June Answers: Midlife reading, reminders to slow, and my pick for album of the summer
Plus, a midyear reading check-in
The days have been stretching out in a way they only do in the summer. When dinner is done, I rejoice that it’s still light out, there’s still time. Time to play with my pup, to read as the sun goes down, or write as I’m doing now. As long as I’m willing to activate the mosquito safeguards, I remind myself this doesn’t last long and I should soak it in.
Because while the days stretch, they are also filled with hard things, necessary things, and things that probably shouldn’t be a thing. The tasks to function, to take action1, to show care for yourself and others. I know yours are too.
So I’m also doing things like buying all the fruit at the market (and making versions of this as a snack), bringing backyard bouquets to friends, going to see movies during the week, stopping for ice cream on the way home. I’m trying to remind myself to slow.
I’m listening to albums from start to finish and HAIM’s latest is on repeat for me. The sisters are the girls of the summer as far as I’m concerned and I’m going into July with this energy from Gone:
I'll do whatever I want
I'll see who I wanna see
I'll fuck off whenever I want
I'll be whatever I need
Listen: Full playlist from the monthly recaps.
Answers in the pages
Listed in the order that I read. 🎧 Audio | ⭐️ Favorite | 📚 Book club pick
Everything is Tuberculosis, John Green
“And anyway, while I’m fascinated by how TB shaped culture and history, what’s most important to me is how culture has shaped TB. The infection has long exploited human biases and blind spots, wriggling its way through the paths injustice creates.”
In the early days of June I didn’t anticipate my only 2025 published read so far would be a book about TB, but it was one of my most anticipated books of the year. I appreciate that Green is using his fame megaphone to spotlight TB, a disease that is curable, yet over 1 million die from each year. With his signature wit and storytelling, he shares an overview of the history of the disease, its cultural impacts, while also sharing stories from patients that he meets—spotlighting a young man he meets in Sierra Leone who shares a name with his own son—Henry. The cultural impacts are interesting, truly everything is TB: cowboy hats, the existence of entire cities, and the sensitive artist trope. This book will make you angry and sad as Green unravels the infrastructure inequities that lead to unnecessary dehumanization.
All Fours, Miranda July
“I was no closer to being sixty-five than twenty-five, but since time moved forward, not backward, sixty-five was tomorrow and twenty-five was moot. I didn’t think a lot about death, but I was getting ready to. I understood that death was coming and that all my current preoccupations were kind of naive; I still operated as if I could win someone. Not the vast and total winning I had hoped for in the previous decades, but a last chance to get it together before winter came, my final season.”
This was the big book of summer 2024 so I knew the premise: woman abandons planned cross-country road trip to stay in a motel 30 minutes from her house and dives into a mid-life crisis. But I was not prepared. (If you’ve read: the interior design! the dancing!) As my conversations with friends are increasingly filled with is it perimenopause? questions, I appreciated the commentary on aging (and parenting and marriage). The female friendships shine in this book. A favorite moment: a group chat discussing the best thing about when you stop bleeding. It’s got a little bit of raunch, a lot of unhinged behavior, but also what I think was heart? This book was a good time.
🎧 On Being 40ish
I turn 39 this month, and being 40ish is my new homework assignment. This was a good warmup with essays from writers I’ve enjoyed and some that were new to me. The reflections ranged from comedic to motivational, all worthy. Catherine Newman’s essay made me cry. She’s so damn good.
Dear Writer, Maggie Smith
“To make things that don’t exist yet—and don’t need to exist, because that is the very definition of art—and to them out into the world is wildly, impractically, gorgeously hopeful.”
I featured Maggie Smith’s latest in my recent reading list for creativity. The book borrows and expands on her Substack newsletter
. She provides excellent advice and her signature pep talks for writers. While at times it does skew more toward poetry, her advice applies to many forms of writing, and any creative pursuit. Through essays, prompts, and reading assignments, Smith walks the reader through her ten essential elements of creativity. The quote above comes from the hope section and was something I needed to hear amid last week’s news cycle. Other elements include attention, wonder, vision, surprise, play, vulnerability, restlessness, connection, tenacity, and hope. This is one I’ll be coming back to.📚 ⭐️ Migrations, Charlotte McConaghy
“It isn’t fair to be the kind of creature who is able to love but unable to stay.”
A gut-punch of a book. Adventure, mystery, romance, mental health, climate change, McConaghy does a lot with this story and is the rare writer that pulls it off. In reading this book, you’ll join the main character as she is determined to track what is predicted to be the Artic terns last migration. Set in a world that doesn’t feel far off, species like wolves and crows are all extinct, and oceans are near-empty with fish. Through the harrowing tale abroad a fishing boat, you’ll unpack her past, revealing the tragedies that have led her desperate to set sail to track the birds.
🎧 Girl on Girl, Sophie Gilbert
“It’s been well documented by now that this particular decade was crushing for many of the women who lived through its lens and they deserve reappraisal, but I’m interested, too, in what this moment did to those of us who were simply spectators. Curious, and even envious of the stars whose degradation was offered up to us as thrilling, perpetually stakes- free entertainment. How did it condition us to see ourselves? And, maybe more crucially, what did it condition us to think about other women and what they may be capable of?
I learned about this book when the author was a guest on the Culture Study podcast. She does her due diligence in exploring what feels like all aspects of decades of pop culture. Setting the stage with how the nineties shaped the 2000s and examining fashion, music, movies, reality television, and more.2 In short, the nineties and early aughts were a very messed up time in pop culture.
There were so many aspects I forgot about, or maybe that I didn’t necessarily consume, but was certainly aware of. For example, beauty and body standards were not only a constant in movies and magazines, but there were entire reality series built around reinforcing them like The Swan and The Biggest Loser. I don’t recall reading Perez Hilton, but the cruelty of its punch lines for stars like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan became mainstream. Gilbert’s examination of the “girl boss” and “Lean In” era helped me realize just why it’s taken therapy and years of effort to separate my worth and identity from my career aspirations and output. This book made me angry and sad, and as the author points out, one can’t help but look around and see after brief reprieves of some of these pop cultural messages we’re boomeranging back in so many ways. This post from
captures part of the current moment.Tar Baby, Toni Morrison
"Long ago she had given up trying to be deft or profound or anything in the company of people she was not interested in, who didn't thrill her."
Continuing to work through Morrison’s books, this one felt like a departure in some ways—the Caribbean setting, white characters, but it’s still true to Morrison—the dialogue sharp, the characters complex. Ultimately, it’s a love story complicated by backgrounds and values. A bit of a Romeo and Juliet situation. The longer I sit with it, the more I appreciate the novel and its main character, Jadine. Morrison explores many coming-of-age decisions as Jadine resists cultural messages of what it means to be Black and female. If you haven’t read, Tar Baby is as worth your time as any work by Morrison.
Answers in a midyear book check-in
With 37 books read so far this year, here are my favorites with prompts inspired by
by way of .Book that made me laugh: Kelly Bishop’s The Third Gilmore Girl
Made me cry: See above, Catherine Newman’s essay in On Being 40ish
Fav character: Holly and Misty from Happy All the Time
Book that stretched me: The Collected Schizophrenias, Esme Weijun Wang
New to me author: Danielle Evans blew me away with The Office of Historical Corrections
Biggest surprise: How much I loved a book about walking the length of the Grand Canyon, A Walk in the Park
Tell me: What have been your standout reads? What’s the best think you read this month? What’s your song/album of summer? Where are you finding joy?
ICYMI in June:
Recommendations for staying informed and taking action: Emily in Your Phone and
Content warning on this book: I did skip over part of a chapter for its graphic descriptions of the extreme porn that was popular at the time.
Such great variety here - thank you for sharing! I think I'm now at #2 for my Everything is TB hold - it sounds like an important and eye-opening book. Do you plan to read McConaghy's Wild Dark Shore since Migrations was a hit for you? I haven't read either yet but have heard nothing but rave reviews!
I am planning to read Wild Dark Shore, one of my book club pals read and confirmed it was just as good as Migrations. I hope you enjoy Everything is TB, it really is fascinating and Green’s nonfiction writing is as great as his fiction work!