August Reading Roundup 2024
Some of the books I read and enjoyed last month
Nashville hosts a large multi-day (free) book festival every fall called the Southern Festival of Books. It’s a huge affair put on by Humanities Tennessee. The authors of three of the books I’m writing about today will be at SFoB: Betsy Phillips, Joanna Brichetto and Sloane Crosley, so it only seems natural to give the festival a plug. You can find out more info here and here.
Okay, now let’s get into what I read in August!
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Dynamite Nashville: The FBI, the KKK, and the Bombers Beyond Their Control
In 1960, the home of a sitting U.S. politician was bombed. Z. Alexander Looby and his wife survived, but the crime was never solved. Neither were the two other Nashville bombings that happened around that time. In this book, Phillips sets out to find out why these three integration-era bombings were never solved, and if she can solve them.
What Phillips pulls off in this book is incredible, and has resulted in the investigation being re-opened. Local folks, there are signed copies at Parnassus and The Bookshop. Phillips will be at the Southern Festival of Books on Oct. 26-27. Read my Q&A with Phillips here.
This Is How a Robin Drinks: Essays on Urban Nature (out Sept. 24)
by Joanna Brichetto
I became a hobbyist birder during the pandemic. As I’ve started learning more about birds and nature, I’ve flirted with the idea of becoming a certified naturalist. When I saw this book about birds and sidewalk nature written by someone in Nashville who’s a certified naturalist, I snatched it up.
The thing I love about this book is that it makes nature accessible. Brichetto lives with a chronic illness and writes about the connection she built to nature in her backyard and on the sidewalk around her house. Local folks, there are so many treasures in this book in regards to locations, native plants, etc.
Trust me, you’re going to want to read this book. Don’t just take my word for it, Margaret Renkl blurbed it, and is hosting Brichetto at Parnassus for her launch event. Brichetto will also be at the Southern Festival of Books.
by Stephen Graham Jones
I had so much fun listening to this audiobook. The narrator (Michael Crouch) does a perfect Texas accent. This is a story about a teenager in West Texas in the late ‘80s who accidentally becomes a serial killer. It riffs on the classic slasher films like Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween. It also, in my opinion, is in conversation with Scream in the way that one of the characters has to explain the slasher narrative to the literal slasher because he doesn’t understand the process. I loved this one.
by Melissa Mogollon
This is Mogollon’s debut novel and wowee, what a debut. It’s the story of a Colombian American family in Miami told through one-sided phone calls between sisters Luciana and Mari. Luciana is queer and living at home as she finishes high school, and Mari has moved away to begin her freshman year of college. The book opens with Luciana calling Mari during a hurricane evacuation to vent about their mother and to ask her to please call their grandmother Abue and convince her to evacuate.
The phone calls are an interesting plot device because they give you all the information about the family and what’s going on, and they show you the relationship between the sisters and between Luciana and Abue.
I really liked this book. It’s sweet and hilarious. It takes a minute to get used to, but once you understand that it’s all phone calls, it makes sense. Just give it a few pages. If you can decipher the bizarre dialogue structure in Sally Rooney novels, this will be a piece of cake.
by Sloane Crosley
I’m so glad this book exists. Many of the memoirs around death and trauma are about illness or romantic partners, which leaves out a wide range of other types of grief. In this book, Crosley’s NYC apartment gets robbed and all of her heirloom jewelry gets stolen. A month later, her friend and former boss dies by suicide. The way Crosley is able to write about her grief surrounding these events and how they intertwine is incredible.
I just appreciate her candor. She doubts how much grief she’s allowed to feel over the jewelry, and then she doubts how much grief she’s allowed to feel over her friend. It’s a book about survivor’s guilt, which is the part of grief that so few people write about.
Crosley will be at the Southern Festival of Books on Oct. 26-27.
ICYMI: Here’s what I read last month:
Grief is for People has been on my list for a while now. I must read I Was a Teenage Slasher and Oye! I love when writers use different narratives to tell stories (ex.: phone calls). Thank you for another great list!
I put Oye on hold at the library and downloaded I Was A Teenage Slasher from Libby. Thank you!