📖 Reading List: May 2025 📖

get your library cards ready!

Hello from sunny Phoenix, where the weather is already pushing 100, the sun is shining and the kids are already on summer break. The end of the school year has all of us in shambles. There goes our routine! There go more milestones! We somehow have a kid entering medical school, a kid who finished her freshman year of college, a kid solidly in middle school and — I don’t know why this one felt so monumental — a third grader?

But enough about my impending mental breakdown! Let’s talk about books, baby.

📖 Unshrunk by Laura Delano was an eye-opener. At age 14, Laura was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and put on psychiatric medications that promised to make her better. But she got worse. 19 medications later, she began to untangle her identity from her diagnosis, eventually tapering off all medications. This is a memoir that asks hard questions about diagnoses, drugs and psychiatry, and has ruffled some feathers (Delano runs a non-profit that provides support for people tapering off their psychiatric medication) and as a person who has benefitted from psychiatry I was resistant to reading it. But many things are always true at once: the things that help some hurt others, the things we don’t think to question should be questioned, and listening to the experiences of others need not threaten the validity of our own.

📖 Free by Amanda Knox is not a book about the crime for which she was wrongfully convicted, but about the quest for freedom outside of what people believe about us, presented so beautifully by someone who is owed COUNTLESS APOLOGIES FROM THE MEDIA AND ITS AVID CONSUMERS. Amanda is a hell of a writer, and the picture she paints of her life is vivid and affecting and should make you rethink every story you’ve ever heard about a “bad” woman.

📖 High Dive by Chelsea Fagan is a vacation in a book, specifically a sumptuous vacation on a private yacht with Alex — a political strategist from a lower-middle-class background — and the ultra-wealthy friends she met at Columbia University. Those friends include the handsome Danial, who works in private equity and broke Alex’s heart 10 years ago. Every dynamic in this book feels so real and relatable, even though I will never in my life step foot on a yacht and nobody has ever quietly loved me for a decade¹.

📖 Alive Day by Karie Fugett is a trip back to trauma town, baby! Karie is the widow of a combat veteran she met and married when she was very young, after a tumultuous childhood. Early in their marriage, this man (BOY!) was hit by an IED in Iraq. He became a traumatized amputee; she became his traumatized caregiver. It’s Memorial Day weekend, and while we’re thanking the troops for their service and shopping for deals and remembering our fallen we should be addressing all of the issues that Karie plows into headfirst in this memoir.

OKAY LET’S HAVE SOME MORE FUN! All’s Fair In Love And Pickleball by Kate Spencer is what Kate does best: a sexy little friends-to-enemies rom-com set in the high-stakes world of pickleball vs. tennis (this is a very real thing!). Fun, breezy, sexy, and a great escape from the real world, which is not fun, breezy or sexy! Have you been to an actual pickleball court? People take it so seriously! Relax! We are playing ping-pong on a court! Smile a little!

📖 Unworld by Jayson Greene is out June 17. Jayson is the author of the memoir Once More We Saw Stars, and described this novel as a nightmare of that first book. The book starts with Anna, whose teenage son Alex has just died suddenly. Was it a suicide? An accident? Nobody can know for sure, and the loss of this child has reverberated the way these losses always do: Anna feels disconnected from her husband, from her life, from the couple friend whose daughter Samantha was Alex’s best friend and who was with him the day that he died. Then there’s Aviva, an AI-powered version of Anna’s consciousness that lives in a small device behind her ear. If you’ve listened to our AI Wife episode, or the episode with Julia Hotz of the Connection Cure, you know why I’m into this: because technology and memory and grief and loneliness are intertwined parts of our world, and will only get more entangled.

🎧 The Villa by Rachel Hawkins was a perfect listen: two frenemy writers (one a major self-help guru and the other a moderately successful novelist) go to Italy for the summer. The villa they’ve rented was the home of a grisly murder in the 1970s, when two frenemy stepsisters rented the villa with their musician lovers. If you don’t already know, I love Rachel Hawkins and her twisty thrillers. Such world-building! Multiple timelines! As a trusting reader, I never ever see the twists coming, and I love that about myself.

📖 Kingdom of Prep by Maggie Bullock has been on my list since it was published, and it did not disappoint. J.Crew is a brand that has shaped our culture, and this is the true story behind it (and the ways that — no surprise! — venture capital and private equity LITERALLY RUIN EVERYTHING!). If you or someone you know dressed as Jenna Lyons for Halloween, you absolutely have to read this.

📖 The Greatest Possible Good by Ben Brooks is a Wes Anderson movie in book form: a wealthy family is (shockingly!!) not as happy as they may seem. Their daughter is secretly sabotaging her college applications and obsessed with effective altruism. Their son is experimenting with drugs and their dad disappears, comes back and has given away most of their money. Funny and sharp and perfectly dysfunctional.

📖 Family and Other Calamities by Leslie Gray Streeter is the first novel by one of my favorite widows: a funny, engaging book about a widowed journalist facing the betrayal of a colleague stealing her story decades ago, the family she left in the dust, and the unexpected allies who help her pick up the pieces.

📖 FYI — The Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda Montell is in paperback on Tuesday! Amanda is one of the most engaging writers out there, and this exploration of our modern delusions is comforting and enlightening.

Hey, wanna change someone’s life? Me too! My sister has been volunteering with a young woman named Sydney, who was accepted into her dream school — Howard! And even with scholarships and Pell grants, she’s $30K short. My sister has secured matching grants of $10K, and I’d love to see us get her over the edge this weekend and alleviate some of that future student loan debt (as I’m writing this she’s on the verge of unlocking the second $5k match!). Let’s do it!

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 for your address². Up for grabs: All’s Fair in Love And Pickleball, Unworld, Unshrunk, Alive Day, High Dive, Free, The Greatest Possible Good, Family and Other Calamities.

🛒 Boden is British but still doing a Memorial Day Sale³, so I rounded up my favorite styles (things I’ve bought in other prints/colors in the past that I know are great).

🛒 The Dermstore sale is when I try new things and stock up on my favorites. Lots of things are 20% off with code SUN but if that code doesn’t work on what you want…use GEETHANKS (this is why

Caroline Moss

is my bestie!) My tries/rebuys are here.

🛒I love Kitsch because they make amazing hair products AND they sent an email saying any tariffs will NOT raise their prices. My faves are here.

🛒 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!!!!

1. Unless you do! I’m open to being pined for! Just let me know, I could use the self-esteem boost!!!!

2. 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!

3. weird but okay!!!