July 2026 Reading Roundup

The graphic generated by The Storygraph this month is different because in the view I usually use, it only showed two books. Glitches happen. Moving on!

I like Jenny Lawson's essays; she's funny. So I picked up her latest, How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay, from the library. It's more of a self-help, how-to kind of book, which I realize now is right in the title. I thought it was making fun of how-to books, but I was mistaken. She does share some good advice, and she does remain funny, so if you're going through a rough patch you might like this. It's even neurodivergence friendly. It just wasn't what I expected.

Link: https://bookshop.org/a/7065/9780593833216

The other two books I finished in July were both for review, so if these sound at all intriguing to you, preorder and help the authors out!

I like Lydia Millett, so when I had a chance to read Fair Ones for review, I grabbed it. I'm not sure where the review will end up, but I will let you all know as soon as it has a home. Short take: This is two novels in one, Fair and Ones. Each has a different narrator, two close friends (Jen and Mara) who lose another close friend (Claire) to an accidental shooting. Fair follows them in the immediate aftermath of Claire's death, and as in real life there is grief commingled with hilarity. Claire left behind an absurd ass of an ex-boyfriend, for instance. Ones picks up two years later as lives and families have shifted around Claire's absence. It's a good novel. Bonus points for possible Jon Hamm.

Link: https://bookshop.org/a/7065/9781324123675

The other review copy I had in July was Ambivalence: An Education, in which essayist Brian Dillon details his literary coming of age from high school through his PhD. I've got an essay review of this one circulating with different outlets, and I'm not sure how to sum up this very specific memoir, but if you have ever been a pretentious twenty-year-old with a voracious appetite for literature and theory and not much patience for sitting at a desk and doing the writing that should be the next step, you also might enjoy this book. Bonus points for Roland Barthes.

Link: https://bookshop.org/a/7065/9798896231103

I'm also rereading The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub. I still have my battered paperback purchased at Waldenbooks while I was in high school. I've also got book two in this series waiting in the wings because book three--surprise--is coming out this fall. So it's not all snobbery around here. But mostly it is.

Links:
The Talisman https://bookshop.org/a/7065/9781501192272
Black House https://bookshop.org/a/7065/9781501192296
Other Worlds Than These https://bookshop.org/a/7065/9781668233092

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