Friday Thread: What Are You Reading?

Let's talk about books.

Since we’ve been talking about the Burnt Toast Book Giveaway and our upcoming Burnt Toast Book Club, I realized: We need a space to talk very specifically about books we’re reading and loving. (Or not loving/want to warn others away from? I’m open to that too!)

You do not need to limit these to anti-diet/fat justice themes, though of course, we’re open to those. But I will tell you that I personally need to read a lot of escapist fiction in my downtime right now, because I’m so deep in the trenches of finishing my book and a weird thing happens to me at this stage of the writing where I cannot have other non-fiction writers’ voices in my head. This is NOT true in earlier stages, such as book research, of course, but also when I’m figuring out structure or how do people end books or start chapters. Then I read a lot of non-fiction in order to dissect what other writers do. But right now, I alternate between thinking very intensely about the words on my pages and then needing my brain to go somewhere else so my subconscious can solve various problems for me while I read something totally different.

Yes that’s 299 pages of words I wrote and maybe don’t even hate.

The something totally different I read this week was The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker. It’s moody and Gothic, about six sisters and a complicated mother (and also a bit about guns, FYI) and exactly the kind of absorbing can’t-put-it-down read I need right now, perfect for summer evenings on the screen porch, which is maybe my favorite reading mode. (I also will always adore Sarai Walker for writing the brilliantly dystopian Dietland, but this is something completely different and equally magical!)

I know this photo is VERY tranquil, so pls know that my week also involved a sick kid, last minute brownie baking, four days of solo parenting and a nearly fatal fish tank failure. Plus the aforementioned looming book deadline. June Mental Load is a whole thing, friends.

But now it’s done and I need a new escape. And maybe you also need a great summer read? Feel free to solicit specific book recs here (“seeking queer historical romance” or "in search of a searing memoir”) as well as give them.