June Reads Ranked & July Books on Deck
$5 Friday
Another month, another chance for you to donate $5 to a good cause. Last week, Venezuela saw two devastating earthquakes that killed 1,179 people, as of this writing. The good people at World Central Kitchen are on the ground in Venezuela providing fresh meals to those who have been displaced by the earthquakes. Your $5 gives people more than food—it provides hope and dignity in a time where comfort is in short supply.
As always you can give more or less than $5, and if donating isn’t in the cards this month, sharing this with your community on and off social media is meaningful and appreciated.
I feel like I didn’t read anything all month1, because since June 11th, I have been locked in on the World Cup. I will read again, but not until after all this amazing soccer ends. I just can’t look away. Plus, its good to do things besides work all the time, right?
Below you’ll find a quick recap of The Stacks episodes from June, a list of July books I’m looking forward to, and all the books I finished in June ranked from least to most favorite in a 15-minute mini-podcast.
The Stacks March Recap
The great came on the podcast to talk about her new book Pool House and let you all know why she is the coolest!
In a very, very special episode, my uncle Dusty Baker came on the podcast to discuss his life in baseball and his new book Crossroads. I’ll never not love this conversation.
When I read a book that I think is just absolutely fantastic, I slide into the author’s DMs and demand they be a guest on the podcast. That’s exactly what happened here with Justine van der Leun and her book Unreasonable Women.
Twice a year, I talk with and about forthcoming books. Every year these conversations are the best. Here is our mid-year check-in.
Why is The Alchemist such a reading staple for so many, and what has reading this book for the last 40 years done to the culture? and I try to answer those questions in our book club chat of this polarizing book.
July Books On Deck
We’ve had a lot of months this year with a lot of very exciting books. July feels like a month where the new-release intensity is pulling back just a little—well, at least for me. There are only seven books on my list this month2. That feels very reasonable, no?
There are a few more July books on my radar that I may or may not get to. Those are all listed on my #teampreorder list on bookshop.org. This is a running list we update all the time. So bookmark it, shop from it, plan your reading life around it. And yes, we’ve already tipped into 2027 books.3
The books here are listed in order of pub date, and anything I’ve read (or at least started) appears in bold.
Daughters of the Mountains: poems of heartbreak & homecoming by Fatimah Asghar (July 7)
I absolutely loved Asghar’s poetry collection, If They Come for Us. Their new book makes this list based off that alone.The Great Wherever by Shannon Sanders (July 7)
A super solid family novel narrated by a gossipy ghost. That sounds a little weird, but really works. I know folks are going to eat this one up.Good Morning Means I Love You by Kendra Allen (July 7)
This book was pitched to me by Jason Reynolds as “sorta like if Sula had kids,” and that is sorta like, all I need to know.False Prophet by Afsheen Farhadi (July 7)
This novel is hard to explain, but let me try. There is an author whose mom dies. The mom had some connection to Jonestown. The son decides to write the mom’s story and it is a success, except, of course, the story isn’t true. So, like, a little Yellowface vibes, but maybe/hopefully better.A Quiet Place by Seichō Matsumoto translated by Louise Heal Kawai (July 14)
I am not really a genre girly, but there is something about this thriller that is calling out to me. It is about a man whose wife dies suddenly, but also maybe suspiciously? Which like, isn’t that exciting to me, but it should be said that the author is a legend of suspense in Japan and this book was originally published in 1971, so this is a re-release.Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast by Pamela Colloff (July 14)
I read this one. It is a wild story. A con man in jail informs on his fellow inmates and is pretty clearly lying, but the prosecution doesn’t care because, like, of course they don’t, and at least one dude ends up on death row. So yeah, wild story.Liberation Summer: The Moment That Changed the Women's Movement and the Future of American Politics by Micki McElya (July 28)
A work of narrative history about the 1968 Miss America Pageant and the women behind it.
My July list is kind of sparse, so what is on yours?
June Reads Ranked
I read less this month than normal because of the World Cup, duh. I did read eight books this month, and they were mostly good. I ranked all my reads for you, including one book that shocked me by how annoying I found it, and a trio of books I really, really enjoyed for very different reasons.
