june and july books

I didn't read as much over the last 2 months as I would've liked. 

I started my mfa program. It consisted of a week of residency done online. I got to meet lots of other writers and listen to lots of other writers read and I got paired with a mentor for the semester and yesterday, I picked out all the books I'll read over the next 5 months for the program. I'm excited about this new part of my life. 

and my sister got married last Sunday, to a wonderful man. it was the most beautiful thing that's happened in my world this year. 

so. that being said, I didn't read as much as I wanted to. but I still had time to read some books by authors I talked to. and so, those are the books I am going to recommend. it was an honor to talk to them, and to read their books. 

Where the Sky Meets The Ocean and The Air tastes Like Metal and The Birds Don't Make a Sound was written collaboratively by Mike Kleine and Dan Hoy. It's a detective story but also involves centaurs and subliminal messages on billboards. It's one of the most free, unique novels I've ever read. It was a joy to talk to them on my podcast. And I feel like I learned a lot about writing. I was excited to sit down and go back to my own work as soon as I finished talking to them. 

Buy their book here. 

Selftitled by Nicole Morning is a collection of stories, poems, essays about love, tinder, sadness, pandemics, parenting, anxiety and other topics that feel close to home. This was one of only two books that I've read in the last year that directly referenced the pandemic. It made me feel less insane. Nicole also makes zines and learning about how much she loves them, her process, all of that was wonderful. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the way she conducts herself as an artist. 

Buy Nicole's book here. 

Read more of her work here. 

I read one of Oliver Zarandi's stories online about a year ago and then thought about that story every time I saw his name on Twitter. These stories made me think a lot about what makes a good short story. I found myself re-reading lines, trying to figure out how they manged to do what they did. I found myself remembering why I started to love literature in the first place. What makes it worth spending time on. 

Buy Oliver's book here. 

I'm going to re-focus my reading a little bit. I have  a couple more books I'm excited to read in their entirety before I start reading novels for my mfa program. After that, I'm planning to talk to a bunch of writers whose work is online for the podcast. I love reading full length books but I want to have the energy to give full attention to an entire book and I don't think I'll have enough brain space to do that again until December. But I'm planning to keep recording episodes about shorter material. So keep an eye out for that. 

Let's all enjoy the end of the summer, as much as we can.