Hello Booklovers,
After a long and entirely unnecessary hiatus, I am back here on the boards to amuse and entertain you with books. Not mine, sadly, but ones I have piled up to read for my self-curated Summer Reading List, challenging myself to read 30 books in the 14 weeks between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Can I do it? I have in the past, but at this point who the heck knows.
As I have in the past, I broke my list into three portions: Fiction (always a challenge for me as I don’t read much of it); Nonfiction, and Poetry. I added a clause that the books must be ones I already own and have not read yet. (There are plenty of those because I am a book goblin building up my secret hoard that I try to hide from my husband by secretly adding new books to the bookcases while he sleeps.) Am I embarrassed to have to admit that there are 30 books in my house that I have not read yet? Not really, because the number is actually much higher than 30.
And with that confession out of the way, here is NKP’s 2024 Summer Reading List, formerly known as Ellie @ Home’s Summer Reading List (all synopses from Goodreads.com):
Fiction:
When Women were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill: A rollicking feminist tale set in 1950s America where thousands of women have spontaneously transformed into dragons, exploding notions of a woman’s place in the world and expanding minds about accepting others for who they really are. In this timely and timeless speculative novel, award-winning author Kelly Barnhill boldly explores rage, memory, and the tyranny of forced limitations. When Women Were Dragons exposes a world that wants to keep women small—their lives and their prospects—and examines what happens when they rise en masse and take up the space they deserve.
After the Forest by Kell Woods: Fifteen years after the witch in the gingerbread house, Greta and Hans are struggling to get by. Their mother and stepmother are long dead, Hans is deeply in debt from gambling, and the countryside lies in ruin, its people recovering in the aftermath of a brutal war. Greta has a secret, the witch’s grimoire, secreted away and whispering in her ear, and the recipe inside that makes the most sinfully delicious – and addictive – gingerbread. As long as she can bake, Greta can keep her small family afloat. But in a village full of superstition, Greta and her intoxicating gingerbread is a source of ever-growing suspicion and vicious gossip. And now, dark magic is returning to the woods and Greta’s own powers – magic she is still trying to understand – may be the only thing that can save her … If it doesn’t kill her first.
Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart by GennaRose Nethercott: From the author of the breakout fantasy novel Thistlefoot (NKP: another book on my very long Want to Read List): a collection of dark fairytales and fractured folklore exploring all the ways love can save us—or go monstrously wrong. The stories in Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart are about the abomination that resides within us all. That churning, clawing, hungry desire to be loved, and seen, and known. And the terror of those things to be loved too well, or not enough, or for long enough. To be laid bare before your sweetheart, to their horror. To be known and recognized as the monstrous thing you are. In these lush, beautifully written stories, GennaRose Nethercott explores love in all its diamond-dark facets to create a collection that will redefine what you see as a beast, and make you beg to have your heart broken.
The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff: (NKP: I read Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds earlier this year after listening to a discussion on the Nerdette podcast. I picked this book up at a library book sale based on how good her other book was): “The day I returned to Templeton steeped in disgrace, the fifty-foot corpse of a monster surfaced in Lake Glimmerglass.” So begins The Monsters of Templeton, a novel spanning two centuries: part a contemporary story of a girl’s search for her father, part historical novel, and part ghost story, this spellbinding novel is at its core a tale of how one town holds the secrets of a family. In the wake of a wildly disastrous affair with her married archeology professor, Willie Upton arrives on the doorstep of her ancestral home in Templeton, New York, where her hippie-turned-born-again-Baptist mom, Vi, still lives. Willie expects to be able to hide in the place that has been home to her family for generations, but the monster’s death changes the fabric of the quiet, picture-perfect town her ancestors founded. Even further, Willie learns that the story her mother had always told her about her father has all been a lie: he wasn’t the random man from a free-love commune that Vi had led her to imagine, but someone else entirely. Someone from this very town. As Willie puts her archaeological skills to work digging for the truth about her lineage, she discovers that the secrets of her family run deep. Through letters, editorials, and journal entries, the dead rise up to tell their sides of the story as dark mysteries come to light, past and present blur, old stories are finally put to rest, and the shocking truth about more than one monster is revealed.
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent: Set against Iceland’s stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution. Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes’s death looms, the farmer’s wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they’ve heard. Riveting and rich with lyricism, Burial Rites evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the question, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?
Crossings by Alex Landragin: On the brink of the Nazi occupation of Paris, a German-Jewish bookbinder stumbles across a manuscript called Crossings. It has three narratives, each as unlikely as the next. And the narratives can be read one of two ways: either straight through or according to an alternate chapter sequence. The first story in Crossings is a never-before-seen ghost story by the poet Charles Baudelaire, penned for an illiterate girl. Next is a noir romance about an exiled man, modeled on Walter Benjamin, whose recurring nightmares are cured when he falls in love with a storyteller who draws him into a dangerous intrigue of rare manuscripts, police corruption, and literary societies. Finally, there are the fantastical memoirs of a woman-turned-monarch whose singular life has spanned seven generations. With each new chapter, the stunning connections between these seemingly disparate people grow clearer and more extraordinary. Crossings is an unforgettable adventure full of love, longing and empathy.
The Penelopeia by Jane Rawlings: Imagine that you have gone back in time 3,000 years to the city of Ithaka to greet Odysseus, the sole survivor of a decade of adventures, shipwreck, and mayhem, on his long-awaited return home. Recognized only by his loyal dog, he is really a stranger to his son, Telemachos, and even to Penelope, the wife who, flicking off suitors like flies, has managed to keep his household intact. Imagine his shock when she informs him she has another surprise in store; when he left for Troy some twenty years before, he fathered twin daughters. These daughters, now mature and preternaturally gifted, are determined to travel with their mother to the Pythian oracle, there to learn what the gods have decreed as their fates and do the goddess’ bidding. Imagine, in other words, the next episodes of The Odyssey told in the voice of a woman, in this case a woman who has faithfully waited for her husband to return, who has diligently performed all her duties as wife and mother, and who now desperately wants to experience the same adventure and freedom as her heroic spouse. (NKP: oh, the treasures to be found in book bin sales at used bookstores. I had never heard of this book before I went bin-diving at Roundabout Books in Greenfield, MA)
Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup: A spellbinding work of literature, Latitudes of Longing follows the interconnected lives of characters searching for true intimacy. The novel sweeps across India, from an island, to a valley, a city, and a snow desert to tell a love story of epic proportions. We follow a scientist who studies trees and a clairvoyant who speaks to them; a geologist working to end futile wars over a glacier; octogenarian lovers; a mother struggling to free her revolutionary son; a yeti who seeks human companionship; a turtle who transforms first into a boat and then a woman; and the ghost of an evaporated ocean as restless as the continents. Binding them all together is a vision of life as vast as the universe itself. Richly imaginative and wryly perceptive, Latitudes of Longing offers a soaring view of humanity: our beauty and ugliness, our capacity to harm and love each other, and our mysterious and sacred relationship with nature.
The Butterfly Lampshade by Aimee Bender: On the night her single mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, eight year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter, waiting to take the train to Los Angeles to go live with her aunt and uncle. There is a lovely lamp next to the couch on which she’s sleeping, the shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie spies a dead butterfly, exactly matching the ones on the lamp, floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see. Twenty years later, Francie is compelled to make sense of that moment, and two other incidents — her discovery of a desiccated beetle from a school paper, and a bouquet of dried roses from some curtains. Her recall is exact — she is sure these things happened. But despite her certainty, she wrestles with the hold these memories maintain over her, and what they say about her own place in the world. As Francie conjures her past and reduces her engagement with the world to a bare minimum, she begins to question her relationship to reality. The scenes set in Francie’s past glow with the intensity of childhood perception, how physical objects can take on an otherworldly power. The question for Francie is, What do these events signify? And does this power survive childhood? The Butterfly Lampshade is a heartfelt and heartbreaking examination of the sometimes overwhelming power of the material world, and a broken love between mother and child.
Girl in the Walls by A. J. Gnuse: Elise knows every inch of the house. She knows which boards will creak. She knows where the gaps are in the walls. She knows which parts can take her in, hide her away. It’s home, after all. The home her parents made for her, before they were taken from her in a car crash. And home is where you stay, no matter what. Eddie is a teenager trying to forget about the girl he sometimes sees out of the corner of his eye. But when his hotheaded older brother senses her, too, they are faced with the question of how to get rid of someone they aren’t sure even exists. And as they try to cast her out, they unwittingly bring an unexpected and far more real threat to their doorstep. Written with grace and enormous heart, Girl in the Walls is a novel about carrying on through grief, forging unconventional friendships, and realizing, little by little, that we don’t need to fear what we do not understand.
Nonfiction:
Normal Women by Philippa Gregory (Sister read with @BaketressofRoyalHeights): In Normal Women, Gregory draws on an enormous archive of primary and secondary sources to rewrite British history, focusing on the agency, persistence, and effectiveness of everyday women throughout periods of social and cultural transition. She sweeps from the making of the Bayeux tapestry in the eleventh century to the Black Death in 1348—after which women were briefly paid the same wages as men, the last time for seven centuries—to the 1992 ordination of women by the Church of England, when the church accepted, for the first time, that a woman could perform the miracle of the mass. Through the stories of the female soldiers of the civil war, the guild widows who founded the prosperity of the City of London, highwaywomen and pirates, miners, ship owners, international traders, the women who ran London theaters and commissioned plays from Shakespeare, and the “female husbands” who married each other legally in church and lived as husband and wife, Gregory redefines “normal” female behavior to include heroism, rebellion, crime, treason, money-making, and sainthood. As she makes clear, normal women make history.
I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai (No, I have not read this yet. Yes, I am ashamed): When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive. Instead, Malala’s miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she has become a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate. I Am Malala is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls’ education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons.
Rooted by Lyanda Lynn Haput: In Rooted, cutting-edge science supports a truth that poets, artists, mystics, and earth-based cultures across the world have proclaimed over life on this planet is radically interconnected. Our bodies, thoughts, minds, and spirits are affected by the whole of nature, and they affect this whole in return. In this time of crisis, how can we best live upon our imperiled, beloved earth? Award-winning writer Lyanda Lynn Haupt’s highly personal new book is a brilliant invitation to live with the earth in both simple and profound ways—from walking barefoot in the woods and reimagining our relationship with animals and trees, to examining the very language we use to describe and think about nature. She invokes rootedness as a way of being in concert with the wilderness—and wildness—that sustains humans and all of life.
The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkel: In The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl presents a literary fifty-two chapters that follow the creatures and plants in her backyard over the course of a year. As we move through the seasons—from a crow spied on New Year’s Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year, to the lingering bluebirds of December, revisiting the nest box they used in spring—what develops is a portrait of joy and joy in the ongoing pleasures of the natural world, and grief over winters that end too soon and songbirds that grow fewer and fewer. Along the way, we also glimpse the changing rhythms of a human life. Grown children, unexpectedly home during the pandemic, prepare to depart once more. Birdsong and night-blooming flowers evoke generations past. The city and the country where Renkl raised her family transform a little more with each passing day. And the natural world, now in visible flux, requires every ounce of hope and commitment from the author—and from us. For, as Renkl writes, “radiant things are bursting forth in the darkest places, in the smallest nooks and deepest cracks of the hidden world.”
The Year of Yes by Shonda Rimes: With three hit shows on television and three children at home, the uber-talented Shonda Rhimes had lots of good reasons to say NO when an unexpected invitation arrived. Hollywood party? No. Speaking engagement? No. Media appearances? No. And there was the side benefit of saying No for an introvert like Shonda: nothing new to fear. Then Shonda’s sister laid down a challenge: just for one year, try to say YES to the unexpected invitations that come your way. Shonda reluctantly agreed―and the result was nothing short of transformative. In Year of Yes, Shonda Rhimes chronicles the powerful impact saying Yes had on every aspect of her life―and how we can all change our lives with one little word. Yes.
A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage: A History of the World in 6 Glasses tells the story of humanity from the Stone Age to the 21st century through the lens of beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola. Beer was first made in the Fertile Crescent and by 3000 B.C.E. was so important to Mesopotamia and Egypt that it was used to pay wages. In ancient Greece wine became the main export of her vast seaborne trade, helping spread Greek culture abroad. Spirits such as brandy and rum fueled the Age of Exploration, fortifying seamen on long voyages and oiling the pernicious slave trade. Although coffee originated in the Arab world, it stoked revolutionary thought in Europe during the Age of Reason, when coffeehouses became centers of intellectual exchange. And hundreds of years after the Chinese began drinking tea, it became especially popular in Britain, with far-reaching effects on British foreign policy. Finally, though carbonated drinks were invented in 18th-century Europe they became a 20th-century phenomenon, and Coca-Cola in particular is the leading symbol of globalization.
A Writer’s Dairy by Virginia Woolf (a companion read with Virginia Woolf by J. Briggs): An invaluable guide to the art and mind of Virginia Woolf, drawn from the personal record she kept over a period of twenty-seven years. Included are entries that refer to her own writing, and those that are relevant to the raw material of her work, and, finally, comments on the books she was reading. The first entry included here is dated 1918 and the last, three weeks before her death in 1941. Between these points of time unfolds the private world—the anguish, the triumph, the creative vision—of one of the great writers of the twentieth century.
Virginia Woolf by Julia Briggs: In this fresh, absorbing book, Julia Briggs puts the writing back at the center of Woolf’s life, reads that life through her work, and mines the novels themselves to create a compelling new form of biography. Analyzing Woolf’s own commen­tary on the creative process through her letters, diaries, and essays, Julia Briggs has produced a book that is a convincing, moving portrait of an artist, as well as a profound meditation on the nature of creativity.
Eliza: The Extraordinary Life and Times of The Wife of Alexander Hamilton by Tilar Mazzeo: Fans fell in love with Eliza Hamilton—Alexander Hamilton’s devoted wife—in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s phenomenal musical Hamilton. But they don’t know her full story. A strong pioneer woman, a loving sister, a caring mother, and in her later years, a generous philanthropist, Eliza had many sides—and this fascinating biography brings her multi-faceted personality to vivid life. Eliza: The Extraordinary Life and Times of The Wife of Alexander Hamilton follows Eliza through her early years in New York, into the ups and downs of her married life with Alexander, beyond the aftermath of his tragic murder, and finally to her involvement in many projects that cemented her legacy as one of the unsung heroes of our nation’s early days.
The Rumi Prescription by Melody Mozzi (a companion read with Rumi: The Big Red Book edited by Coleman Barks): Rumi’s inspiring and deceptively simple poems have been called ecstatic, mystical, and devotional. To writer and activist Melody Moezzi, they became a lifeline. In The Rumi Prescription, we follow her path of discovery as she translates Rumi’s works for herself – to gain wisdom and insight in the face of a creative and spiritual roadblock. With the help of her father, who is a lifelong fan of Rumi’s poetry, she immerses herself in this rich body of work, and discovers a 13th-century prescription for modern life. Addressing isolation, distraction, depression, fear, and other everyday challenges we face, the book offers a roadmap for living with intention and ease and embracing love at every turn–despite our deeply divided and chaotic times. Most of all, it presents a vivid reminder that we already have the answers we seek, if we can just slow down to honor them.
Poetry:
Rumi: The Big Red Book edited by Coleman Barks: The Big Red Book is a poetic masterpiece from Jalaluddin Rumi, the medieval Sufi mystic. Readers continue to be awed and inspired by Rumi’s masterfully lyrical, deeply expressive poems, collected in volumes such as The Illustrated Rumi, The Soul of Rumi , and the bestselling The Essential Rumi. With The Big Red Book, acclaimed poet and Rumi interpreter Coleman Barks offers a never-before-published translation of a crucial anthology of poems widely considered to be one of Persian literature’s greatest treasures. (NKP: apparently, I have read this one already, though it’s been a few years. It will be interesting reading it as a companion volume to a nonfiction book)
How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch (not exactly poetry, but poetry craft and analysis): “Read a poem to yourself in the middle of the night. Turn on a single lamp and read it while you’re alone in an otherwise dark room or while someone sleeps next to you. Say it over to yourself in a place where silence reigns and the din of culture-the constant buzzing noise that surrounds you-has momentarily stopped. This poem has come from a great distance to find you.” So begins this astonishing book by one of our leading poets and critics. In an unprecedented exploration of the genre, Hirsch writes about what poetry is, why it matters, and how we can open up our imaginations so that its message-which is of vital importance in day-to-day life-can reach us and make a difference. For Hirsch, poetry is not just a part of life, it is life, and expresses like no other art our most sublime emotions. In a marvelous reading of world poetry, including verse by such poets as Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Pablo Neruda, William Wordsworth, Sylvia Plath, Charles Baudelaire, and many more, Hirsch discovers the meaning of their words and ideas and brings their sublime message home into our hearts. A masterful work by a master poet, this brilliant summation of poetry and human nature will speak to all readers who long to place poetry in their lives but don’t know how to read it.
Harmony by Whitney Hanson: In this exquisite poetry collection, Whitney Hanson chronicles the loss of a loved one, tracing the progression of grief and healing through the lens of music. We each begin with a simple note, but as life progresses, we’re led to the next note, and the next—all of which combine to form the melody of a song and a life. As life becomes more complicated and complex, we find that loss, grief, and heartache can muffle our music, making the world go silent. But as Whitney’s poems show, all of these rests and pauses in the music are part of the composition of life, and it is only by moving through the variations that we can find the harmony and grace that come with healing.
Mysteries of Small Houses by Alice Notley: Alice Notley vividly reconstructs the mysteries, longings, and emotions of her past in this brilliant new collection of poems that charts her growth from young girl to young woman to accomplished artist. In this volume, memories of her childhood in the California desert spring to life through evocative renderings of the American landscape, circa 1950. Likewise, her coming of age as a poet in the turbulent sixties is evoked through the era’s angry, creative energy. As she looks backward with the perspective that time and age allows, Notley ably captures the immediacy of youth’s passion while offering her own dry-eyed interpretations of the events of a life lived close to the bone. Like the colorful collages she assembles from paper and other found materials, Notley erects structures of image and feeling to house the memories that swirl around her in the present. In their feverish, intelligent renderings of moments both precise and ephemeral, Notley’s poems manage to mirror and transcend the times they evoke. Her profound tributes to the stages of her life and to the identities she has assumed—child, youth, lover, poet, wife, mother, friend, and widow—are remarkable for their insight and wisdom, and for the courage of their unblinking gaze. (NKP: I LOVE her book The Descent of Alette; I have high hopes for this one!)
Last Poems of Elinor Wylie: When Elinor Wylie died in 1928 at the age of 43, she had built a considerable reputation as both a poet and a novelist. She was a voracious reader who idealized Shelley. Her own work is reminiscent of Dante, Webster, and Aesthetic Decadents of the late nineteenth century. It is deceptively simple, couched in traditional rhyme schemes. But it is sharply pointed and sensitive. Edmund Wilson described her as “the master of a divine language.” (NKP: This synopsis doesn’t really say much of anything…this should be interesting.)
Maxine Kumin, Selected Poems: Gathered from nine collections representing three decades of work, these poems―newly available here in a rich and varied volume―celebrate the growth of a major artist. Since the publication of her first book of poetry, Halfway, Maxine Kumin has been powerfully and fruitfully engaged in the “stuff of life that matters”: family, friendship, the bond between the human and natural worlds, and the themes of loss and survival.
E.E. Cummings, Selected Poems: The one hundred and fifty-six poems, arranged in twelve sections and introduced by E. E. Cummings’s biographer, include his most popular poems, spanning his earliest creations, his vivacious linguistic acrobatics, up to his last valedictory sonnets. Also featured are thirteen drawings, oils, and watercolors by Cummings, most of them never before published. (NKP: This synopsis is specific to the edition I own, picked up at a used bookstore. This edition was first printed in January 1960; reprinted August 2007, edited by Richard Kennedy.)
Here Comes and Other Poems by Erica Jong: (NKP: No synopsis available on Goodreads.com. Amazon.com offers the following: Originally published as Fruits & Vegetables and Half-Lives: Fruits & Vegetables, originally published in 1971, offers a glimpse into the daring, erotic imagination of a young author of great promise. Here is a writer who puts metaphors in her oven, fruits and vegetables in her bed. In her tide poem, Jong considers the character of the onion: “Not self-righteous like the proletarian potato, nor a siren like the apple. No show-off like the banana. But a modest, self-effacing vegetable, questioning, introspective, peeling itself away . . .” Throughout her debut collection, Erica Jong demonstrates a remarkable adventurousness, erudition, lyricism, and command of the poetic form. At the same time, she examines many of the themes she will pursue in years to come. On the subject of desire, she writes: “The corruption begins with the eyes, / the page, the hunger. / It hangs on the first hook / of the first comma…. The corruption begins with the mouth, / the tongue, the wanting. / The first poem in the world / is I want to eat.”)
Complete Poems by Anne Sexton: (NKP: apparently I have read this one already as well, again a few years ago. It must have been a library book, as I just picked up the copy I own from Unnamable Books in Turners Falls, MA just a few weeks ago): From the joy and anguish of her own experience, Sexton fashioned poems that told truths about the inner lives of men and women. This book comprises Sexton’s ten volumes of verse, including the Pulitzer Prize-winner Live or Die, as well as seven poems from her last years.
Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry by Jacques Maritain (again, craft and analysis rather than actual poetry): This book explores the rich and complex relationship between art and poetry, shedding invaluable light on what makes each unique yet wholly interdependent. Jacques Maritain insists on the part played by the intellect as well as the imagination, showing how poetry has its source in the preconceptual activity of the rational mind. But intellect is not merely logical and conceptual reason. Maritain reveals how it carries on an exceedingly more profound and obscure life, one that is revealed to us as we seek to penetrate the hidden recesses of poetic and artistic activity. Beautifully illustrated, this illuminating book is the product of a lifelong reflection on the meaning of artistic expression in all its varied forms.

So there you have it. 30 books. 14 weeks. I generally kick off my Summer Reading on Memorial Day weekend (okay, the Friday night of) and wrap it up on Labor Day. My sister and I are reading one book together as she is a huge fan of Philippa Gregory’s historical fiction, and I am an amateur scholar of Women’s Studies. In a make-believe world I would go back to school to earn a Master’s Degree in the Literature of the Sociology of Women’s History (is that even a thing??) but I prefer to spend my money on frivolous things like food and utilities.
What are you reading this summer? Leave a comment and let me know. And if you have read any of these books, let me know your thoughts!