What I’ve been reading lately: the new and the notable

Short and sweet book reviews of what I've been reading lately

Welcome to Quick Lit, where we share short and sweet reviews of what we’ve been reading lately on the 15th of the month. (Or, when the 15th falls on a weekend, near the 15th of the month. Since the 15th falls on a Tuesday and that’s What Should I Read Next day we’re running the August edition on Monday.)

My reading life has been all over the place this summer! Since the last time we gathered to share our short and sweet reviews of recent reads, I’ve finished books I began in Europe, gotten over jet lag, accompanied a child to college orientation, hosted two sets of visitors from out of town, and read a slew of books for our upcoming Fall Book Preview on September 14. There have been days when I’ve read 300 pages and days when I’ve read just five.

I typically read more backlist in the summer than is reflected here: most of my recent reads have been quite new, but Brandon Sanderson’s Skyward and Weike Wang’s Joan Is Okay are recent backlist selections.

Coincidentally, I read two memoirs about marriages in crisis this month for an accidental book flight: Elizabeth Crane’s This Story Will Change and Harrison Scott Key’s How to Stay Married. The experience of reading two ostensibly similar stories almost back-to-back was interesting.

And for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on (though I have my theories), I’ve also been reading A TON on audio. As you’ll see, more than half of my short book reviews are for audiobooks! I’m thinking it’s time for a summer round-up dedicated to summer audiobook listens, because I’ve racked up so many good ones! Perhaps soon?

As always, I’m tracking my reading in the My Reading Life book journal, which makes it easy to see and share what I’ve been reading lately.

I hope you find something that looks intriguing for your TBR on this list (and in these comments!), and I look forward to browsing your recent reads below. Thanks in advance for sharing your short and sweet book reviews with us here!

Welcome to August Quick Lit

An Astronomer In Love

Author: Antoine Laurain

Another novel from our big trip! I read this French novel, as translated by Louise Rogers Lalaurie and Megan Jones, in Paris and had to mention it in WSIRN Ep 389: Anne and Will’s European reading adventures. Having loved Shirley Hazzard's The Transit of Venus, I was particularly intrigued by the astronomical phenomenon's key role in this story. The novel unfolds in two timelines: in 1760, King Louis XV's astronomer sets sail for India, where he hopes to observe a rare transit. 250 years later, in Paris, a real estate agent finds himself in possession of this same astronomer's telescope, which is soon to upend his life. This was the right book at the right time, and I thoroughly enjoyed it for its strong sense of place and whimsical love story. More info →

Joan Is Okay

Author: Weike Wang

In this first person, character-driven narrative, we meet thirtysomething ICU doctor Joan. Her relationships with her Chinese and Chinese American family members are fraught, and her inability to read cues makes friendship and neighborliness tricky, but her great love for her work is utterly uncomplicated—that is, until her father dies. Her workaholism has always been seen as an attribute in her NYC hospital, but when she takes just 48 hours off to fly to Shanghai and back for his funeral, HR steps in and makes her take some extended time off. Without the distraction of work, Joan is forced to reckon with the things she's been avoiding, in all their complexity and ambiguity. But then COVID-19 enters the story, with devastating effects in her personal and professional life. I so appreciated being let into Joan's interior world: her cool assessments of the people around her, her dry (and sometimes unintentional) humor, and her frank reckoning with individual and societal struggles. Catherine Ho's excellent audiobook narration was a wonderful way to experience this story. More info →

How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told

Author: Harrison Scott Key

I read this on the recommendation of a handful of writer friends and opted for the audio, read by the author. This memoir begins in much the same way as Crane's: one night the author's wife turns to him and says she wants a divorce. Both memoirs explore the aftermath of a spouse's revelation, both are written in more or less real time, and yet the stories felt completely different. I think this is as much due to the tone and approach as the ending, as the title indicates that this is not the story of a marriage's dissolution but its unlikely continuation. Key's voice is frank and funny, even as he tells his readers about his wife's affair with a family friend and the chaos this revelation brought to his family, including the couple's three young daughters. Early on, Key takes a close friend's advice to fight for his wife, and proceeds to interrogate his own role in their problems, the past unaddressed traumas that continue to fuel present hurts, and what his Christian faith means to his life and relationship now. I'm sure my jaw dropped a time or two while listening, including when Lauren showed up to voice her own chapter in which she shares her side of what happened. I'm glad I opted for the audio: Key's humor added levity to tough moments, and the Southern accent was a nice surprise and fitting for a story that unfolds mostly in Savannah. More info →

Skyward

Author: Brandon Sanderson

This was such a fun change of pace! I raced through the audiobook, narrated by Suzy Jackson, and while my app clearly shows it's 15 1/2 hours long the reading time sped by. This series opener for the Skyward series introduces us to Spensa, a 16-year-old girl who has long dreamed of following in her father's footsteps as a pilot for the Defiant Defense Force. It's not easy to land a coveted pilot position, but Spensa's way is made much harder because of that same father: years ago, he was branded as a coward during an important battle, and the powers that be fear that if allowed to fly, Spensa will turn coward as well. Despite these obstacles, Spensa manages to clinch a position with Defiant, where she makes friends, excels in the air, and discovers that Defiant's leaders seem to be hiding key information about her father's last battle from the people. I really enjoyed this, and might need to make time to read the rest of the series this fall. More info →

The Connellys of County Down

Author: Tracey Lange

Lange's debut We Are the Brennans is one of my favorite juicy, big-hearted family novels and I've so been looking forward to her next family drama, which I read months ago but can't miss the opportunity to tell you about it now that it's finally out in the world. (I nearly included it in the Summer Reading Guide but the way the categories shook out, there just wasn't room.) This story is about the three adult children in the Connolly family. In the opening pages, Tara is released from prison after serving 18 months on a drug charge and goes home to see her siblings: her brother, a single dad who is still struggling with lingering symptoms from a brain injury sustained many moons ago, and sister, the Type A firstborn who always has things under control but who is struggling at the moment, not that she’ll admit that to her siblings. I love stories of complicated families, and was also pleasantly surprised to discover this novel features a book within a book: the title references the ongoing story the mother of the now-grown Connolly children once told them at bedtime. More info →

Tom Lake

Author: Ann Patchett

When I included this new release in the 2023 Summer Reading Guide, I closed my blurb with the words "I can't wait to read it again." Friends, I have so much I need to read right now, for a variety of reasons. But the thing I most wanted in my reading life last week was to revisit Tom Lake, this time on audio, as narrated by Meryl Streep, and it was a very good decision. (Dare I say it was even better the second time, on audio?) This is the novel I didn't know I was longing to read, with its tender familial relationships, Michigan cherry orchard setting, and insider look at summer stock theater. When Lara is nearing sixty and the pandemic is just beginning, her three adult daughters return home for the summer. The girls have long romanticized their mother’s once-upon-a-time romance with a megastar actor, and now, all together again, the girls direct Lara to tell them the whole story from the beginning. She unspools her story slowly, over three long weeks harvesting cherries on the family property. I’m still not sure how I feel about the ending, but this story? Gorgeous, wistful, and tender, with every word falling in exactly the right place. Bravo. More info →

This Story Will Change: After the Happily Ever After

Author: Elizabeth Crane

I picked this up after Curtis Sittenfeld praised it during our MMD Book Club discussion of Romantic Comedy, and listened to the audio version narrated by the author. This is the almost real-time chronicle of the death of a marriage, an ending that felt premature to the author. What's more, when the story ends, it's not over, necessarily, for the author still does not know what will happen next, either in her life or the life of her marriage. The beginning, at least, is clear: in the opening pages, the husband unexpectedly tells the wife "I'm not happy;" the wife then proceeds to interrogate what might have gone wrong—for she has many theories on this point, though she doesn't know which, if any, is true. The narrator does indeed refer to the characters as "the husband" and "the wife," no one is named in this memoir, and the third person narrative is only occasionally broken by a first person chapter. I would have guessed this approach would make the characters feel distant, but instead felt as though the author was making room to tell a story more universal than the breakdown of one marriage. This is a book about sad things, but I found the storytelling—and specifically the narrative approach—made for interesting listening. More info →

Just Another Missing Person

Author: Gillian McAllister

McAlister's bestseller Wrong Place Wrong Time is likely to land on my Best of the Year list, so when I saw she had a new procedural thriller out this August, I pounced! I read it while we were in England and mentioned it in WSIRN Ep 389: Anne and Will’s European reading adventures. This sucked me right in: when a 22-year-old British woman disappears without a trace, the detectives are baffled by what they see on the CCTV: she enters a dead-end alley and never comes back out. The dedicated cop assigned to the case is straight as an arrow ... except for the single time she abused her position for her daughter's sake. That lapse now comes back to haunt her, as she's blackmailed at knifepoint to frame an innocent man for the missing woman's murder. I raced through this one. More info →

What have YOU been reading lately? Tell us about your recent reads—or share the link to a blog or instagram post about them—in comments.

P.S. I took the top photo at London’s Daunt Books. I shared more pics of Daunt Books and more bookstores we visited on our trip on my Instagram.

What I’ve been reading lately: the new and the notable

Short and sweet book reviews of what I've been reading lately

Welcome to August Quick Lit

An Astronomer In Love

Joan Is Okay

How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told

Skyward

The Connellys of County Down

Tom Lake

This Story Will Change: After the Happily Ever After

Just Another Missing Person

52 comments

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Find your next read with:

100 Book recommendations
for every mood

Welcome to August Quick Lit

52 comments

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Find your next read with:

100 Book recommendations for every mood

100 Book recommendations
for every mood