On Porches and Paperbacks

From an early age, the concrete steps of my Aunt Dorothy’s Chicago front porch—not far from where we lived—became a summer oasis from the noise of home. There, I devoured mysteries, biographies, and my aunt’s out-of-date magazines, even, unbelievably, her well-thumbed stock of Reader’s Digests. When I ran out of “good” material, I usually settled for The Lives of the Saints, a compendium of books that recounted the saints’ gruesome deaths.

Why? Because those religious books, despite being the stuff of nightmares, were always in abundance on the shelves of our small Catholic school library, which guaranteed their availability for check-out, even when classes were not in session. Over the years, as my library card became worn and thin, my enthusiasm for getting lost in a terrific story continued to grow. And the bliss of cracking open a new hardcover on a sweltering July day? Well, that is a pleasure that has never waned.

Now, as I compile my summer list of “must reads”—many of which I’ve discovered by quizzing fellow bookworms whose recommendations I trust—I’m interested in paying this process forward by sharing here three recently (or fairly recently) published “faves” that may be books that you will want to peruse, too.

As a debut memoirist and clinical psychologist, I have a natural affinity for personal stories, particularly those which are beautifully written, powerful, and emotionally astute. Emi Nietfeld’s Acceptance (Penguin Books, 2022) meets the criteria for “all of the above.” Noteworthy, as well, is that while this millennial author’s narrative traces her journey through psychiatric hospitalizations, foster care, homelessness, Harvard, and Big Tech in a riveting way, Acceptance is not a memoir that neatly conforms to a “from-suffering-to-success” arc. Rather, as much as it is a remarkable story of transformation, it is also a work that challenges the societal myth that poverty, illness, and other hardships can be overcome through sheer resilience and grit. Kirkus Reviews describes Nietfeld’s book this way:

“A complex meditation on desperation, leveraging personal pain, and how the drive to achieve can be a gift and a pathology simultaneously …  A powerful memoir of overcoming adversity that also effectively interrogates the concept of meritocracy.” —(starred review)

I binged acclaimed author Rebecca Makkai’s fifth novel, I Have Some Questions for You (Viking, 2023) on the first day of a road trip this past February while bundled up in a blanket in the passenger seat of our car. However, I can enthusiastically recommend it as a perfect hammock companion. It is a smartly written murder mystery with an assortment of suspects, but also a tale that deftly illuminates hot-button issues of social injustice and misogyny, and which provocatively takes aim—as evidenced  in the following excerpt—at our societal fascination with (and paradoxical emotional detachment from) “dead-girl” stories:
 
Sometimes they ask, “Wasn’t that the one where the guy kept her in the basement?”
 
No! No it was not.
 
Wasn’t it the one where she was stabbed in—no. The one where she got in a cab with—different girl. The one where she went to a frat party. The one where he used a stick, the one where he used a hammer, the one where she picked him up from rehab and he—no. The one where he’d been watching her jog every day? The one where she made the mistake of telling him her period was late? The one with the uncle? Wait, the other one with the uncle?
 
If you’re still pondering whether this multi-layered gem by a master storyteller is for you, check out this review of Chicago-based Makkai’s latest work:
 
“Thought-provoking, deeply unsettling and undeniably riveting . . . Part #MeToo manifesto, part true-crime page-turner, part campus coming-of-age, [I Have Some Questions for You] serves up compelling insights about the fallibility of memory and the slippery nature of truth . . . it’s a fully immersive, addictive whodunit.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

As a memoir-in-essays about wrestling with anxiety over life’s uncertainties and the truth about loving—that it is inextricably married to our fears about loss—author Mary Laura Philpott’s  Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives (Atria, 2022) is an entertaining, poignant, and “Amen!” kind of read.
 
Throughout, Philpott skillfully weaves anecdotes about how she managed (and fumbled in managing) her angst during her growing-up years with fret-filled tales about shepherding her children toward “almost-grown.” With both humor and deep insight regarding the “whys,” she guides her readers through a catalog of disaster-possible scenarios that, in the course of her life, have propelled her “pinwheel thoughts” to spin.
 
At its core, however—framed best, perhaps, in her story about the terror of finding her adolescent son in the throes of a violent seizure—Philpott’s book champions a full-bore “leaning in” to life and prioritizing human connection as the way to buffer ourselves against our real-world worries. Describing herself as an “anxious optimist,” Philpott reminds us that “There will always be bombs, and we will never be able to save everyone we care about. To know that and try anyway is to be fully alive.”
 
It’s a message, of course, that even those who aren’t serial worrywarts can embrace.

Now, before afternoon’s end, I’ll be making my way to my favorite summer reading refuge: sinking into the deep cushion of an oversized wicker chair, on a porch that bears no resemblance at all to the one that was my Aunt Dorothy’s. But before I dive into my next book, one I’ve been eager to read (Katherine May’s Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age, 2023), I will be thinking of my Auntie with the same fondness and gratitude I had for her when I was nine.
 
I expect that I will be remembering her saying, “Oh, Terry,” whenever she stepped out and saw me perched on her stoop. “How marvelous it is to see you with your head stuck in a book!” And I’ll remember how, because she, too, was an avid reader—someone whose literary tastes extended far beyond her Reader's Digest subscription—I would absorb these words of approval like an anointing—as if I’d been deemed worthy for admittance into a special club.
 
And you? Do you have a summer reading sanctuary?? If so, I’d love to hear about it, along with what you’ll be reading this summer, as well!