The vast majority of us get into publishing because we love to read. Maintaining that love when reading becomes work is really essential to not hating your work, in my opinion. I still read a lot ‘outside of work.’ I put that in quotes though because arguably, a number of these I read because I need to keep up to date on what’s being published, because I needed to know how they would work as a comp title for something I was submitting, because they kept coming up in conversation, or some other reason that wasn’t explicitly for leisure.
I’ve removed anything I read explicitly for work and didn’t include about 12 books I started but didn’t finish.
I’ll chat about the books in comment below or you can text me if we’re IRL buds but for the purpose of this advice-focused newsletter, and to skirt around picking favorites or saying which I didn’t like (explanation in a forthcoming paywalled article), I included how I read each.
LEGENDS & LATTES by Travis Baldree - Audio. Recommended by a friend, finished while getting over food poisoning from a salad.
SAME BED DIFFERENT DREAMS by Ed Park - Purchased in hardcover.
FIRST LIE WINS by Ashley Elston - Purchased in hardcover, read start-to-finish over 2 plane rides.
VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES by Dan Kois - Purchased cheap paperback.
THE ANTHROPOLOGISTS by Ayşegül Savaş - Read via PDF when a client was asked to blurb the book.
WE COULD BE SO GOOD by Cat Sebastian - Audio, read for a social bookclub.
WELLNESS by Nathan Hill - Audio.
NORTH WOODS by Daniel Mason - Borrowed, read for a social bookclub.
IF ONLY by Vigdis Hjorth translated by Charlotte Barslund - begged for a galley, this publishes in September.
A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES by Sarah J. Maas - Audio
POVERTY, BY AMERICA by Matthew Desmond - Audio
JAMES by Percival Everett - Purchased the hardcover
THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Fyodor Dostoevsky translated by Michael R. Katz - asked a publishing contact for the hardcover, read for different social bookclub.
MY BELOVED LIFE by Amitava Kumar - Purchased signed hardcover at book event.
CLEAR by Carys Davies - A publishing contact sent the hardcover.
FAMILY HAPPINESS by Laurie Colwin - Bought a $5 paperback outside the Center for Fiction.
THIS STRANGE EVENTFUL HISTORY by Claire Messud - Purchased hardcover.
A COURT OF MIST AND FURY by Sarah J. Maas - Audio (this one is better than the first)
BEAUTYLAND by Marie-Helen Bertino - Borrowed a hardcover.
INTERMEZZO by Sally Rooney - [redacted], this publishes in September.
I clearly need to read more nonfiction (I subscribe to and read a lot of magazines/journals and am still reading The Power Broker; next I want to read How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr.)