Read With Us Lounge: 6/8/26

 

One of the quietest pressures many readers carry has nothing to do with time or attention span. It’s the endless chorus of reading “shoulds.”

We should read the classics.
We should read the prize winners.
We should finally tackle that intimidating novel everyone else seems to have read in college.
We should read serious books, educational books, important books.
We should read book series in order.
We should keep up with best sellers.
We should always have an audiobook going while we fold laundry, commute, exercise, or walk the dog.
We should finish every book we start.

At some point, reading can begin to feel less like pleasure and more like homework with no due date.

One of the things we hope to do in the Read With Us Lounge this summer is gently question those “shoulds.” Not because classics or award winners or ambitious reading goals are bad (they absolutely aren’t) but because reading is deeply personal, and our reading lives change over time. The books that nourish us at one stage of life may not be the books we need at another.

Sometimes the most meaningful reading experience comes from picking up the exact “wrong” book at the exact right moment.

Maybe you discover that you actually prefer reading contemporary romance to literary fiction. Maybe you abandon a 600-page masterpiece halfway through and feel relieved instead of guilty. Maybe you read children’s books for comfort, reread old favorites from your teenage years, or spend an entire summer immersed in mysteries, cookbooks, essays, graphic novels, or cozy fantasy. Maybe you decide silence is better than forcing yourself to listen to audiobooks just because everyone else seems to multitask their reading.

Challenging our reading “shoulds” can feel surprisingly uncomfortable at first. Many of us learned early on that some books were “good for us” while others were considered fluff, escapism, or a waste of time. But joy matters. Curiosity matters. Rest matters. Reading for delight matters.

And often, when we let go of obligation, something unexpected happens: we read more honestly. We become more adventurous. We notice our real tastes instead of the tastes we think we’re supposed to have. We stop performing as readers and start becoming ourselves again.

That doesn’t mean abandoning challenging books forever. Sometimes we truly want to wrestle with a classic or work our way through a demanding nonfiction title. But there’s a difference between choosing a difficult book because we’re interested in it and forcing ourselves through it out of guilt or fear of not being “well read.”

This summer, consider asking yourself:

• What reading “shoulds” have shaped my reading life?

• Which ones actually enrich my reading experience?

• Which ones make reading feel stressful, competitive, or performative?

• What kinds of books do I secretly love?

• What would happen if I gave myself full permission to read exactly what I want?

Maybe the answer is that you really do love classics. Maybe the answer is dragon-filled fantasy novels, celebrity memoirs, nature writing, romance, rereading childhood favorites, or checking out giant stacks of random library books with no plan whatsoever.

All of it counts.

I'll start by admitting that I have occasionally chosen a book to read because it seems like everyone is reading it, and I don't want to miss out. The latest example of this is The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion. I checked out the first four volumes from hoopla and happily started listening. Over the course of a week, I thought that maybe I was just more interested in other books and returned them. I  tried twice more to listen to Volume I, and have finally decided these are just not for me. All telling, no showing, and just too much forced whimsy. I finally admitted that these books are just not for me at this time. I felt quite a sense of relief when I gave myself permission to stop trying and move on. 

Be sure and check with Kym and Carole for their take on reading "shoulds". 

So tell us: What “shoulds” do you carry around reading? Have you challenged any of them? And when you do, are you happier as a reader? We would love to know!  

Books on Thursday

I finished two books this week, and they were both a little outside of my usual reading. Sarah recommended this first one, and since I seem to be on a memoir streak, I gave it a try. 

In How to Lose Your Mother, Molly Jong-Fast writes with a voice that is unmistakably her own, sharp, self-aware, anxious, funny, exhausting, and often brutally candid all at once. The memoir moves quickly between humor, resentment, grief, celebrity gossip, family history, and the slow devastation of Erica Jong’s dementia. At times the tone feels almost frenetic, but that energy also feels true to the life she’s describing. Even when I wasn’t fully invested, I was rarely bored.

One of the most compelling aspects of the book is its complicated portrait of motherhood and daughterhood. Jong-Fast clearly spent much of her life longing for stability and attention from a mother who was consumed by fame, relationships, ambition, her own needs, and addiction to alcohol. The title itself captures the emotional core of the memoir: how do you mourn a mother you never really had in the first place? Some passages about caregiving, aging, and anticipatory grief were genuinely moving.

I listened to the audiobook, which added another interesting layer to the experience. Molly Jong-Fast has a very distinctive narration style and voice. At first I found it a little jarring , clipped, intense, almost breathless at times and strident at others , but as the memoir went on it started to feel perfectly matched to the story she was telling and the emotional chaos underneath it.

In the end, I think readers who enjoy messy family memoirs, literary gossip, and emotionally complicated mother-daughter stories will probably get the most out of this one. I didn’t love every moment, but I appreciated its honesty and refusal to sentimentalize difficult relationships. This is a story about a little girl who didn't get what she needed from her mother while she was growing up, and that's a sad story no matter the circumstances. Three and a half stars.

Sally Hepworth has built a reputation for writing domestic suspense with sharp humor and memorable characters, and Mad Mabel leans heavily into both strengths. Part mystery, part character study, and part dark comedy, this novel follows eighty-one-year-old Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick, a woman whose prickly exterior hides a lifetime of secrets, and possibly a trail of bodies.

The strongest aspect of the book is undoubtedly Mabel herself. She's nosy, opinionated, unapologetically difficult, and far more complex than she initially appears. Hepworth does an excellent job balancing Mabel's sharp edges with enough vulnerability to make readers invested in her story. The friendship that develops between Mabel and her young neighbor Persephone is also unexpectedly charming and provides much of the novel's heart.

The dual timelines gradually reveal Mabel's past, and while the mystery kept me turning pages, some of the twists felt more entertaining than surprising. The pacing occasionally lagged a bit in the middle. The novel's blend of humor and darker subject matter is mostly successful, though at times the tonal shifts felt a little uneven.

What ultimately makes Mad Mabel work is its exploration of justice, redemption, and the assumptions we make about people based on age and appearance. It's a clever premise that asks readers to reconsider who gets labeled "dangerous" and who gets overlooked. It is an engaging, quirky mystery with a memorable protagonist and enough twists to keep suspense fans satisfied. Three and a half stars rounded up.   

Now I'd love to know what you're reading!  

Unraveled Wednesday: 6/3/26

I’m happy to join Kat and the Unravelers today with a completed barn owl in duplicate stitching. 

I've been sitting outside in the shade in the afternoon and stitching. This has worked well because I've got plenty of natural light to make stitching easier. It's also been really beautiful so I'm enjoying my time stitching outdoors. You can see a little bit of brown and gray to the right of the owl; those stitches mark the beginning of the ear of the next animal, a wolf.  

 

I'm still knitting dishcloths as a no-stress break from stitching, but I don't think you need to see a photo of a couple of dishcloths. They are definitely not too exciting, but I do have an idea for a different, small, non-stressful bit of knitting. I'll try to cast that on this week and see what my idea looks like.  

 

What are you making this first Wednesday in June?  

Read With Us Lounge: 6/1/26

Welcome to the Read With Us Lounge, our brand-new online adult summer reading program!

This summer, we’re throwing out the rules, the pressure, the reading quotas, and the guilt. Read With Us Lounge is built around one simple idea: No rules. Just fun. 

We know that many of us carry around a lot of ideas about what “counts” as good reading. Maybe we think we should be reading more classics, more nonfiction, more award winners, fewer thrillers, fewer romances, fewer rereads, fewer graphic novels, listening to fewer audiobooks. Maybe we feel guilty for abandoning books or for reading something light when the world feels heavy.

This summer, we’d like to challenge those notions together.

Read With Us Lounge is an anti-book bingo experience. No rules. No assigned categories. No pressure to optimize your reading life. Just an open invitation to read whatever feels right to you.

Want to spend the summer immersed in cozy mysteries, giant fantasy novels, beach reads, food writing, poetry, fan fiction, childhood favorites, or books with dragons? Excellent. Want to reread beloved books instead of chasing the newest release? Wonderful. Want to listen to audiobooks while gardening or walking the dog? That's great, too.

Our goals are simple:

• Challenge the assumptions we hold about reading and books
• Encourage joyful, pressure-free reading
• Build camaraderie and community through questions, conversations, and shared experiences
• Gather for a couple of casual LOUNGE hang-outs via Zoom
• Distract ourselves from the daily horrors in the news for a little while

Throughout the summer, look for our blog posts on Mondays where we’ll post discussion prompts, conversation starters, and questions designed to get us thinking and talking. These are definitely not meant as a test of whether you “did the homework” because there is none. There are no reading minimums and no expectations except kindness and curiosity.

Think of the Lounge as a comfortable chair, a cold drink, a stack of books, and a group of fellow readers who are happy you showed up exactly as you are.

So bring your library stack, your neglected TBR pile, your weird reading habits, your favorite rereads, and your enthusiasm. Or your reading slump. Those are welcome too.

Read what you want. Join us in the Lounge this summer for No rules. Just fun. 

Books on Thursday

I read three books this week, two ARCs and one already published book. A couple of them were just average, but I've read a lot of stellar books lately and they can't all be five stars. 

The Left and the Lucky was something I checked out on the spur of the moment. It is filled with empathy and bruised humanity, and at its best, the novel offers a moving portrait of connection between damaged people trying to survive difficult lives. Eddie, the lonely house painter carrying decades of guilt, and young Russell, desperate for safety and kindness, form the emotional core of the story, and their growing bond is genuinely tender. Vlautin writes beautifully about small mercies: a shared meal, a little work to do, a quiet place to sit, someone finally paying attention. Those moments feel earned and deeply human.

But for me, the novel’s relentless bleakness eventually became overwhelming. There is more than enough sibling abuse, substance abuse, neglect, poverty, violence, and child abandonment to go around, and while Vlautin clearly approaches his characters with compassion rather than judgment, the accumulation of misery sometimes overwhelmed the story entirely. Curtis, Russell's brother, is portrayed with such frightening volatility that many scenes become difficult to read, and the constant sense of danger hanging over Russell made the reading experience emotionally exhausting.

That makes the kindness Eddie offers all the more meaningful, but it also means those quieter moments can feel buried beneath wave after wave of suffering. I appreciated what Vlautin was trying to do ,show how even fragile acts of care can alter a life, and there are passages here that are heartbreakingly lovely. Still, I found myself wishing for a little more balance and breathing room amid the despair.

Readers who appreciate stark, working-class literary fiction with deeply compassionate characters will likely find much to admire here. While I respected the novel more than I enjoyed it, Eddie and Russell’s relationship lingered with me even after I finished the final page. This was three stars for me. 

Barry Werth’s The Age of Cures is an ambitious history of the rise of the American pharmaceutical industry, tracing the scientific breakthroughs that transformed medicine between the 1930s and 1960s. Werth clearly did an enormous amount of research, and the book is packed with details about the development of antibiotics, vaccines, cortisone, and the partnerships between universities, government, and private industry that reshaped modern healthcare.

What worked best for me was the sense of scale. Werth captures how terrifying illness once was before the arrival of so-called “miracle drugs,” and he effectively shows how quickly medicine evolved within just a few decades. Some sections, particularly those dealing with the race to develop penicillin and the polio vaccine, were genuinely compelling and gave me a new appreciation for the scientists and institutions involved.

That said, I found the book uneven as a reading experience. The level of detail can become overwhelming, and the narrative sometimes gets bogged down in long explanations of corporate structures, research funding, and scientific politics. While those elements are obviously important to the story Werth is telling, they occasionally overwhelm the book. I also struggled to connect emotionally with most of the people involved because the cast of researchers, executives, and institutions is so large.

Overall, this is a thoughtful and deeply researched work of medical history that will probably appeal most to readers with a strong interest in science, medicine, or the pharmaceutical industry. I admired it more than I loved it, but I still came away with a greater understanding of how modern medicine and America’s pharmaceutical dominance came to be. Three stars from me.

Thank you to Edelweiss and Simon & Schuster for providing me with a copy of the book. It will be published on September 22, 2026.

Mary Beth Keane’s Whale Harbor is a sprawling family novel that feels both intimate and epic at the same time. Inspired by Keane’s own family history, the story follows eleven brothers whose lives diverge after tragedy fractures their family in Ireland. Some remain behind while others emigrate to Montana and New York, building new lives marked by hardship, loyalty, silence, and longing. At the center of it all is the mystery of a missing brother, Rian, whose absence echoes through generations.

What impressed me most was Keane’s ability to make such a large cast feel emotionally distinct and fully human. Multi-generational novels can sometimes become overwhelming, but here each brother and branch of the family carries its own emotional weight. The novel explores immigration, identity, masculinity, grief, and family obligation without ever feeling heavy-handed. Keane writes with tremendous compassion for her characters, even when they make frustrating or heartbreaking choices.

The emotional texture of the book is what lingered with me most. There’s a quiet sadness running beneath much of the story, but also resilience and tenderness. Keane captures the complicated ways families carry both love and damage across decades. The sections set in New York and Montana were especially vivid, and the immigrant experience felt grounded in the daily realities of work, survival, and reinvention rather than romanticized nostalgia.

I also appreciated the pacing and structure. Despite covering so many years and perspectives, the novel never felt rushed. Keane allows relationships and tensions to develop naturally, and the central mystery of Rian's estrangment gives the story an emotional pull that keeps unfolding right up to the end.

My only slight hesitation is that a few characters inevitably receive less depth simply because the scope is so ambitious. There were moments when I wanted to stay longer with certain family members before the narrative moved on. But honestly, that feeling also speaks to how invested I became in their lives.

Overall, this was a beautifully written and deeply absorbing family saga, rich with history, heartbreak, and humanity. Fans of literary fiction centered on family dynamics and immigration stories will find a lot to love here. I’ll be thinking about these characters for a long time. 4.5 stars rounded up.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on November 3, 2026.

Now I'd love to know what you're reading!  

Unraveled Wednesday: 5/27/26

I’m happy to join Kat and the Unravelers today with some more duplicate stitching, a completed dishcloth, and a start on another one. 

 

I've finished the raccoon, complete with his eyes, and the deer now has eyes, a nose, and outlined ears. Up next is a barn owl. I've only completed the counting and placement of the first stitch, but I think I'll enjoy stitching this one. It has large areas of the same color, which means I have less chance of misplacing stitches.

A photo of a dishcloth isn't terribly exciting, but knitting keeps me from going crazy when I'm not duplicate stitching. I'm not sure who I'm making dishcloths for, but they will suffice until my rainbow yarn arrives from Must Stash.  

What are you making at the end of May? 

Books on Thursday

I finished two books this week and both of them were ones that although they were not at the top of my list, still provided me with some interesting reading. 

I had placed a hold on Strangers at one of my libraries, but was pleasantly surprised to find it available at my second library, so I checked it out and started listening. Belle Burden’s memoir is a reasonably well-written and often compelling account about the one-sided collapse of a marriage. The early pandemic setting adds a claustrophobia to the story, and there’s no denying the emotional devastation of having a partner of twenty years abruptly decide he no longer wants the life you built together. Burden writes candidly about grief, confusion, humiliation, and the slow process of reclaiming herself after betrayal.

At the same time, this memoir is filled with red flags that made it difficult for me to completely lose myself in the narrative. The biggest one was Burden handing over complete financial control to her husband. I simply could not understand that choice at all, regardless of how much wealth and privilege she may have come from. Burden writes openly about how she chose not to know, and the book becomes a cautionary tale about dependence and the dangers of surrendering autonomy within a marriage.

Burden is honest about being raised in a wealthy socialite world, and while she can’t help the circumstances of her birth, I do think that wealth cushioned many of the practical and emotional circumstances of the divorce. There’s still real pain here, of course, but it’s impossible not to notice the safety nets available to her that many women would never have.

What stayed with me most, though, were the children. The unraveling of the marriage is sad, but the most heartbreaking aspect is the portrait of a father who seems anxious to walk away not only from his wife, but from his three children as well. That complete emotional abandonment lingers over the entire memoir. Her children ranged in age from 12-17 at the time their father abruptly discarded them, and they are now 17-22 years of age. I would be interested in reading their accounts of what this has felt like for them now that they are young adults.

Overall, this is an engaging and emotionally raw read, even if I sometimes found myself more frustrated than sympathetic. I’d recommend it to readers who enjoy memoirs about marriage, identity, and reinvention after betrayal. Three and a half stars.

 

 

I also checked out Malibu Rising at the same time. I've only read one other book by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Daisy Jones & the Six) and enjoyed it, so I thought this one might provide some entertainment. Malibu Rising is definitely a summer read: glossy, dramatic, emotionally engaging, and somewhat difficult to put down once the party gets started. While I wouldn’t call this great literature, it absolutely succeeds as a propulsive, entertaining novel for times when you want something lighter that still has enough heart and family drama to keep you turning the pages.

Set over the course of one chaotic night in 1983 Malibu, the novel follows the four famous Riva siblings as they prepare for (and endure) their legendary annual summer party. Reid does a wonderful job capturing the atmosphere of excess, celebrity culture, surfing, music, and sun-soaked California glamour. The setting feels cinematic in the best way, and it’s easy to imagine this story unfolding in slow-motion montages complete with crashing waves and Fleetwood Mac in the background.

What kept me reading most was the complicated relationship between the siblings themselves. Nina, Jay, Hud, and Kit all carry wounds left by their famously absent father, Mick Riva, and the emotional fallout of their childhood gives the story more substance than the flashy party premise might initially suggests. I especially appreciated the sibling loyalty and the ways they tried, imperfectly, to protect one another.

That said, the novel occasionally leans a little too heavily into melodrama, and some of the secondary characters felt underdeveloped or conveniently sketched in. The frequent shifts into Mick’s backstory also slowed the momentum for me at times, even if they helped explain the family dynamics. By the end, some emotional revelations felt more predictable than profound.

Still, Reid undeniably knows how to craft a compulsively readable story. The pacing is sharp, the dialogue is lively, and the “one wild night that changes everything” structure works incredibly well. Even when the book veers toward soap opera territory, it remains entertaining throughout.

Overall, this was an enjoyable, fast-moving novel with memorable family dynamics, plenty of emotional turbulence, and a vivid Malibu backdrop. Not necessarily a deeply literary experience, but definitely a satisfying read when you’re in the mood for something immersive and fun. Three and a half stars. 

 

Now it's your turn to tell me what you're reading!