What To Read When It’s Too Hot To Do Anything Else

July is here and I don’t know how the weather is where you all are spending your summer, but at least in New York, it is extremely hot. I’m talking pushing-through-the-thick-air, full-body-sweat-the-second-you-step-outside, can’t-remember-ever-being-cold hot. In these conditions, I don’t want to work — physically or mentally. I want easy and breezy. When it comes to my reading, that means I don’t want heavy introspection, dense prose, or abstract narratives. I’m craving straightforward, plot-driven stories with relatable characters and true-to-life dialogue. I want a book that goes down so easy I can finish it in one afternoon, ideally while floating in a pool or sitting in front of a strong air conditioner; something that’s smart but also makes me feel good. These books — which include tales of vital 20-something female friendships, summer romance, and even a 10th century diary — deliver exactly that.

Something Old

Happy Hour by Marlowe Granados

Marlowe Granados’ dazzling debut was one of the books that had the bad luck of publishing during lockdown in 2020. So when I read and fell in love with it, I shouted extra loud about how amazing it was and I’ve never really stopped. Following 21-year-old Isa as she travels to New York for kind of reckless summer that you can only really have in your youth — sharing a room in a cramped apartment with her best friend, staying up all night, relying on their wiles and odd jobs to eke out a living — it’s a wild, heartfelt ode to girls in pursuit of adventure.

My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki

When I opened the Penguin Random House Audio app and saw this book’s striking cover, emblazoned with celebrated novelist Ruth Ozeki’s name, I couldn’t download it fast enough. New Ozeki, I thought, and it somehow slipped under my radar? But no: though the audiobook is being newly released, My Year of Meats was actually the A Tale for the Time Being author’s debut, originally published in 1998. And what a gift to have found it! The central story follows Japanese American documentarian Jane Takagi-Little over the course of a year, as she directs My American Wife! — a Japanese reality show sponsored by an American beef distributor, with the intent to familiarize Japanese wives with the new-ish import. As she dives in, though, she discovers the dark underbelly of the meat industry (specifically, its use of hormones despite their clear harm), and her goals shift accordingly. Ozeki brilliantly covers so much ground here, not without a good amount of humor: capitalism, feminism, fertility, domestic abuse, ethics in the entertainment industry, race, the trappings of “American values.”

Something New

Humor Me by Cat Shook

Presley Fry, a 25-year-old New Yorker by way of Georgia, earns her living as an assistant talent booker for a prominent late-night talk show, and though it’s mostly a thankless role, she’s grateful for its proximity to her real passion: stand-up comedy. Presley is singularly focused on her immersion in the world of up-and-coming comics, to the point of pushing things like her social life, romantic endeavors — even her grief over her mother’s recent passing — into the background. When her boss and mentor, who happens to be her late mother’s childhood best friend, becomes intent on setting Presley up with her son, Presley is forced to confront the reasons she’s been reluctant to open herself up to real, messy intimacy. A love letter to New York, comedy, and romance itself, Humor Me is a true delight.

Let the Games Begin by Rufaro Faith Mazarura

Every time the Olympics come around, without fail, I’m surprised by how excited I am. This year, podcast producer Mazarura captures that energy with her flirty, tantalizing debut. Let the Games Begin brings the 2024 Olympics to Greece, where Olivia Nkomo is living out her dream of working at the Summer Games (albeit as an unpaid intern) and runner Ezekiel Moyo, a fan favorite at least in part because he is very hot, is looking to win gold for England. When the Brits meet, sparks fly, and they bond upon realizing they are (like the author herself) children of Zimbabwean immigrants.

Something Out of the Blue

The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon

One of the things I didn’t mention about My Year of Meats: It’s also an homage to Sei Shōnagon, a lady-in-waiting to the 10th century Japanese Empress Consort Teishi whose pillow book — essentially a diary — was so influential that it was passed around for centuries via handwritten copies until it was formally published in the 1600s. Ozeki’s protagonist is enamored of Shōnagon for her subversion — daring to write in the male format of Kanji, describing her love affairs and other “vulgar” topics — and each chapter opens with a passage from the book. After finishing My Year of Meats, I knew I had to pick it up. Filled with lists of likes, dislikes, and observations, as well as accounts of Shōnagon’s daily life, it’s remarkable for being at once timeless (in a list of “things that are near though distant” she writes, simply, “paradise”) and delightfully foreign (her proclamation that “there is nothing so charming as a man who always carries a flute”). Its longevity is a testament to Shōnagon’s poeticism as well as her incomparable insights into the culture of the Heian era.