Summer Reading, Had Me A Blast
What I read in July, 2025
We had some very, very hot days in July which reminded me of the downside of my very warm and well-insulated flat. I spent a lot of afternoons reading a book in a cool or barely lukewarm bath, just to bring my body temperature down and stay sane in the heat. (My water bill has just gone up by £10 per month, which reflects my absolute dedication to taking baths lately…).
So here’s what I read in July:
As always, just a note that these are commission links - that means that you pay the same price you would otherwise, but I get a tiny cut of that price.
Mrs Nash’s Ashes - Sarah Adler
The Mysterious Death of Miss Austen - Lindsay Ashford
Reading Lessons - Carol Atherton
Cassandra At The Wedding - Dorothy Baker
The Midnight News - Jo Baker
Same Time Next Year - Tessa Bailey
Promise Me Sunshine - Cara Bastone
This Summer Will Be Different - Carley Fortune
Digging Dr Jones - Olivia Jackson
We Were Liars - E Lockhart (a re-read… but I last read it in 2014!)
The No-Show - Beth O’Leary
The Dutch House - Ann Pachett
What Happens in Amsterdam - Rachel Lynn Solomon
All Adults Here - Emma Straub
Atmosphere - Taylor Jenkins Reid
Under Your Spell - Laura Wood
Let’s Make A Scene - Laura Wood
It was a really good reading month. Two Laura Wood books (Let’s Make A Scene just came out, which reminded me that I hadn’t got to my paperback of Under Your Spell either yet), a Rachel Lynn Solomon, an Ann Patchett, and a non-fiction that might have changed my life a bit… Reading Lessons by Carol Atherton is all about what we can learn from reading classic literature - but more than that, it’s about the experience of teaching those classic pieces of literature in a normal state secondary school, as she has done for the last thirty or so years. I can definitely see myself coming back to re-read this one regularly.
Of the 17 books I read, ten were on Kindle, one was in hardback (Atmosphere - and I see it as an achievement that I got to the hardback before the paperback comes out), and the remaining six were paperbacks. My oldest unread title was The Mysterious Death of Miss Austen, which I apparently bought on Kindle in April of 2014. I barely even remember what my life felt like then.
I know people like to share numbers when they’re reading down their To Be Read stacks, but honestly the idea of counting the unread physical books I own fills me with no small degree of fear. Luckily (?), on my Kindle, I can use the filter buttons, to tell you that of the 891 ebooks I own on my Kindle… 519 are unread. Add that to 34 unfinished audiobooks on Audible and seven on Libro.FM (it’s like Audible but supports indie bookshops!)… that makes 560 unread digital books.
That’s a lot.
That’s why one of the goals that I’ve set for the next few months is to get out of the habit of buying new books and into the habit of reading the books I already own. One strategy I’ve been using (which you might be able to tell from the list of books above) is to sort the books on my Kindle by author rather than the default ‘most recent’ sort order. It makes browsing the books feel like shopping from my own personal bookshop, rather than being overwhelmed by the endless digital list in no coherent order.
What have you been reading lately?
Speak soon,
Lily