Art needs friends, girls need sardines
👻 🤡 🎨 🐷 everything I read in June
Happy Sunday!
Despite my best attempts, Olivia Summer has yet to catch on.
My inbox continues to be peppered with Summer 2025 name suggestions that span every possible interest and/or dietary preference.
Some are fruit-themed:
Fish-themed:
Vegetable-themed:
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The current state of America-themed:
And, my personal favourite, ‘beach bum but make it #girlboss’-themed.
I fear we are way too late to meet quorum for this decision.
Instead, overworked marketers will continue bludgeoning email subject lines with more and more desperate attempts to coin the season…. At least until the Pumpkin Spice Latte resurfaces sometime in mid-July.
The spinning wheel of time is relentless and cruel.
Anyway! Onto the books…
The theme of my June reading was “uncomfortable fixations,” which should probably also be the tagline of this Substack.
This month’s books spanned:
Binge eating
A woman hellbent on getting married on a plantation
Another woman hellbent on making croquembouche the morning of her wedding
An artist obsessed with her hero’s personal life
A clown obsessed with a magician
To be fair, who among us didn’t have a crush on Criss Angel, Mindfreak?1
👻 When The Reckoning Comes, LaTanya McQueen (3)
A woman attends her childhood friend’s wedding on a haunted plantation.
I love horror with a point to make, and this premise promised a lot. Sadly, the execution fell flat.
I get it! It’s hard to land a horror novel. You run the risk of a Scooby Doo ending (it was the janitor all along!), or leaving parts of the plot unresolved (was it really a ghost? Or my imagination!?!). This book somehow managed to do both and glossed over the spookiest bits. Where, pray tell, was the reckoning!!!?!
Unfortunately for McQueen, Jordan Peele set the bar for race-themed horror way too high. I picked up this book hoping for new, ghost-filled commentary on modern brides romanticizing the Antebellum period, and I left with an even deeper appreciation for how incredible Get Out is.
🤡 Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One, Kristen Arnett (3)
A struggling clown in Florida becomes infatuated with an older magician and questions her commitment to the craft.
This book was delightfully niche. How many LGBTQ+ coming-of-age clown novels can you name?? One thing I love about Kristen Arnett is her dedication to Florida culture. She has crafted a full fleet of books about gay women in Florida with hyper-specific interests. The novel that turned me on to her writing, for example, is about a Florida-based taxidermist grappling with her father’s suicide.
Her writing is visceral, gritty, and strange, but I do find the plots slow. Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One wasn’t my favourite, but it earns bonus points for its title, the opening scene, and for the experimental section where an affair plays out in the same steps as a magic performance.
🎨 My Friends, Fredrik Backman (4.5)
A young artist meets her hero and learns about the childhood friends who encouraged his career.
There is not a man on earth who has made me cry more than Fredrik Backman. He is a beautiful writer and also a sadistic monster who must be stopped because I simply cannot take it anymore…
My Friends leans on the timeless tradition of an older person taking forever to tell a younger person a story (see also: The Princess Bride, Definitely Maybe, How I Met Your Mother, my grandfather describing his route to dinner, etc.).
At it’s core, this was a book about farts — a divisive topic in this newsletter, especially for one specific reader.2 Let it be known that bodily functions do have a place in literature, and Stephen King would do well to learn from this example!
Despite my love of all things Backman, this book lost half a star because it felt like he was adding twists for the sake of twists, and I’m not a huge fan of the “let me tell you our life story” narrative structure. That said, this line has already made its way into my lexicon:
“..art doesn’t need critics, art has enough enemies already. Art needs friends.”
Thank you all for being friends of my art!
🐷 Piglet, Lottie Hall (5)
A woman completely unravels in the lead-up to her wedding.
Holy shit. This book had me stressed to the max, and 98% of it was descriptions of food. The sheer restraint in this storytelling is insane — Her fiancé tells a secret that we never learn, Piglet is only ever referred to by her nickname, and dialogue is left hanging in the air while she obsessively thinks about food. It shouldn’t work, but it does because the author perfectly captures the pressure of trying to maintain composure and control over a life that is very clearly falling apart. Lottie, you cheeky little minx! How did you do this??? And a debut, no less!! Y’all KNOW I love a debut!
“She was proud, in a way, that she could still smile as the delicious life she had been savouring turned maggoty in her mouth.”
On My TBR:
From the same woman who brought me Unhinged — the erotica novel about an inanimate door —comes another deeply concerning recommendation that I cannot believe I promised to read.
Sky Daddy by Kate Folk follows a woman who falls in love with a literal airplane.
Linda knows that she can’t tell anyone she’s sexually obsessed with planes—nor can she reveal her belief her destiny is to “marry” one of her suitors by dying in a plane crash, thereby uniting her with her soulmate plane for eternity. But when an opportunity arises to hasten her dream of eternal partnership, and the carefully balanced elements of her life begin to spin out of control, she must choose between maintaining the trappings of normalcy and launching herself headlong toward the love she’s always dreamed of.
There are no words.
But! What are books for if not to take you to places you never expected? Literature is made to expand horizons! To push limits!! To explore ideas that have never been explored before!!!
It’s also worth noting that this book has a higher Goodreads rating than every other book in this list besides My Friends.
Either it’s subversive literary genius, or the world is full of closeted airplane freaks (no offence).
Find out next month, I guess!
Last Thought:
Another one for the public’s consideration
…
Epilogue
What did you read this month?
Anything I should add to my TBR?
Right????
You know who you are, and we’re all eagerly awaiting your notes!