everything I read this summer

Every summer as a kid, I would read nonstop. During a successful summer, I could finish a book a day. Not because I had to (though it was a great way to tackle summer reading assignments), but because there was literally nothing better to do. These days, TV and movies and social media make that pretty much impossible, though I know deep down its an issue of lack of willpower. So this summer, I made a pact with myself to try to read every day and see how many books I could finish. Below, I'll discuss what I read and what I learned from pushing myself to read like I'm 12 again.

May 30
The Analog Sea Review: An Offline Journal No. 3 edited by Johnathan Simons (2020)

“No images leave you in peace: they all want something from you.”

The Analog Sea Review was a wonderful way to start off my summer, as it tackles the importance of being offline in the modern age and emphasizes learning about new and interesting topics outside of the internet. The issue I read included some valuable essays on filmmakers and storytelling, which I found filled a certain movie-shaped hole in my soul, as I've spent the last few summers binging movies instead of reading (though I still found time for plenty of movies).

The books themselves are a tactile and beautiful experience, as each issue is pocket-sized and hardbound with a cloth bookmark. Their construction is intentional and careful, making them a joy to hold and to read. I bought two volumes, and both included a postcard with a letter from the editor and the publication's website on the back. The postcard asks them to send a letter to their P.O. box with questions and comments. Though they haven't published a volume in a few years, I might just take them up on that offer. If my letter gets lost to the mail void, at least I'll have had the pleasure of writing a letter.

June 16
Sorcery & Small Magics by Maiga Doocy (2024)

Next, I harked back to my preteen self's reading tastes with Maiga Doocy's debut cozy and queer fantasy novel. This was a quick and enjoyable read, which I found in my favorite local bookstore while desperately searching for just that. The romance was barely there, though I thoroughly enjoyed the slow burn of it all. It makes me impatient for the second book, though, which has yet to come out. The acknowledgements tell me this novel took four years to publish, so we'll see when I get my next fix.

While this book didn't require too much of my brain to digest, it was exactly what I needed to decompress after a spring semester packed with dense literature. I read it in about 24 hours or so, and I had a great time! This book reminded me that I hadn't lost my spark when it came to binge reading. 

June 24
Blackouts by Justin Torres (2023)

"But the mentions of Father in the paper increase, news of the work he's doing in Chicago, of his legendary life. Each new article like a shadow suddenly falling across her lap. And she feels rage, and thrill, and wonder."

I couldn't purchase a cute and cozy fantasy at the bookstore without accompanying it with something depressing, could I? Justin Torres' Blackouts is a meditation on death, grieving, and what it is to exist as a minority in a world that can't seem to acknowledge your existence, pain, loss, and suffering. The novel reads as a conversation flowing through time, as we flit between the past and present without warning. By the end of the book, I felt as though I had lived a life with the two characters, whose conversation leads us through an untold and censored queer history. Photographs and blacked out scans of queer oral histories are shoved between the chapters, stopping readers in their tracks and forcing them to mull over what is left of the life on the page.

The art of this novel is clear to me, though it took me a week or so to get through it. There were sections I felt were more thorough than others, and I preferred certain storylines to others. The nonlinear narrative was relatively easy to follow, though I found my divided attention was less an intended effect of the novel's construction than a pacing issue. Regardless, I strongly recommend this novel to fiction readers wanting to branch out into history or memoir or vice versa. I've read more nonfiction and memoir in the last few years than fiction, and I found Blackouts a masterful blend of fiction and reality.

June 28
Evocation by S.T. Gibson (2024)

For every great book you read, there will be a few stinkers. As a stickler for clear intention behind plot devices and character motivation, Evocation was a tough read for me. Personally, I found most of its issues stemmed from the conflict driving the plot taking a backseat for the tactless romance, which quickly turned into a confusing and unnecessary polyamory situation. I don't mind polyamory in my literature in general, but the tactlessness of its construction made it clear that the main conflict of the story (a ticking time bomb in the form of a demonic possession) was little more than an excuse to get all three characters in a room together. If the conflict is time-driven, why push it aside for more boring conversations and shaky rivalries? And if it takes less than a few pages for a rivalry of over three years to collapse, why make them rivals at all? I personally didn't understand a lot of the choices Gibson made in this novel, and it made the romance unenjoyable and the main plot totally unreadable. This was a real let-down, but at least I had something else to get to afterwards as a palate cleanser!

July 3
One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig (2022)

Still riding the fantasy train, I decided to take a friend up on her recommendation and check out One Dark Window (the first book in a duology). I'm not really on BookTok (book TikTok), so I didn't realize this was a huge deal over there until I picked it up and did some quick googling. Notwithstanding my distaste for BookTok, I started the book excited to know what all the hype was about. Within just a few pages, I was hooked. The storyline was simple enough (a young girl accidentally gets a monster stuck living inside her head after an ordeal with a magical Providence Card and has to conceal it or face death by execution) and I immediately found myself wanting to know how the girl would keep her secret hidden.

I finished the book in just a few days, and while the world wasn't as well developed as I would prefer, I enjoyed the characters (the main two as well as the side characters) and the romance was intriguing enough for me. One of the reasons I struggled with it was likely a marketing issue, as it tends to be described as an adult dark fantasy, though it read a little more Young Adult (save for one sexually explicit scene that's more of a fade to black than anything). Also, the term "dark fantasy" does a lot of heavy lifting with building the atmosphere here, as having a few castles in a misty forest doesn't really make it dark to me so much as medieval. Either way, I still had a great time and would recommend this to anyone wanting to get into fantasy without having to deal with too much exposition or detailed world-building, though as someone who enjoys those things this novel left me wanting a bit more.

July 12
Two Twisted Crowns by Rachel Gillig (2023)

The last book I completed for my summer read-a-thon was the second book in Rachel Gillig's duology. Since I wanted more from the world of One Dark Window, I was hoping this second installment would answer some of the questions the first book left me with. The narrative of Two Twisted Crowns is divided between two locations with plots that converge at the end of the novel, with varying character perspectives that tackle angles of this world we didn't get in the first book. I enjoyed the blossoming romance of this novel more than the first, though the quest narrative was less intriguing to me, as somehow the stakes of either situation were flip-flopped (the romance was more interesting than the life or death adventure).

Another disappointing aspect of this novel was the constant sentence structure and editing issues I encountered. There were countless instances of sentences being structured in a way that was counterintuitive, so much so that any competent editor would've asked that the author rework the entire draft to polish it. It was clear that this was not a final draft and was rushed through the production process in an attempt to recreate the success of the first novel. They sacrificed a great deal of the novel's integrity in doing so. While I enjoyed bits and pieces of this second installment, it felt messily put together and didn't really answer any of my questions about the world I couldn't have intuited on my own. This was confusing to me, as many fans of the first installment argue that this book is even better than the first, but I didn't get that at all. I would still recommend the first to people, but would be wary of continuing onto this book if you're picky about writing (which, let's be real, you should be).

Currently Reading:
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (2022)
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (2015)
Babel by R.F. Kuang (2022)

I'm in the middle of three books right now, which (after years of struggling to get through even one book in a few months) I consider a strong step in the right direction. I've gotten closer to understanding my favorite genres as an adult reader, as well as what I find challenging, intriguing, and downright ridiculous. I consider my book purchases more carefully recently, ensuring (almost) every book I buy will be read and enjoyed. I've reminded myself what it feels like to fall in love with a great book, to be so obsessed with reading I can't imagine not taking my book with me everywhere I go or ending the day with a chapter or two. It's an escapism I've been chasing since those childhood summers spent reading all day long, but could never quite capture with anything else. I've reminded myself that I can read a book a day if I want to, if I put my mind to it, and if I allow myself the room to breathe away from the digital world that has quickly engulfed my real life. Time spent offline is a luxury, and books are a wonderful place to spend it.