The Joy of Summer Reading

Jul 14, 2025

While reading on the dock, by the lake this week, my 14-year-old daughter, who is re-reading Harry Potter (for the 3rd time), turned to me, with her sunglasses, trucker hat, while lying on a striped beach towel and said, “I’m so glad I’m a reader!” (me too, girl, me too.)

Summer reading is the best reading. I’m sharing a few fiction books I’ve loved recently-I’d love to hear from you what you’ve been reading and loving this summer!

Lying Awake by Mark Salzman

This 2003 book is the fictional story of a cloistered nun, Sister John, in a Los Angeles area Carmelite monastery. “Here, Sister John of the Cross lives in the service of God. She is the only nun who expereinces visions and is regarded by the others as a spiritual master. But Sister John is also plagued by powerful headaches and when a doctor reveals that they may be dangerous, she faces a devastating choice. Is this grace merely an illness, and will a ‘cure’ mean the end of her illuminations?”

Lying Awake is a small but powerful book. Nuns hold a place of mystery. What is the life they have chosen to live? Are they happy? This short but profound book tugs at those questions and poses the questions of meaning, purpose, happiness, and contentment back to the reader. Are our motives always pure? What is the transformational power of ritual, liturgy, and slow-intentional daily living?

“What if I have it all upside down? What if I'm the one who knows nothing of God, and the people in the world are actually interceding on my behalf with their ordinary daily struggles?”

― Mark Salzman, Lying Awake

Everyone is Lying to You by Jo Piazza

(released on 7/15!)

This book is a new release that I read from NetGalley. I LOVED it! Everyone is Lying to You is “The tradwife murder mystery we’ve all been waiting for…about two estranged friends, a murder, and a sudden disappearance, and the truly shocking revelations that everyoe is lying to you about something.” Bex and Lizzie were best friends in college, but life took them in different directions, Lizzie into journalism and a busy, but all too everyday, family life. Bex met the man of her dreams in California and became a social media sensation with her five children, picture-perfect ranch (with a three-legged goat), sourdough bread, and homeschooling life. When Lizzie receives a DM (Direct Message) on Instagram from her long-lost friend, she suddenly finds herself thrust into an elite and confusing world of influencers.

This is a perfect summer read, with suspense, glamour, and friendships that are both broken and repaired.

(Jo Piazza wrote another book that I loved, If Nuns Ruled the World: Ten Sisters on a Mission. I read it years ago and still think about the (real-life) nuns featured in this book.)

Stone Yard Devotional By Charlotte Wood

In this book, an unnamed narrator leaves her successful urban life to join a monastic community in the Australian “outback” in the town where she was raised. The bones of a sister who was murdered abroad are returned to the community, in the middle of a terrible mouse plague. Stone Yard Devotional is the quotidian reflections of a middle-aged woman, living in community, wrestling with faith-how does an atheist come to live in and join a monastic community? This novel is strangely compelling.

“Our Simone once took me to task over my ‘sneering’ about prayer. My notion of prayer was juvenile: forget this telephone line to God bullshit, she snapped, hot with impatience. It wasn’t even about God, she said, which I thought must surely be blasphemous. Praying was a way to interrupt your own habitual thinking, she told me. It’s admitting yourself into otherness, cracking open your prejudices. It’s not chitchat; it’s hard labour. She spoke as if all this were obvious. I longed to understand her. It feels always that I am on the edge of some comprehension here but never breaking through to the other side.”

― Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional

“But still, it has surprised me, over the years, to discover how many people find the idea of habitual kindness to be somehow suspect: a mask or a lie.”

― Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional

Legends and Lattes and Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

These two books are whimsical, fantasy, not my usual genre, but I loved them. These books tell the story of a “battle-hungry orc” who finds her life transformed by books and lattes. I listened to these books, and I’m still sad that I’m done with them. They were a delightful escape from reality.

“You've found a very peaceful place here. A special place. You've planted something, and now its blossoming. Very nice. A good spot to rest. My thanks to you for letting an old-timer shade under the branches of what you've grown.”

― Travis Baldree, Legends & Lattes

“Never trust a writer who doesn’t have too many books to read. Or a reader, for that matter,” said Zelia.”

― Travis Baldree, Bookshops & Bonedust

“You know, there’s a lot of people out there. Lot of noise. I love what I do, love it every day, but none of us sees more than a tiny piece of all the world, like we’re lookin’ out a little-bitty window. And I saw you through mine, and somethin’ inside me said, ‘That’s somebody you oughta know.’ Simple as that.”

― Travis Baldree, Bookshops & Bonedust

A Blessing for Reading a {Great} Summer Book

May the book you need, a love story, a murder mystery, or the unlikely story of an orc who learns to love to read and drink coffee, find you. May the story, the questions, character, challenges, and resolutions whisper truths and invitations into your real-life-life. May summer reading in the shade, with water lapping or birds chirping, or the sun settling bring joy and alignment to your soul. May you, too, exclaim, “I love being a reader.”