If You Read Something…
Our summer #swashreads saga continues in this exciting sequel to A Well Read Agency. If you follow us on the ol' Instagram, you may have noticed we have been quietly persevering through our summertime reading challenge, even though our agency’s end-of-the-summer rush has left us with only the occasional opportunity to sneak a few pages here or there. Allow me to catch you up with what our collective, eclectic book-tastes have covered over the last month and a half or so:
Josh caught some feelings while reading Bucky Fucking Dent (by David Duchovony), the story of an ad man who also happens to be a Red Sox fan and who has a son he named after Fenway Park and Ted Williams. (Definitely sounds like a book Josh would read ﹘ if you haven’t already, you should check out the romantic ode-to-baseball he penned at the beginning of the season.) As an adult, the ad man’s kid ends up estranged from his father and slinging peanuts at the Yankee Stadium instead of becoming the writer he had hoped to be. They attempt to reconcile and things… get sad, which is probably why this book made Josh cry more than once while reading it. In the end though, the story becomes that of redemption and forgiveness, and maybe some good feels?
The rest of the staff have been stretching their brains with books too ﹘ I noticed even Jon has been getting into our summer challenge! (He said my blog post last month inspired him!) Let’s see. Diana listened to the audiobook of Gretchen Ruben’s The Happiness Project, read Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey, and started Chapmen’s The Five Love Languages of Children. Over in the media department, Charlie read and enjoyed Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre, a satirical adventure ﹘ if perhaps depressing ﹘ while Stephanie finished The More of Less by Joshua Becker, the creator of BecomingMinimalist.com. It is about, you guessed it, minimalism (maybe I should read it….). There seem to be crickets in Scott’s corner.
Joan has been dedicating most of her summer to getting all of her bee-business in order, but she did read some more of the beekeeping book I gave her on her birthday, and says she can now explain, in detail, the “reproductive insanity” of bees. (We’ll save that exciting information for her next blog post.) Jess dug into the classics and read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slapstick and Truman Capote’s The Grass Harp. As for me, I read and totally loved Joy William’s Taking Care, a beautifully written collection of stories, and also devoured and have been meditating on Miranda July’s newest novel, The First Bad Man. I think I have about a dozen books that I’ve started over the summer, so I suppose it’s time to finish some of those up… we’ll be back with an end of summer #swashreads wrap-up before you know it!