five things Friday: August TBR edition

My July reading list was all about getting around to picking up some hard copies already on my shelves, and that's partly because my August reading is a little up in the air... could have 2 solid weeks of good reading time before baby arrives, or 2 days, so who knows how many books I'll fit in next month. However, I do remember getting through a good bit of books on Kindle when Hendrik was tiny, since it's easy enough to do one-handed while nursing - thus I'm hoping I'll still be able to enjoy a few things in later August as well and decided I'd still put together a little potential reading list for myself.

So here's what I've got lined up on my Kindle that I've been saving for the one-handed reading-while-nursing days, thinking these will be engaging or light/fun to accommodate having maybe smaller snippets of time for reading (and of course less of a well-rested brain...): YA mystery Good Girl, Bad Blood (sequel to one I really enjoyed, A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, kind of a Serial [season 1] true crime podcast in YA-narrated form); memoir Nobody Will Tell You This But Me, which I've heard great things about, and think will be enjoyable as it's written by a tv comedy writer; a couple of fun rom-coms, The Soulmate Equation and The Tourist Attraction; and finally a book that I've been intrigued by after hearing it described as noir fantasy and Harry Potter for grownups, Magic for Liars. 

Not pressuring myself to finish August's list, but it's nice to have a few books I'm interested in that I know I literally have right at my fingertips - reduce the decision-making requirements and keep myself doing my favorite hobby even if busy and tired!

 As for my July reads, definitely more success than June's list recap. 

• Instructions for Dancing is YA that along with Tokyo Ever After (review here) got my YA -reading mojo back, after I had been a little meh about some other recent YA picks. Great protagonist, cute story and romance but with some depth and diverse characters. ★★★★
• Anne of Manhattan is a modern-day resetting of Anne of Green Gables. Not great literature but still fun - see my full review here. ★★★
• Great with Child is a book of letters of encouragement and advice from poet Beth Ann Fennelly to her younger friend who is expecting a first baby was wonderful to read during a first pregnancy. But I loved it even more on revisiting during a 2nd one because while I can still very much identify with the pregnant letter recipient looking for the community of womanhood and motherhood, at the same time I felt even more strongly along with the writer the wonder and strangeness and struggles and everything that she reflects on in her letters, having been through it myself now. ★★★★.5
• A Children's Bible is fascinating literary fiction - lots going on, with an apocalyptic/climate change story line, but also read to me as coming-of-age, allegory, and a bit of satire. Even felt a bit Lord of the Flies except with the kids working together and figuring things out as a team. It's set in a not-too-distant future where group of oddly mature kids, disdainful of their parents' out-of-touch attitudes, partying, and willful ignorance of the realities of how climate change is affecting daily life decides to go it alone when a destructive storm arrives. It's not super depressing and bleak apocalyptic fiction like The Road, maybe more of a Karen Thompson Walker verge of apocalypse type of tone/story (The Age of Miracles, The Dreamers). It's really engaging and even wryly amusing at times, though certainly has its intense moments - and after coming through the Covid pandemic and the latest climate change craziness with wildfires and storms, it feels eerily real (and predictive) to have life sort of going as normal, but with these big disruptions/shut-downs and the way it makes people go a bit feral or hoard things. Something unexpected and different - I'm glad I read it.  ★★★★
• The Fixed Stars is a memoir of Molly Wizenberg exploring her changing identity and sexuality in her mid-30s, and how that affects her sense of self, her marriage, and her family. I appreciated the prompts to think about sexuality and sexual orientation in a broader way (perhaps moving beyond the "born this way" understanding of it, especially in terms of women's sexual identities), allowing ourselves to get rid of definitions and identities that no longer fit, and also her discussion of motherhood - but I think I would have liked it even more in terms of a connection to the personal stories from her life if I had previously read her other work (though it sounds different, as the others look to be more about being a writer/opening restaurants with her husband). ★★★.5

Best books of last month were definitely Great with Child and Instructions for Dancing, but A Children's Bible was (somewhat unexpectedly) up there, as was the romance The Friend Zone (love everything by Abby Jimenez!). What were your favorite book(s) of the month?