Summer Reads

are the best reads

Or at least that’s how I feel because as a teacher and an instructional coach, I have a lot of time to play in the summer. I love the work that I do, but I also love not doing it all summer long and spending my days hiking, gardening, writing and baking. Most of all, I think I love the slow that summer offers me, something I really don’t get during the school year. From the last week of August to the second week in June, I live by bells and schedules. I have meetings at 7:10 in the morning more often than one should have meetings at 7:10 the morning. In the summer, I still wake up early because I like to start my day writing and then I like to be in the garden before it gets hot, but it’s all about the choice. I’m waking up because I want to, and then I get to decide what to do with the rest of my day. It’s delicious. One summer, I took a walk and started chatting with a woman about her garden. She then invited me into her house which was full of tropical fish and plants. There were so many fish. She told me how I should teach my kids to fish, which I proceeded to never do, but I still cherished the encounter, and it feels like these kinds of quirky adventures happen more in the summer.

I hope you get a taste of summer this weekend, a taste of the slow, a taste of spending your time exactly how you want to. May it be a teaser of good things to come!

Below I’m including a short stack summer reading list, a handful of titles I read or plan to read because I want to, not because I have to. Recently, a friend of mine who is also our school librarian reminded me of the golden rule when it comes to starting a new book. Give it 100 minus your age, so if I’m doing the math right and calculating my age right, big ifs, if I get to page 66, and I’m still not into a book, it’s time to move on. As my delightful neighbor would attest to, there’s lots of fish in the sea.

Without further ado, here’s my summer short stack.

1. Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

“Stories do more than comfort. They take you away and bring you back better made.”

Wandering Stars is the sequel to There There, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Like Star Wars, it is out of order. There There is set in Oakland, California in the present day and shares the stories of twelve characters on their way to the pow wow. The characters struggle with a wide array of challenges, ranging from depression and alcoholism to unemployment, fetal alcohol syndrome and the challenges of living with an “ambiguously nonwhite” ethnic identity. Wandering Stars starts in 1864 after the Sand Creek Massacre where 230 of Tommy Orange’s ancestors, members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, mostly consisting of women, children and the elderly, thought they were in negotiations with the American military to receive safety and supplies and instead were brutally slaughtered. The novel follows Star to a prison run by Richard Henry Pratt, the founder of the Carlisle Industrial School, an institution infamous for brutalizing children and dedicated to the erasure of Native history, culture and identity where a generation later Star’s son is sent. Wandering Stars is a poignantly written story about epigenetic and generational trauma.

2. Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

For a lighter summer read, I suggest you try Kevin Wilson. Lillian and Madison were roommates in boarding school, but then Lillian had to leave in the face of a scandal, great backstory. Ten years later, Madison calls Lillian up asking for a favor. She wants Lillian to be a nanny to her two stepchildren. There is just one catch. The kids spontaneously combust when they get upset.

“I’d live with the kids?” I asked.

“Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” she said, and she could see on my face that this sucked. “We can arrange for a few days off, to have someone else watch them if you need a break one day. And it’s just for the summer, until we can figure out a more permanent solution, okay? Once the vetting is done and the nomination comes through, it’ll all be easier.”

“This is weird, Madison. You want me to raise your husband’s fire children.”

This book absolutely raised my reading bar. I loved every inch of. It made me laugh, hard, but it also pulled my heart strings in unexpected ways on what it means to be a parent, particularly a parent to kids who are neither your biological or adopted children. It hit home in a way that I sometimes find only science fiction can, revealing something bright and true beneath the absurdity.  

3. Now is Not the Time to Panic also by Kevin Wilson

Anna just finished reading Now is Not The Time to Panic and absolutely loved it, so now we are swapping.

“At the Coalfield public pool, they would blow a whistle and everybody had to get out of the water, and we’d all stand there, hopping on one foot and then the other because the concrete was so damn hot, burning the bottoms of our feet. And some lifeguard, barely older than I was, sixteen, looking like the bad guy in a teen movie, blond and buff and absolutely never going to save you if you were drowning, would wheel out a greased watermelon. There was a three-inch layer of Vaseline, which made the watermelon shiny, almost like it was turning from a solid into a liquid. And the lifeguard and one of his evil twins, maybe with crazier muscles and a scuzzy mustache, would dump this watermelon into the water and then push it to the middle of the pool.”

That’s Chapter One. Don’t you want to read more? I know I certainly do.

4. 1,000 Words A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round by Jami Attenberg

In the Spring of 2018, Jami Attenberg and a friend decided to help motivate each other to write by writing 1,000 words together daily for two weeks. This turned into a movement with thousands of writers joining in. This year Jami came out with a book to cheer people on even further, full of wisdom from fifty writers, who have been there.

“The best part of being a writer is the actual writing and the community you build along the way. Commercial success, a good review, a cool book cover that everyone compliments, all the likes you get on a post—all of that feels good, all of that is important, because it’s important to feel good and be recognized. But also, it’s fleeting. In the long haul, those things are temporary, and it’s the growth and joy of putting down the words on the page, the development of both the body of work and yourself as a person, in addition to the supporting of other people and being supported by them, that makes it all worthwhile. Those are things you can have every day of your life. They are all possible.”

If you’re a writer, and if you write, you’re a writer, and you need a little pick me up, this one is for you. I also invite you to write along with Jami and the rest of us starting June 1^st. It is free, and you can sign up by joining her Substack here. (No one will beat you up if you don’t write 1,000 words, so don’t beat yourself up. Come and be part of a creative community.)

Well, I’ve already taken up more of your holiday weekend time than I intended. If you are still hungry for more reads, I suggest you check out this Saturday’s Literary Merit. Andrea is the one who pointed me towards Kevin Wilson’s books. She has a talent for finding the best things and sharing them, and this week her Substack turned one. Congratulations, Andrea!

I would love to continue this conversation in the comments. Let’s fill it up with books we are reading now, past summer loves, or books we can’t wait to take in the hammock, or our dark bedroom, and devour.

Thanks for being here!