📖 Reading List: June 2025 📖
It's summer, baby!
By the time you’re reading this, I’m on vacation. A real vacation without a computer. A real vacation with a fat stack of books loaded in my Libby app. A real vacation we’ve saved for and planned for literal years, that at least one of the kids will be utterly disappointed with because their job is to keep us humble.
📖 Better: A Memoir About Wanting To Die by Arianna Rebolini is what
calls Memoir+, a memoir with a little something extra (in this case, research on suicidality, suicidal ideation, etc.). How can you still want to die if you’re better? If you’ve been in therapy, been to the mental hospital, gotten married, had a baby and built the career you wanted? How can it be possible that so many people feel so hopeless? The girls that know, know, but I think anyone could benefit from the insights in this book.📖 Sing To Me by Jesse Browner was so beautiful and painful, especially if you have ever met a little boy and imagine them as the hero of this odyssey. After the fall of Troy, Hani and his donkey (sob!) leave their abandoned farm and shell of a village to embark on a journey to find Hani’s sister, who left for the city with their father and never returned. If you loved Madeleine Miller’s Song of Achilles, this will also speak to you.
🎧 The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian was a perfect listen, even though I’d already seen the TV series and thought I knew the story (I didn’t! They change things when they make a TV show! Never forget that!). A thriller is truly my favorite kind of audiobook. You might think I’m a normal woman listening to music when I’m at the gym or driving my car. You’re wrong! I’m an abnormal woman listening to a thrilling novel about a flight attendant who wakes up next to a dead body in Dubai after yet another blackout and finds herself trying to outwit international spies (while keeping her job).
📖 Everyone is Lying To You by Jo Piazza is a trad-wife thriller that lives up to the hype, and I gobbled it down in one flight (my favorite way to consume a book). When an influencer’s husband is murdered during a Girl Boss conference, her college bestie-turned-journalist has to figure out what actually happened. The perfect summer book.
📖 Making Friends Can Be Murder by Kathleen West is a cozy murder mystery set in Minneapolis, where an intergenerational group of friends all named Sarah Jones find themselves solving the murder of another Sarah Jones. There’s a hot FBI agent with a haunting past, intrigue and, duh, a murder to solve. I read it in a single day by the pool (the way books want to be read).
🎧 The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens Our Businesses, Infantilizes Our Governments and Warps Our Economies by Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington was truly enraging! If you’ve ever wondered what consulting is…get ready to learn that it’s kind of nothing! Just a lot of money changing hands, draining brainpower and manpower from companies and governments, and pouring money into big buckets for the wealthy to chug from. Am I oversimplifying? OF COURSE I AM!
📖 The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean was published in 2000, adapted into the movie Adaptation by Charlie Kaufman, and finally had the honor of being read by me in the summer of 2025. Susan Orlean is the kind of writer who makes a meal out of a sentence. Thank GOD she built her career when she did, when she could follow those ideas down into swampy rabbit holes, spend years reporting on a weird man who was obsessed with orchids, and leave us with this book, part historical record and part memoir.
📖 Awake by Jen Hatmaker won’t be out until September, but I got an advanced copy, flipped it open just to read a few pages and then resurfaced hours later, face covered in tears. The book grabbed me by the throat with the first sentence: at 2:30 AM on July 11, 2020, out of a dead sleep, I hear five whispered words not meant for me: “I just can’t quit you.” If you’ve survived evangelicalism, betrayal, being a woman alive in the world, or any combination therein…I can’t wait for this book to get into your hands.
Book Giveaway Time!
If you’re new here, we do this every month. Leave a comment with what you’d like, and I’ll choose winners at random and message you for your address1. These books will be sent out in late July, so stay patient!!
Making Friends Can Be Murder
Everyone Is Lying To You
Sing To Me
Better
❤️ The May Reading List is on YouTube, too!
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❤️ Simplified my makeup routine with the essentials from Merit, which means traveling much lighter than usual!
❤️ Tried the Needles No More eye de-puffing cream from Dr. Brandt and this stuff works.
❤️ I get 8+ hours of sleep a night because of these THC gummies. The DREAM ones conk me out for 8-9 hours, and the UPLIFT ones make me chill and fun. Code NORA gets you 15% off! My other sleepy girl things are here.
❤️ I’m still Bricking my phone for most days and this link gets you 10% off. If the link doesn’t auto-apply 10% off, use code NORA.
XO,
Nora
A note that paid subscriptions are always optional and always appreciated. There will always be plenty here for free, and just like Tommy Boy, I will absolutely accept no as an answer!!!!
Book giveaways are a perk for paid subscribers! If you can’t comment, you aren’t a paid subscriber and need to upgrade your subscription! Also this is only for Americans! I can’t afford to ship books across the world, sorry!
OoOoOOooh I would LOVE Making Friends Can Be Murder or Everyone Is Lying to You!! I feel like I probably SHOULD read Better, but I might be too sensitive/tender to read that atm because I *am* "better" these days, but not really that much better... y'know?
Please add me to the drawing for Better. Thank you so much for 30 Days of OK! I really needed those messages.