As you might imagine, we read a lot of books here at EL. Followers of our Instagram may be familiar with our long-running What We’re Reading series, where we post every other week about what staff members have been reading and loving. Recently, we decided it was time to make this tradition a little more special, and asked staff and interns to share a few thoughts on the books that have been lingering on their nightstands. Below are the titles our team read over the summer—old and new—that excited them the most.
One Leg on Earth by ‘Pemi Aguda
I was in New York on a day when wildfire smoke had settled over the city. Breathing the air, they told us, was like smoking a pack of cigarettes. Needing to be transported somewhere far away, I read Aguda’s strange and beautiful novel. It is set in Lagos (far enough!), a city that is rendered in all its contradictions, chaos, and vitality. Instead of offering escape, the novel reminded me that cities, however different, ask the same impossible thing of us: to build lives alongside one another while the ground beneath us is constantly shifting.
- Evander Reyes, Communications Director
Names Have Been Changed by Yu-Mei Balasingamchow
I had so much fun reading this whip-fast story of a Singaporean criminal on the run, told in podcast form. As someone who loves the idea of podcasts but is a much better reader than listener, this was perfect for me: all the voice and personality a podcast offers, but on the page instead! I was drawn right in by the narrator’s delightfully irreverent voice and couldn’t stop hitting play on the next episode.
- Katie Henken Robinson, Deputy Editor
I Can Tell You the Version That Will Make You Take My Side by J Brooke
J Brooke’s debut poetry collection is an incredibly candid look at what it means to be queer in so many contexts: what it means to be part of a family, both of origin and chosen. What it means to move actively in a society that often won’t protect you; what it means to parent a queer child; and what it means to be doing all of this right now, in this version of America. This collection is whip-smart, bursting with heart, and generous with its humor. It’s a quick read, but I loved every second of it.
- Denne Michele Norris, Executive Director and Publisher
Famous Men by Julie Buntin
I’ve always had a complicated relationship with mentorship. What happens if you tether yourself to a mentor who, ultimately, isn’t who you imagined them to be? This question is at the heart of Famous Men, one Buntin’s protagonist, Will, must navigate on her own. The result is an unflinching portrait of power dynamics, ambition, desires of all kinds, and what happens when a mentor’s voice looms large over your writing and your life—even when you want to escape it. Compelling, gorgeously written, and complex in all the best ways.
- Katie Henken Robinson, Deputy Editor
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
I adore epistolary stories and many readers loved this one, so I was curious. From the moment Sybil Van Antwerp carries a mug of Irish breakfast tea with milk to her writing desk, I could feel the concrete details of this world coming vividly to life all around me. There is something so compelling about watching Sybil compose her many letters, rendering her own emotional life with precision that still leaves room for tremendous mystery.
- Preety Sidhu, Associate Editor, Recommended Reading and The Commuter
Girl’s Girl by Sonia Feldman
Feldman captures a hot, sticky, teenage summer in the suburbs with discerning, literary prose and picture-perfect intensity. I was instantly brought back to my own adolescence: falling asleep in the long grass, giggling over The Sims, dressing up to go to the state fair. The friendships at the heart of Girl’s Girl are endlessly complicated and devastatingly romantic—absolutely true to teenage life.
- Amulya Tadimety, Editorial Intern
It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell
Another unputdownable psychological jewel(l) of a novel! There’s a missing girl and a house where secrets have calcified across decades. Jewell pulls you into a labyrinth where suspicion clings to everyone inside Thornwood’s walls, and nothing (not even love or blood) feels protective. Her prose moves through layers of lies so deftly that clarity becomes its own trap-you think you’ve found the truth, then question whether you’ve found anything at all. It Could Have Been Her is both unsettling and brilliantly layered, exactly the kind of dark, intricate thriller that proves why l’ve trusted Jewell’s gift for deception since None of This Is True.
- Shandela Contreras, Editorial Intern
Body Double by Hanna Johansson
Literature is my primary interest, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else. This summer, armed with a Criterion Channel subscription, I decided I wanted to cultivate a deeper appreciation for film . . . and ended up reading Johansson’s novel instead. Body Double is about a consuming romance between two women, one of whom seems to exist only inside their uncanny relationship. It describes itself as a “Hitchcockian thriller”—and I’d argue reading it doubles as a cinematic experience.
- Wynter K Miller, Director of Operations and Fiction Editor
London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
Patrick Radden Keefe uses the story of an upper-middle class family’s tragedy to unpack how extreme foreign wealth—especially the money and business dealings of Russian oligarchs—has been transforming the city of London in recent decades. He is a master storyteller, deftly illuminating deep global backstories and showing how they converge to shape the lives and deaths of the contemporary individuals he is writing about. I am devouring this book and picking up every craft tip I can from it.
- Preety Sidhu, Associate Editor, Recommended Reading and The Commuter
Dog Days by Emily LaBarge
I’m typically more of an autofiction reader than a memoir reader, but Dog Days is not your typical memoir. While it takes as its subject a defining personal trauma—LaBarge and her family were held hostage while on holiday—the book doesn’t dwell on the event. Instead, LaBarge circles around it, moving between art, literature, film, and theory. She shifts quickly from one reference to the next, each idea opening onto another, complicating what came before. There are no easy truths about trauma here, no revelation that makes her experience cohere. And yet, reading this book changed me.
- Evander Reyes, Communications Director
In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri
I moved to Italy last year with my family and have been studying the language, so In Other Words—Jhumpa Lahiri’s account of learning Italian—has been on my TBR pile for a while. Lahiri somehow won a Pulitzer, mastered Italian as an adult, and then became so fluent she started writing only in Italian. (Yes, she wrote this book in Italian; Ann Goldstein translated it. My friend . . . save some accomplishments for the rest of us.) It’s a thoughtful, obsessive meditation on language, identity, and the strange joy of becoming a beginner again.
- Kelly Luce, Editor, The Commuter
Transcription by Ben Lerner
I tend to have a hard time with “COVID fiction.” The pandemic had a near-universal impact, so why can references to masks and quarantine feel so artificial when rendered? I wouldn’t call Transcription a pandemic novel, exactly. It’s a novel about parenthood, mentorship, time and memory, and the failures and foundations of technology. But when COVID does come into play, the personal is made startlingly universal. In Transcription, the pandemic functions less as a discrete event and more as a software; like with technology, Lerner captures how our language, routines, and relationships were forced to adapt or risk obsolescence.
- Lennie Roeber-Tsiongas, Assistant Editor
Fights! by Scott McClanahan
I began reading about a little boy named Scott mailing his poems with stolen stamps one evening, and finished the same night, crying because I’d finally found a book that knew how I felt after my aunt died. It’s magic when stories that have nothing to do with us become our own. Fights! is about Scott writing books, finding and losing his editor, Gian, his wife, Juliet, and growing into himself. It is a hilarious, wrenching, viscerally intimate novel that I’m rereading already, slower this time.
- Willem Marx, Associate Editor
Every Time We Say Goodbye by Ivana Sajko
I read this book about a man on a train to Berlin while I was on a flight to Barcelona. I thought this slim novel would be the perfect travel book; I was wrong. Don’t read this in an enclosed space. Sajko’s prose leaves you no room to breathe. Each long, winding sentence yanks you through the memories of a man whose life is constrained by a succession of world crises. I’ve never felt so useless in the face of history. I can’t recommend this book enough.
- Evander Reyes, Communications Director
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
If you know me, you know I love everything Elizabeth Strout writes. Her latest novel, out in May, is a beautiful and haunting exploration of the way secrets can fester, and when they emerge, upend everything. I was immediately hooked by the authority of the voice on the page, and the beauty of the sentences. I love this novel with all my heart!
- Denne Michele Norris, Executive Director and Publisher
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