summer reading list.

a season of reading - or whatever we want to call it.

Erin Ashley

Jun 13, 2024

Three quick flags:

This week’s newsletter is longer than usual, so I suggest opening it on a browser or using the Substack app.
Since this newsletter is longer, I am not sharing my usual list of recommendations. Instead, I am leaving you two new albums from Kaytanada and Esta. I have added these songs and more to my summer playlist, which you can listen to on Spotify (will be adding to iTunes).
Also, I am leaving you with one show recommendation: Queenie, based on the book by Candice Carty-Williams. While I could not stand the book, I soaked up the show. The show reminded me that sometimes you go through storms to find your rainbow or happiness at the end. I feel inspired to re-read the book to see if I like it better this time around.

Now that I have gotten that out of the way, the video at the top is a video clip from my podcast with

Andrea Brown

, Creative Canvas. For this episode, we chatted with my friend and author

Kristen L. Berry

(listen on Spotify | Apple Podcast | Amazon). While this episode is from a few weeks ago, it’s an episode I have revisited a few times as it’s about one of my favorite topics: books. In the episode, we shared a few recommendations for books to check out, which inspired me to write my list of the books I am adding to my TBR list. I also shared a few I have read this year that I have enjoyed.

Additionally, here are a few other great reading lists from authors that I love here on Substack:

Kristen on book covers and a few books to add to your list.
Tembe Denton-Hurst
’s Book Preview Part 2, read here
Alexis Reliford
’s Summer Preview, read here.

Without further ado, let’s get into my list.

on my want-to-read list:

Ambition Monster by Jennifer Romolini — A deeply personal memoir about workaholism, the addictive nature of ambition, and the humbling process of picking yourself up when the world lets you down—an anti-girlboss tale for our times for readers of Drinking: A Love Story and Uncanny Valley.

Outsider Advantage by Ciera Rogers — Ciera Rogers is known for being an “Outsider”—and she likes it that way. As the founder and CEO of a multi-million-dollar brand that caters to curvy women of all shades, worn by the likes of Kim Kardashian and championed by Beyoncé, Ciera has rallied the very women the fashion industry is designed to ignore around the radical idea that what makes you different is actually your superpower.

Love Life by Matthew Hussey — Sometimes, it feels like life and love are working against us. Just finding someone we like can be a struggle. Even when we do, we often find they’re not ready or they want different things. Then there are the internal fears and anxieties that lead us to self-sabotage—that make us indulge the wrong behavior in others, hold back from expressing our needs for fear of losing someone, or overinvest in people and lose ourselves in the process.

An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work by Charlotte Shane — In her early twenties, Charlotte Shane quit her women’s studies graduate program to devote herself to sex work because it was a way to devote herself to men. Her lifelong curiosity about male lust, love, selfishness, and social capital dovetailed with her own insatiable desire for intimacy to sustain a long career in escorting, with unexpectedly poignant results.

Such a Bad Influence by Olivia Muenter — Hazel Davis is drifting: she’s stalled in her career, living in a city she hates, and less successful than her younger sister @evelyn, a lifestyle influencer. Evie came of age on the family YouTube channel after a viral video when she was five. Ten years older and spotlight-averse, Hazel managed to dodge the family business—so although she can barely afford her apartment, at least she made her own way.

Memory Piece by Lisa Ko — In the early 1980s, Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong, and Ellen Ng are three teenagers drawn together by their shared sense of alienation and desire for something different. “Allied in the weirdest parts of themselves,” they envision each other as artistic collaborators and embark on a future defined by freedom and creativity. By the time they are adults, their dreams are murkier.

Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh — Moonlight meets Purple Hibiscus in this gay coming-of-age novel from an astonishing young talent, set in post-military Nigeria and culminating in the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act of 2014. Obiefuna has always been the black sheep of his family—sensitive where his father, Anozie, is pragmatic, a dancer where his brother, Ekene, is a natural athlete. But when an intimate connection blossoms between Obiefuna and a boy from a nearby village, happiness is fleeting once his father catches them together and banishes him to boarding school.

Good Material by Dolly Alderton — From the bestselling author of Ghosts and Everything I Know About Love: a story of heartbreak and friendship and how to survive both. Andy's story wasn't meant to turn out this way. Living out of a suitcase in his best friends' spare room, waiting for his career as a stand-up comedian to finally take off, he struggles to process the life-ruining end of his relationship with the only woman he's ever truly loved. As he tries to solve the seemingly unsolvable mystery of his broken relationship, he contends with career catastrophe, social media paranoia, a rapidly dwindling friendship group and the growing suspicion that, at 35, he really should have figured this all out by now.

One of Our Kind by Nicola Yoon — When Jasmyn and King Williams move their family to the planned Black utopia of Liberty, California, they hope to find a community of like-minded people, a place where their growing family can thrive. King settles in at once, embracing the Liberty ethos, including the luxe wellness center at the top of the hill, which proves to be the heart of the community. But Jasmyn struggles to find her place. She expected to find liberals and social justice activists striving for racial equality, but Liberty residents seem more focused on booking spa treatments and ignoring the world’s troubles.

While We Were Burning by Sara Koffi — After her best friend's mysterious death, Elizabeth Smith’s picture-perfect life in the Memphis suburbs has spiraled out of control—so much so that she hires a personal assistant to keep her on track. Composed and elegant, Brianna is exactly who she needs—she slides so neatly into Elizabeth’s life it's almost like she belonged there from the start, and proves herself indispensable. Soon, the assistant Elizabeth hired to distract her from her obsession with her friend's death is the same person working with her to uncover the truth behind it.

Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang — Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents—also talented musicians—who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City.

Allow Me to Introduce Myself by Onyi Nwabineli — Ever since she was a child, Anuri’s life was chronicled and monetized by her influencer stepmother. Now an adult, she’s finally broken free. But when her stepmother starts preying on her young half sister, Anuri decides she must stop the cycle of abuse. Really Good, Actually meets City of Likes in a stunning page-turner about overcoming toxic family and reclaiming identity and, ultimately, hope.

Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan — Their love was supposed to last forever. But when life delivered blow after devastating blow, Yasmen and Josiah Wade found that love alone couldn’t solve or save everything. It couldn’t save their marriage. Yasmen wasn’t prepared for how her life fell apart, but she’s is finally starting to find joy again. She and Josiah have found a new rhythm, co-parenting their two kids and running a thriving business together. Yet like magnets, they’re always drawn back to each other, and now they’re beginning to wonder if they’re truly ready to let go of everything they once had.

This Could Be Us by Kennedy Ryan — Soledad Barnes has her life all planned out. Because, of course, she does. She plans everything. She designs everything. She fixes everything. She’s a domestic goddess who's never met a party she couldn't host or a charge she couldn't lead. The one with all the answers and the perfect vinaigrette for that summer salad. But none of her varied talents can save her when catastrophe strikes, and the life she built with the man who was supposed to be her forever, goes poof in a cloud of betrayal and disillusion.

Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin): A Memoir by Sly Stone — As the front man for the sixties pop-rock-funk band Sly and the Family Stone, a songwriter who created some of the most memorable anthems of the 1960s and 1970s (“Everyday People,” “Family Affair”), and a performer who electrified audiences at Woodstock and elsewhere, Sly Stone’s influence on modern music and culture is indisputable. But as much as people know the music, the man remains a mystery. After a rapid rise to superstardom, Sly spent decades in the grips of addiction.

My Name Is Barbara by Barbara Streisand — The long-awaited memoir by the superstar of stage, screen, recordings, and television Barbara Streisand is by any account a living legend, a woman who in a career spanning six decades has excelled in every area of entertainment. She is among the handful of EGOT winners (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) and has one of the greatest and most recognizable voices in popular music. She has been nominated for a Grammy 46 times, and with Yentl she became the first woman to write, produce, direct, and star in a major motion picture. In My Name Is Barbra, she tells her own story about her life and extraordinary career, from growing up in Brooklyn to her first star-making appearances in New York nightclubs to her breakout performance in Funny Girl (musical and film) to the long string of successes in every medium in the years that followed.