What I’m Reading Right Now

To me, summer is the season for reading. I’m not exactly one to bring a book to the beach – I might get too immersed and lose track of time, which would inevitably lead to my very pale skin turning a very wrong shade of red – but I do love curling up under a tree in the park, or staying up way past my bedtime on stormy summer nights. Here’s a few of the very fantastic books I’ve been reading recently:

• How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett. I’m actually not even done with this book yet – it’s so dense in content, and there’s so much to take in – but I love Barrett’s theories as well as how carefully and methodically she uses real data and research to disprove the popular beliefs that emotions are somehow universal and automatically generated. She then – just as methodically – builds a case for a new paradigm to understand our emotions. I’m still wrapping my own brain around it.
• Rememberings by Sinead O’Connor. I’ve always been a fan of O’Connor’s music – her raw, emotive voice and theatrical style – but I didn’t really know much about her life story or what led her to make the choices she made. This memoir is well-paced but, most importantly, it’s written in an honest, almost innocent voice. I came away from reading this book with a lot of empathy and respect for her.
• One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston. I’m not typically a huge fiction reader but this book checked off all of the boxes to lure me in. Queer female protagonist? Check. Love story set on the New York City subway? Check. Subplot revolving around music history? Check. I binge-read this over two days and regret nothing.