Two Big Summer Books and the Cozy Shelf I Keep Crawling Back To

Every reader I know has been circling the same 640-page question since May: is the new Stockett worth the wrist strain? I finished it last weekend over approximately eleven cups of masala chai, so consider this my field report, along with the beach bag pick and the comfort shelf that always wins in the end.

Seventeen years since The Help, and you can feel every one of them poured into this. It is 1933 Mississippi, an orphanage girl named Meg with the funniest sad narration I have read in ages, and a plot that goes places I genuinely did not expect a book-club book to go. My honest take: the middle sagged under its own page count for me, but the last hundred pages paid the toll back with interest. Meg alone is worth the hardcover. The Times named it an Editors Choice and for once the sticker and I agree.

The beach bag entry

Look, sometimes the assignment is a lounge chair, a cold drink, and a Danielle Steel about a wedding dress dynasty. She has written more books than I have had birthdays and the machine still runs. No notes. Into the tote it goes.

The shelf I crawl back to

But here is my confession. After every big heavy literary meal, I go back to the same palate cleanser: Lilian Jackson Braun and her mysteries starring a newspaperman and a crime-solving Siamese cat. They are from the sixties. They are about 220 pages. Nothing truly bad ever happens to anyone you love. Reading one is the paperback equivalent of a weighted blanket.

So that is my July: one doorstopper that earned it, one guaranteed beach read, and a cat detective for recovery. My Reading shelf on here keeps me honest about which one I actually pick up on a Tuesday night. Spoiler: it has whiskers. What is on your comfort shelf? Genuinely asking, my want list has room.

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