It’s July. I’m tired, you’re tired. All I want to do is sit next to a large body of water, staring into the middle distance, while someone periodically hands me hunks of watermelon.
Maybe you’re in a similar place, needing time to rest. Reading can be a good way to do this. I like to sit by the aforementioned water, watching my kids shove each other off a paddleboard, earbuds playing something interesting enough to make me occasionally reach for my notebook and jot down a line.
In pursuit of peak lake+book bliss, I’ve gone back through the archives and compiled a list of all the books that I’ve recommended, along with recommendations from our wonderful commenters. I hope one will strike your fancy.
And let me know in the comments: what’s the last thing you read and loved? Especially I’d love some juicy fiction to read in the shade.
FICTION:
-Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
-Book Lovers by Emily Henry
-The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz
-Little Rabbit by Alyssa Songsiridej
-Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
-Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko
GENERAL NON-FICTION:
-Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
-Emily Nagoski’s Come As You Are and Burnout
-Esther Perel’s Mating in Captivity
-Angela Garbes’ Essential Labor
-Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
-Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving
-High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out by Amanda Ripley
-Unmask Alice by Rick Emerson
-How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis
-David M. Buerge’s Chief Seattle and the Town that Took His Name
-The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Morgan Schafler
-Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke
-Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum’s Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
-Sex and the Soul by Donna Freitas
-God: A Human History by Reza Aslan
-How to Be Perfect by Michael Schur
-The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
-Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s On Repentance and Repair
-Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering by Dr. Scott Samuelson
CHRISTIAN-ISH NON-FICTION:
-Freeing Jesus by Diana Butler Bass
-Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free by Linda Kay Klein
-Allison Barr’s The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth
-Sarah Stankorb’s Disobedient Women: How a Small Group of Faithful Women Exposed Abuse, Brought Down Powerful Pastors, and Ignited an Evangelical Reckoning
-Shameless: A Case for Not Feeling Bad About Feeling Good (About Sex) by Nadia Bolz-Weber
-Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion by Dr. Marlene Winell
-Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life and The Universal Christ
-Attached to God by Krispin Mayfield
-Searching for Sunday and A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans
-Kristin Kobes Du Mez’ Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
-White Evangelical Racism by Dr. Anthea Butler
-John Fea’s Believe Me
-When Religion Hurts You by Laura E. Anderson
-Brian McLaren’s Do I Stay Christian? and Faith After Doubt
POETRY/ESSAYS/MEMOIR
-Let the Moon Wobble by Ally Ang (preorders available)
-Another Way to Say Enter by Amanda Johnston
-The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
-Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
-David Sedaris’ Calypso and Happy-Go-Lucky
-Maggie Smith’s You Could Make This Place Beautiful
COMMENTER RECOMMENDATIONS (I’m sure there are others I missed, please lemme know in the comments!)
-Religion of Tomorrow by Ken Wilber
-Joseph Stiglitz’s People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent
-Simon Sinek’s Infinite Game
BONUS MATERIALS:
more book recs, OH YEAH!!
and EVEN MORE!!
Thanks for consolidating these! Definitely bookmarking to sift through them later.
Thanks also for the link to my post!
lots of good ones here to comb through, I really enjoyed Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow!