. It's the book King himself nominated for the NYT best books of the 21st century (lol). At over 1000 pages long, I'm at 65%, and I'm not sure it holds a candle to 11/22/63, but I'm interested to see where it goes.
I lead a classic novel book club and also just read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Book club reviews were mixed but I enjoyed it. If Emily Henry’s age gets you, how about that Carson was 23. We are reading All the Kings men for August. Would recommend!