Nine book recs for your summer

All my favorite reads from June, organized around your summer intentions

Welcome to SEE YOU—a companion for artists, thinkers, and analog lovers with ideas, inspiration, and reflections on living an intentional creative life.

Today I’ve got seven nine monthly book recommendations for your creative practice. Join to follow along!

After reading sixty eight books in 2025 I made a vague commitment to myself to read less this year, in hopes that I’d read fewer books more deeply. I refrained from setting any reading goals and started picking up longer nonfiction books that had been on my TBR¹ forever, avoiding buzzy new fiction reads that I typically gravitate toward.

This anti-goal of reading less was somewhat working, until it became June and I was holed up at a residency in the woods with spotty wifi and there was nothing to do except to write or draw or read. In true writerly fashion there were tons of books in the residency library, several of which I devoured over the course of two weeks along with the two books I had brought. In June I treated reading like my full-time summer job, the most pleasurable job there could ever be.

Map of books read in June. Finding patterns and making connections arrive easily when you read many books at once!

Here are my favorite reads from the month that I’d like to recommend to you, organized by intentions you may like to invite for the rest of your summer.

Disclosure: As an affiliate of Bookshop.org, I earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

1. TO MAKE ART WITH ABANDON: What It Is + Don’t Call It Art

I began the month reading Austin Kleon’s latest book Don’t Call It Art. His handbook for creative liberation is inspired by his young kids, both of whom freely create without any pressure or expectation. It’s a perfectly timed book to read in the summer, a season that most allows for the energy encapsulated by the below quote:

“Creativity is the residue of time wasted.”
- Albert Einstein

A week later at my residency I spotted one of Austin Kleon’s favorite books, What It Is, a “coming-of-art” memoir by cartoonist Lynda Barry. I’d previously read Lynda Barry’s Picture This and Making Comics, so I had an idea of what her collaged, hand-drawn pages would look like. However, What It Is surprised me with its open exploration of abstract questions about the creative process.

• Can meaning exist without language?

• Why do some images come back again and again?

• Can image exist without thinking?

• Where is a mood?

I found What It Is to be the most comforting of Lynda Barry’s books that I’ve read, in large part because she reveals the enormity of her early creative insecurities. After struggling with determining whether her art was good or sucky, she eventually realizes importance of being able to stand not knowing long enough to let something alive take shape. Children do this effortlessly when they make art. As adults, our work is to revive that child’s play.

2. TO REVEL IN LIFE WRITING: Wild + The Chronology of Water

I arrived at my residency with the rough idea of working on a memoir, yet I brought zero memoirs with me for reference. I scoured the residency’s shelves for memoir inspiration and ended up reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed and The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch.

Both of these memoirs came out in 2011-2012. Both have been turned into movies. Both writers are based in Portland, Oregon, and are even in the same writing group! But the books themselves could not be more different.

Wild is a straightforward memoir in which Cheryl Strayed, grieving the loss of her mother, embarks on the Pacific Crest Trail. The book is clearly intelligible with a “hero’s journey” arc (start the trail terribly unprepared and in grief → end the trail a complete badass, making peace with the unknown).

The Chronology of Water is anti-linear. There’s no clear sense of growth, only fragments of memories chopped and repeated and eventually shaped into narrative. Lidia Yuknavitch frames her abusive childhood and angry adulthood within the central metaphor of water, her place of refuge as an avid swimmer. At times she writes like a raw and emotional Tumblr blogger, then on the next page there will be the most poignant prose capturing the unanswerability of life.

The more you describe a memory, the more likely it is that you are making a story that fits your life, resolves the past, creates a fiction you can live with. It’s what writers do. Once you open your mouth, you are moving away from the truth of things.
- The Chronology of Water

Wild was the more pleasant read, but The Chronology of Water broke my brain open with its genre-bending, creativity-as-healing story.

3. TO REFLECT ON LIFE WRITING: Our Diaries, Ourselves

The cover of Our Diaries, Ourselves immediately sold me when I saw it at P&T Knitwear. All those pretty notebooks (and one lone iPad) that can capture all of life! I’m sure it is no surprise to you that I love writing in my diary (or journal— I use these terms interchangeably).

Journalist Betsy Rubiner takes a comprehensive look at the diary in Our Diaries, Ourselves, starting with the difficult task of defining what a diary is. Diaries are written with regularity (though not always daily), and they are a report of the self. Diaries are not necessarily private—many digital blogs and Substacks would fall under the diary category. And diaries are not always true—reread the The Chronology of Water quote above!

Diaries give credence to interiority, especially for women. According to bell hooks, a diary is a “subversive autobiography”, a “narrative of resistance.” Through writing the diary, a person can strengthen their sense of self. A person begins to feel they matter.

I walked away from this book with a lot more reasons to appreciate the diary form as a legitimate method of life writing. Perhaps I too can entertain fantasies of publishing my diaries, like David Sedaris’ Theft by Finding or Heidi Julavits’ The Folded Clock…

4. TO CALL IN THE EROTIC: Pleasure Activism

During the spring I joined Kening Zhu’s Labyrinth Library community. We had many discussion calls that wove around pleasure and sensuality (shoutout to fellow Labyrinth member Sebene Selassie, who has been writing about the erotic lately!) Since Labyrinth closed I’ve been intentionally inviting in more pleasure, both in my body and in my creative life. No book sums up the gravitas of this better than adrienne marie brown’s Pleasure Activism.

Covering topics from sex and drugs to race and climate change, Pleasure Activism emphasizes the importance of feeling good as the basis for creating any kind of lasting change. I’ll speak from my own experience—centering pleasure in my current season of life is helping me act more in my integrity, shed guilt and unworthiness around rest, and generally be a happier, healthier human being. Don’t we all want that for each other?

There is no way to repress pleasure and expect liberation, satisfaction, or joy.
- Pleasure Activism

5. TO MEDITATE ON LONELINESS: On the Calculation of Volume, Book 1

For months I have been eager to read Solvej Balle’s time loop series, On the Calculation of Volume, and upon receiving my Libby hold notification I devoured Book I in a few days.

In this series the protagonist Tara starts repeating the same day endlessly, like the 1993 film Groundhog Day or 2020 film Palm Springs. Unlike those Hollywood movies, Tara experiences her repeating day as slow, dizzying, and deeply existential. She feels widening distance from her husband (for whom time operates normally) and starts to see herself as a monster consuming resources. The time loop acts as a metaphorical exploration of isolation, belonging, and discomfort with the unknown.

As of summer 2026, Solvej Balle has published five out of seven volumes in this series, four of which have been translated to English. I hope to catch up through Book IV before the fifth translated volume comes out November 17!

6. TO FALL IN LOVE WITH ARTISTRY: Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love (33 1⁄3)

The main update I have from June is that I’ve fallen in love with Kate Bush. I am smitten, obsessed, so in admiration of her mysterious artistry! If you weren’t alive in the ‘80s to know about Kate Bush, you may still recognize her 1985 single “Running Up That Hill”, which made a resurgence in 2022 after it got featured in Stranger Things. Just this past week I’ve heard this 41-year-old song play twice while walking around Brooklyn.

Lately I am stuck playing Hounds of Love on repeat, her 1985 album which begins with “Running Up That Hill” then weaves into “Hounds of Love” (my current favorite) and “Cloudbusting” (a close runner up). Side 2 of the album, called The Ninth Wave, is a concept piece about a woman lost at sea inspired by Tennyson’s “The Coming of Arthur”.

Wanting to ingest as much information as possible to fuel my latest obsession, I read the 33 1⁄3 book on Hounds of Love. 33 1⁄3 is a long-running book series published by Bloomsbury, each written about a different music album. They have over 200 books in the series now!

Hounds of Love (33 1⁄3), written by music lecturer Leah Kardos, goes into great detail about Kate Bush’s innovative use of the Fairlight CMI (the first polyphonic synthesizer + sampler machine). Though a lot of musical jargon went over my head, I learned so much about all the choices Kate Bush agonized over to create this perfect album.

7. TO FALL IN LOVE WITH NATURE: Braiding Sweetgrass

My family is mostly comprised of indoor people—city dwellers, mall lovers, movie watchers, book readers. Feeling comfortable in nature doesn’t come naturally, but after reading Braiding Sweetgrass, I’d like to try more often.

Braiding Sweetgrass is written by Indigenous botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer. She has an incredible wealth of knowledge, not only “hard” science facts but also sweet folk tales and rituals from Indigenous culture that show the long human history of being in relationship with nature’s gifts. I especially appreciated how she notes that people are often advised to stay away from nature to not harm plants, but this ironically can harm them more. Plants need to be harvested in order to grow.

I’ve written up more notes on Braiding Sweetgrass in my digital garden, and also read from it in my latest Youtube video, recapping my two week writing residency:

📚 I predict many of you have been hit with the reading bug this summer—during this week’s coworking session, SEE YOU readers Anjelika Deogirikar Grossman read On Painting and the Nature of Work and flux 𖦹 form read Art & Fear. What books have you been reading lately? Recommend me something to read in the comments!

✂️ Zine Lab, my four week zine making workshop, returns August 4. I look forward to meeting those of you who’ve already signed up! Registration is open, with 10% off for paid subscribers and two spots for scholarships.

1. To Be Read