Lose Yourself (aka Recommended Reads)

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It's been a weirdly busy month for my family, opposite of the usual late summer quiet. Diving into my kindle is how I deal with lots of travel and a busy mind, the best way I know to pass the time and relax. You could pick something from the list of this kinda famous guy, but here are some fun summer reads that I've enjoyed:

The Wedding Party is the third book I've read from Jasmine Guillory - The Wedding Date and The Proposal were just as awesome and some of the characters are connected between the three books. Her characters are lively, diverse and woke, and it's great that they reappear so I can "keep in touch."

Evvie Drake Starts Over is the first work of fiction by NPR's Linda Holmes. She is also behind one of my reliably favorite podcasts, Pop Culture Happy Hour. The story involves a widow and a baseball player, in a charming town in Maine, and it's so much deeper than that sounds.

The Kiss Quotient was such a fun story, made even better because the romantic lead is autistic, the other has a deep dark mystery in his past, and has lots of crazy characters in his large Vietnamese family. If you listen to Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, you'll recognize Helen Hoang.  She has another book, The Bride Test, with some of the same great characters, but I liked The Kiss Quotient better.

I have read everything, EVERYTHING, that Jennifer Weiner has written, and I loved her latest book, Mrs Everything. It follows two sisters from 1950s suburbia through college, marriages, kids, and SO MUCH HISTORY. It's a whole series of books in one, and I loved it. You should also check out her latest NYT column, The Abrupt End to My Big Girl Summer. A (shorter) must read.

So my one more "literary" reads this summer was Fleishman is in Trouble. You can tell it's "serious fiction" by the subdued colors, so different from the covers above. I like stories to come to a conclusion, and this one doesn't. It definitely morphs from one viewpoint to another in a surprising way. Funnily enough, it was reading the article  Stop Calling Women Nags, that has made me rethink my original opinion, so I get this book much more. 

Got any good book recommendations for me? Just...

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