July 2024 Reading Recap

Books I read on vacation (when I wasn't watching the Olympics)!

Before we get into the books, I feel like it’s important to say that I am among the many Minnesotans who are delighted that Governor Tim Walz has joined the ticket with Kamala Harris. While not perfect, I think he’s been an excellent governor for our state, and brings a lot of good energy to the national race.

With that, to reading! In July I set a goal to read a little bit every day. It was easy early in the month when I was on vacation, but was definitely a challenge as we got to the end of the month and the Olympics started… but I did it!

I didn’t read quite as many books as I expected given that I was on vacation for so much of the month, but I’m not mad about it because the books I finished were pretty solid. Here’s what I finished:

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📘 I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself by Glynnis MacNicol (Memoir)

I loved Glynnis MacNicol’s first memoir, No One Tells You This, in which she explored what it is like to be a woman walking off the expected path (in the case of that memoir, being over 40 and happy with a partner or children). In this book, she tells the story of going to Paris in summer 2021 exclusively in search of pleasure. She writes about her friendships, the food, the freedom, and all of her French hookups thanks to an app called Fruitz. It’s a decadent, pleasurable, joyful book that was so much fun. It didn’t resonate quite as much for me, but I still thought it was an enjoyable and thought-provoking read. 

📘 The Ministry of Time by Kalaine Bradley (Science Fiction)

I really liked this book when I read it at the start of my vacation, but then tried to describe it to a friend and discovered the plot had completely left my brain – I truly could not remember a single thing. Which is a shame, because I really did like it! The book follows a young bureaucrat assigned as a minder to an Victorian Arctic explorer who has been pulled out of time in a government experiment. The plot is very twisty, but weaves in romance, spies, and comedy in a way I really liked. I want to read this one again when my brain is more focused because I’m sure there is a lot I missed the first time around.

📘 Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum (Contemporary Fiction)

This book opens with the discovery of a dead body, then jumps back to the start of the summer season on a Hamptons-like island where morally questionable rich people like to spend the summer. This was my perfect summer read – quick and plot-driven, with characters that are fun to judge because they’re such spoiled jerks. If you like books about Rich People Problems and spoiled people behaving badly, then this will be a fun one. If those things bug you, then skip picking this one up. 

📘 The Shadows Between Us by Tricia Levenseller (Fantasy)

Alessandra has a three-step plan – woo the Shadow King, marry him, then murder him so she can be Queen. It’s a setup that makes very little sense, but it also doesn’t really matter? Because of course Alessandra and the Shadow King fall for each other, and of course there is drama along the way, but it’s still quite funny and swoony as a YA fantasy romance. This one was very fun.

📘 The Black Bird Oracle by Deborah Harkness (Fantasy)

One of the things that bugged me about the original All Souls trilogy was that despite Diana being the story’s main character, it seemed like most of the plot was driven by the men around her. I wonder if Deborah Harkness heard that, because this book – which seems to be setting up another duology or trilogy – was very different. I loved that it focused on Diana, her family, and her tremendous power as a witch, while putting her relationship with Matthew and the mythology of his vampire dynasty almost fully in the background. More powerful women please!

📘 The Dry and Force of Nature by Jane Harper (Mystery)

I’ve been wanting to read Jane Harper for a while, and finally managed to snag these from the library to read on my Kindle. I didn’t think the main detective, Aaron Falk, was particularly interesting, and so enjoyed these more for the story and atmosphere than the characters. I liked the way that Harper was able to build up tension and fear through outside circumstances like an unsolved cold case or serial killer mythology, which helps distract from the fact that the thing we should be afraid of is often much closer to home. I’m looking forward to the third book in this trilogy!

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Final Thoughts

This month I’d like to give a shout out to my favorite book-related tool of the year, The StoryGraph. I’ve been using this service to track my reading for the last couple of years and I love it.

I was never into the social aspect of Goodreads, so this is a big upgrade of the things I care about in a reading tracker. It has a lot of fun stats tracking, the visuals are beautiful, and they’re continuing to add new features. In the last couple of months they’ve added cover collages and monthly summaries, which I think are neat. Using the reading streak tracker this month was also fun.

How do you track your reading? What’s your favorite Olympic event? What’s something new you’re excited about watching this year?