There’s a lot to love about Goodreads: it helps readers find new books via recommended titles, connect with friends and see what they are reading, and record books read, to be read, and currently being read under the “My Books” section.
There are some negatives, one of them being the ratings system, which I don’t often use. That’s not to say I abstain from rating any books I have read, I only rate the books I have big reactions to. I never liked the idea of star or number or letter-grading systems to determine whether I think a book I have read is good or not. Opinions change. No piece of writing is 100% immaculate, nor is it all garbage. I find it difficult to attribute a specific rating to something I have read because some stories I like and some stories I simply don’t; that doesn’t mean I need to pair my feelings with a rating or score. The ones I assign a star rating to are the ones that really speak to me or I just want to give a score to in the moment I finish reading it, and again, even those initial first-reading-thoughts change. This is likely a bigger conversation on the nature of scoring art; I’m getting ahead of myself since this is supposed to be about Summer Reading 2023.
I opened with Goodreads because that app is my new book-tracking system. The books I’ve read this summer, I’ve logged onto Goodreads, a huge relief for my previous TBR list on my Apple Notes app.
Below is a list of the titles I feel worth highlighting. Again, this is not to suggest that all the other books I’ve read these past few months were bad or unimpressive. As much as I love to read, few books I consume leave a serious impact on me. Most of what I read (across a variety of age groups and genres) is fun or light or enjoyable, even the serious books I take with a grain of salt. Here’s a varied list of some of June, July, and August’s summer reading selection (the season isn’t over until Labor Day, so happy reading!):
The Ghosts of Rose Hill by RM Romero: A lyrical middle grade novel about a girl’s summer with her aunt and an otherworldly new friend in Prague.
Lodge: And Indoorsy Tour of America’s National Parks by Max Humphrey: Like the title says, take a tour of picturesque parks in style by visiting ten stylish US National Park lodges through this photography book.
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast: Uncover the joy of caring for aging New Yorker parents in Chast’s creative memoir, a graphic novel.
The Hidden World of Gnomes by Lauren Soloy: In this charmingly-illustrated guide, explore a year in the forest with the many gnomes dwelling in their peaceful homeworld of The Pocket.
Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth: A John Waters-esque novel of a woman willing to go to extreme measures to save her husband from the vengeful ghost of his mother.
Welcome to the Circus of Baseball by Ryan McGee: Spend summer, specifically summer 1994, with recent college grad and future ESPN reporter Ryan McGee as he navigates a hilarious and joyful stint as a ballpark employee for a minor league team in Asheville, North Carolina.