| Constance Grady is a senior correspondent on the culture team, where she covers everything from Taylor Swift to gender theory. As a kid she read Ella Enchanted so often it fell apart in her hands. |
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| Constance Grady is a senior correspondent on the culture team, where she covers everything from Taylor Swift to gender theory. As a kid she read Ella Enchanted so often it fell apart in her hands. |
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What should I read as summer winds down? |
Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images |
Between the avalanche of new releases that come out every month and the enormous back catalog of existing books, it can be hard for readers to sort through the chaos. This is why my newsletter Next Page exists. I’m Vox’s book critic, and each month I send a handful of book recommendations, both old and new, to help you find your next great read. My latest picks were sent to subscribers today, and I thought it would be fun to give Today, Explained readers a peek too.
August is a sleepy month for books. The big buzzy beach reads have all come out by now, and the prestigious National Book Award contenders will start dropping in September. For now, we wait.
It’s a good time of year to swing by the library and breathe in the good musty smell of old books. Roam the quiet stacks. Take a satisfying pile of contenders to a chair to page through while you work out what you’ll be bringing home with you. Find something a little on the older side, something you maybe have been meaning to read for a while but haven’t quite gotten around to yet. By now, the hold list will have dissolved, and you should be able to nab it without an issue. Here’s a few to get you started. |
What an elegant little novel this is, so precise and trim that when it was first published in The New Yorker in 1961, it worked just as well as a very long short story as it does now as a very short novel. It tells the story of Miss Jean Brodie, a flamboyantly off-kilter schoolteacher in 1930s Edinburgh who has defiantly declared herself to be in her prime. (But if you say you’re in your prime as often as Miss Brodie does — well, maybe you aren’t.)
Miss Brodie reads at first as a comic take on a Dead Poets Society-type of educator. She rejects the stuffy girl’s school curriculum in favor of teaching her pupils about cosmetics and classical art and her own storied love life. Every class, she cautions them to keep a textbook propped open on their desks to deter prying eyes while she cheerfully ignores the proscribed subject, a proto version of Robin Williams hopping on a desk.
Yet slowly, in Spark’s deadpan, understated prose, the sinister elements of Miss Brodie’s pedagogy begin to emerge: her fascination with the fascists of Italy, her desire to mold her chosen pets into her own form, the way she intertwines their romantic paths with her own. This is a funny and richly ambiguous novel, one you can roll around in your mind like a chocolate truffle long after you’ve finished reading it. |
When Akwaeke Emezi released Freshwater, their debut novel, in 2018, it hit like an electric shock. What a ferociously strong new voice: so self-assured, so clear already in what it was saying.
Since then, Emezi has been prolific, putting out romances and mysteries and children’s books to the tune of at least one book a year. (They told me in 2021 that they have a list of 15 books to write and that it keeps growing.) Still, Freshwater remains my favorite of Emezi’s oeuvre. It’s a novel not quite like anything else I’ve ever read, one that knows exactly what it’s doing.
Ada, born in Nigeria, is a changeling, an ogbanje. She houses a malevolent spirit in her body, and she was born only to torture her mother by dying. Instead of dying, however, Ada grows up and goes to college in the US. The ogbanje, a gleeful cloud that refers to itself as we, tells the story of what happened from there, and how it shapes and molds Ada’s experience of her gender and her body. Throughout, the ogbanje remains an unforgettable narrator.
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So you already know the big twist in 1972’s Stepford Wives. (If you don’t: the wives are robots.) Who cares! Read it anyway. It’s a ball.
Joanna is a harried feminist who moves out to the suburbs with her family in the hopes of finding a way to balance looking after the house and children with her part-time career as a photographer. In the new town of Stepford, however, Joanna is surprised and somewhat spooked to find that all the women have no hobbies or professions of their own outside of endlessly waxing their kitchen floors while maintaining perfect lipstick.
Levin’s book is spookier and more playful than its pop culture footprint (especially the 2004 movie starring Nicole Kidman) would lead you to believe. It gallops deliciously along, hardly giving you space or time to stop and think about the implications of the world it’s describing. When you pause to put it down, though, the satire becomes wickedly clear.
The Stepford Wives was published the same year Congress passed the never-ratified Equal Rights Amendment. Levin is painting a portrait of a culture on the precipice of vicious backlash to a feminist achievement that never comes after all. One of the funniest and saddest plotlines is the story of Joanna’s feminist ally husband, Walter, who Joanna assumes will surely help protect her from whatever’s going on with all those Stepford wives. You can tell from page one: ally or not, Walter’s in on all the dirty secrets of Stepford.
If you sign up for Next Page, you’ll get even more recs every month — and if you want even more, consider becoming a Vox Member. You’ll receive exclusive access to a special edition of Ask a Book Critic once a month, where I offer members personalized book recommendations. Happy reading!
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Bloomberg’s Loren Grush explains how two astronauts got stuck on the International Space Station and astronaut Cady Coleman tells us why she is jealous of them. |
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Climate change falls to the wayside: The pace of the presidential race has left little time for Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris to flesh out a detailed climate agenda. While climate change has consistently ranked as a low concern for Republicans, the previously hot voter issue has become less of a priority for Democrats too.
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Oklahoma v. Department of Health and Human Services: Oklahoma wants the Supreme Court to allow it to receive Title X health program grants without having to follow a rule requiring grant recipients provide patients with “neutral, factual information” about all of their family-planning options, including abortion. Ruling in Oklahoma’s favor could potentially sabotage much of Medicare and Medicaid.
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Insurance interference: Over half of Americans are unable to access mental health treatment. While federal law requires insurers to provide access to both mental and physical health care, this investigation with testimonies from hundreds of providers across the country reveals how companies try to restrict, delay, and deny coverage to even the most vulnerable patients. [ProPublica]
Playing both sides: Danny Jansen is now the first person in Major League Baseball history to play for both teams in the same game, due to a weather-related game suspension and a perfectly timed trade. [Sports Illustrated]
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“Whether it be sex with exes, dirty rhyme schemes, or being hot, a clown, or the other woman, Carpenter’s surprisingly long career has been seriously devoted to never taking things too seriously.”
— Alex Abad Santos on Sabrina Carpenter’s new album Short N’ Sweet and her continued appeal |
Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Coachella |
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Today’s edition was produced and edited by senior editor Lavanya Ramanathan, with contributions from staff editor Melinda Fakuade and news editor Sean Collins. We'll see you tomorrow! |
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