A Bunch of Books I Like—July 2025
Have you read a book yet this summer?
I ask because 1) if it was good, please tell me about it, and 2) if you read just one book a year, that puts you in the top half of readers in the US, and this heads-up gives you plenty of time to finish one before 2026.
Yes, reading is time-consuming and focus-consuming and sometimes really difficult. It’s also really good for us. Look up “studies about the benefits of reading” and you’ll find evidence about physical benefits, mental benefits, personal benefits, social benefits, and more.
Ever since elementary school used Pizza Hut vouchers to bribe us to read during break, summer has been synonymous with reading for me, and since then plane flights, beaches, and early mornings are some of my best reading situations.
One of the best parts of summer reading was that it was free from assignments, so I could always choose what to read myself. But things are busier these days, and our attention spans are shorter, so choosing something good seems more important. My aim here is to help make choosing your next read a little bit easier.
Some of these are vetted by the excellent Novel Strand Book Club I frequent, and others are gathered from various lists, recommendations, and interests. Whether you read these or something else, make sure you treat yourself to some pizza at the end for a job well done.
Do you want an uplifting story?
A lot of times the stories we tell in various forms of media are challenging, sad, and heavy. These can be very important, but in a world that is often challenging, sad, and heavy enough, sometimes it’s nice to read stories where good things happen. Here are a few that go beyond escapism and embrace positivity:
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune is full of endearing, magical characters who help change an endearing non-magical main character’s life.
Funny Story by Emily Henry is a rom-com book by someone who literally wrote Beach Read, so she knows the vibe you’re looking for.
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride is also full of endearing characters, plus a few terrible ones who are very worth rooting against
Do you want to read something from a really great contemporary writer?
A few of my favorite classes in college focused on reading the catalogues of one or two great writers: “Faulkner & Morrison,” “Kafka,” and “Dostoevsky.”
These classes were at Amherst College, which writer Lauren Groff also attended. When I read Lauren’s books (or the profile in the New York Times on how she writes), I feel the same way as I did reading fellow alum David Foster Wallace—“We must have had some of the same professors, why didn’t they teach me to write like these people?”
Anyway, Lauren’s books are so freaking good that I’m working my way through all of them. Right now I can vouch for these:
The Vaster Wilds is my current read. It is not blasphemous to say that it reminds me of Cormac McCarthy.
Fates and Furies is a monster of a book, portraying two sides of a marriage in epic fashion.
Matrix is thoughtful, creative historical fiction that I think is the right fit for a summer read.
Do you like reading classics?
I try and make sure I’m cycling in “important” critically acclaimed older books, I guess out of some classical conception of being “well-read,” but also because a lot of the time I’m surprised by how good they are (though sometimes I’m surprised by how dated they are, for sure).
Here are a few older books that were new to me, and still felt relevant:
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf fascinated me for the masterful way she shifted internal perspectives within a narrative written all the way back in 1925.
White Noise by Don DeLillo from 1980 is considered “Post-Modernist” (Virginia’s is “Modernist”), but both are pretty focused on how we deal with our own mortality, if that’s how you like to spend your summer.
Do you prefer sci-fi?
I struggle with the fact that so many sci-fi and fantasy books are part of long series, and so I tend to gravitate more towards self-contained stories like these:
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is written as letters between time-travelling adversaries, and the craft at work in how the story unfolds is pretty mind-blowing.
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, about an artificially intelligent robot, is the way I prefer my reading about AI.
Do you like basketball?
I read a ridiculous number of books about basketball. Here are three I loved:
There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib is beautiful writing about the intersection of life and basketball and place.
Basketball is Jazz by David Thorpe is about what basketball feels like from a coach who thinks about the game in a way I admire.
How to Watch Basketball Like a Genius by Nick Greene is about how a lot of uniquely interesting specialists in other disciplines think about basketball. It’s a great premise that I think would work in a lot of different areas.
Do you just want me to tell you what to read?
Cool, I got you. Email me at jed@kindandfunny.com, tell me what you’re looking for, and you’ll get a custom recommendation.
Not feeling these? You can find previous book recommendations here and here. Holler if you have anything you think I should read! jed@kindandfunny.com.