Read Guide

July 2022

THE STRANGER | ALBERT CAMUS

Albert Camus made it clear that he didn’t identify as an existentialist, despite his work fitting neatly into the classification. But it’s unclear how he felt about the term absurdism, essentially created for him. The Stranger is about a man embracing the meaninglessness of existence in an increasingly secularized society. And it happens to take place over the summer. Sometimes translated as The Outsider, the book’s main character Meursault is a French man living in French-occupied Algeria. Disoriented by the heat and partially blinded by the reflection of the sunlight off the knife of a man attacking his neighbor, Meursault kills a man on the beach, unnecessarily unloading every round into him after the first fatal shot. His general apathy towards life is alien to the court, and he is thus found guilty of murder. The book continues to explore the thoughts of a man sentenced to death in a universe with no higher power.

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE | VIRGINIA WOOLF

To The Lighthouse isn’t really a plot-driven book. My reading of it was Virginia Woolf expressing her own thoughts, opinions, and emotions through multiple characters. Essentially, it takes place over two summers ten years apart. The first section introduces the characters Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, their eight kids, and some guests at their summer home, including painter Lily Briscoe. The kids want to visit an island lighthouse by boat, but Mr. Ramsay is wary of the weather. Woolf’s unconventional narrative involves little dialogue but is told in the third person by an omniscient narrator. The middle section describes the events of the past ten years before the family finally reconvenes with their house guests from 10 years ago to visit the lighthouse at the end.

INFINITE JEST | DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

Infinite Jest isn’t about summer, but summer break is probably the best time to read it, or so the creators of the blog Infinite Summer thought. The site was a book club that read Infinite Jest from June to September in 2009 and analyzed it in a series of discussion posts. Though it’s not required that you read it in the summer, I certainly did by coincidence shortly after graduating with my BA. Infinite Jest is a groundbreaking hysterical realist fiction with some dispute over which school of thought it exists in. With several narratives, the sur-thousand-page book centers around a film that is so entertaining that viewers lose interest in anything else and eventually die.

Also, check out this summer reading list from our Instagram.

Curated by Andrew Scott

June 2022

CHOKE | CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Chuck Palahniuk found unexpected success with his first book, Fight Club, which I’m sure you’ve heard of as he sold the rights for its adaptation into a wildly popular film starring Brad Pit and Edward Norton. Palahniuk reluctantly came out in 2008. He was concerned an interviewer he confided in about his partner off the record would out him. Though his work does not often feature explicitly gay characters, most of his characters are working through being marginalized in some way. Choke, probably his second most extolled novel is about a sex addict turned con man to help support his mother.

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY | OSCAR WILDE

Despite being married and fathering two sons, Oscar Wilde was secretly gay. After starting an affair with a poet, Alfred, who was 16 years younger than him, he was essentially outed by his lover’s father via a calling card in which he referred to Wilde as a “posing somdomite,” misspelling sodomite. Sodomy was outlawed in England at the time in the late 1800s. Despite this, Wilde tried to sue his lover’s father for libel. The defense used The Picture of Dorian Gray to imply that Wilde seduced Alfred with erotic themes in the novel. It resulted in Wilde serving two years in prison. Dorian Gray is about a man who wishes to sell his soul so that a painting of him ages instead of him.

TENDER BUTTONS | GERTRUDE STEIN

Gertrude Stein was an American modernist writer, though she moved to France in 1903. Tender Buttons is probably her most famous work and an excellent introduction to her writing style. Stein’s technique of recontextualizing everyday objects was called “verbal cubism” by Poets.org. Though poetry is decidedly subjective, especially when it is as novel as Stein’s, many people interpret the poems to have an underlying theme of lesbianism. It’s hard to deny the sexual-sounding nature of the title. Personally, I found her poems to be much deeper than sexuality, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be multifaceted, either.

GIOVANNI'S ROOM | JAMES BALDWIN

James Baldwin was an American writer and Activist who also moved to France. Giovanni’s Room is about an American living in Paris named David. The book covers a lot of different subjects, like identity, isolation, gender, and sexuality, but the main focus is David’s relationship with the eponymous Italian bartender, Giovanni. From this description, Giovanni’s Room seems semi-autobiographical or some form of autofiction. But Baldwin insists that, despite being influenced by his life in Paris, the book is not autobiographical. David is actually a blonde man Baldwin met who was later executed. Thus it’s easy to presume Baldwin did not base Giovanni on one of his partners. 

QUEER | WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Queer is technically William S. Burroughs’ second novel and a spiritual sequel to his first, Junkie; however, it wasn’t published until 1985 because, in 1953, when he finished writing it, the explicit homosexuality in it was seen as obscene. His next and most famous novel, Naked Lunch, was published in a timely manner in 1959 and landed him in a Boston obscenity trial. Naked Lunch remains the last work of literature consisting of only words to face such a trial in history. Queer is a relatively short autofiction that follows protagonist Lee in his futile pursuit of a man named Gene Allerton. 

Curated by Andrew Scott

May 2022

THIS IS WATER | DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

This Is Water is an essay David Foster Wallace read as a commencement speech to Kenyan College in 2005. Wallace later published it into a short 138-page book in 2009. His speech offered a uniquely sympathetic perspective on adult life to the 2005 graduating class. The part that stood out to me most when I read it was his parable of being stuck in rush hour traffic only to wait in the post-work rush grocery store line in this endless cycle of mundanity and how now one explained to him growing up that this was a large part of adult life.

RULES OF ATTRACTION | BRET EASTON ELLIS

You probably know Bret Easton Ellis best from his book American Psycho which Edward R. Pressman made into a film starring Christian Bale. It’s an odd occurrence of a film adaptation made as good as the original text without making it obsolete. The film took on a life of its own, but the book is this cerebral work of stream-of-conscious writing. Rules of Attraction is written in the same style, starting and ending mid-sentence. Rules of Attraction follows Sean Bateman in his fictional liberal arts undergraduate program. Sean’s older brother becomes the main character in American Psycho. It’s a satire of college culture. After you read it, you’ll realize that these were possibly not the greatest years of your life, as people often say. It’s just the beginning.

THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO | JUNOT DÍAZ

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao has won several awards, was praised by many critics, and sold almost 40 thousand copies in the first three months of its publication. It follows the titular character through his undergraduate career at Rutgers. Oscar struggles with finding love and having a social life as an overweight mixed-race Dominican-American nerd. The book also follows his travels back and forth between his hometown of New Jersey and the Dominican Republic. Junot Díaz wrote Oscar Wao in Spanglish without offering translation for the Spanish segments. 

 GET GOOD WITH MONEY | TIFFANY ALICHE

Now that you’re an adult, it’s probably a good idea to understand personal finance. Tiffany Aliche has got you covered. Known as “The Budgetnista,” Aliche is a personal finance expert. Her passion for personal finance arose after losing her job as a teacher in The Great Recession. It eventually led her to create The Budgetnista, a personal finance education company dedicated to empowering women. Get Good With Money is her ten-step guide for achieving financial stability.

Curated by Andrew Scott

April 2022

THE SIXTH EXTINCTION: AN UNNATURAL HISTORY | ELIZABETH KOLBERT

In The Sixth Extinction, journalist Elizabeth Kolbert argues that the earth is experiencing another mass extinction event, like what happened to the dinosaurs. Mostly, Kolbert finds climate change to be a chief factor in causing widespread extinction during the Anthropocene era, the Anthropocene being the geological epoch during which the earth started to become significantly impacted by the presence of humans. As a journalist and not a scientist herself, Kolbert’s work relies on interviews and extensive research of her own. Kolbert explores some nonhuman-related extinctions but mostly covers species wiped out by human activity. 

WALDEN | HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Henry David Thoreau was a philosopher, an essential figure in the transcendental movement, and a close friend to its founder Ralph Waldo Emerson. Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that started during the late 1820s in America. Transcendentalists were secularists who saw divinity in nature and believed people to be inherently and independently good, only corrupted by society’s institutions. Though Emerson founded the movement, Thoreau was more extreme and jailed for refusing to pay taxes. Walden is about that social experiment. For two years, two months, and two days, Thoreau sequestered himself in a cabin in the woods owned by Emerson, recording precise observations on nature, living alone, and providing for himself. 

LEAVES OF GRASS | WALT WHITMAN

If you weren‘t already aware, Walt Whitman was an American romantic poet living during the 19th century. Though romanticism started in Europe, one of its fundamental tenets is the appreciation of nature. America in the 19th century had an abundance of raw land, as it turns out. Leaves of Grass is a collection of poems that explores Whitman’s humanistic philosophies. Like Thoreau, Whitman was part of a movement of secularization that was concerned with deifying nature, shifting focus from religion to the material realm. Whitman described early cover art for the collection as symbolizing “being one with nature.”

HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE: LEARNING TO FIGHT IN A WORLD ON FIRE | ANDREAS MALM

How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire is a critique of pacifist climate activism. Andreas Malm is advocating not for assassination or warfare but sabotage. How to Blow Up a Pipeline started as an inquiry into the lack of climate activism. But what Malm ended up taking issue with was the quality of climate activism. It’s unarguably an original stance and particularly interesting given the recent Black Lives Matter protests over lockdown. With an existential threat like climate change that affects humanity as a whole, it’s a wonder no one has even thought to suggest anything other than nonviolent protest and education. Most criticism of the book is nuanced, praising Malm for his valid points and questioning whether sabotage could do more harm than good. While Malm doesn’t explicitly describe how to sabotage, focusing more on why to do so, How to Blow Up a Pipeline has still been met with reproval from more right-leaning interpreters. 

Curated by Andrew Scott

MARCH 2022

THE HANDMAID'S TALE | MARGARET ATWOOD

The Handmaid’s Tale is an easy, linear read. I was assigned it in high school and found it to be quite compelling. At the time, I was really into dystopian fiction for some reason. In Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood takes misogyny to a logical extreme. In the exposition, an extremist regime takes over the US and reduces civil liberties, particularly for women. Coincidentally, pollution has made fertility rare among women, so the government creates a caste system in which fertile women serve essentially as childbearing vassals for commanders. The book has won several awards. Atwood sold the rights for the book’s adaptation to film, opera, and, most recently, television. After the television series was released, Atwood published a sequel called, The Testaments. Transpiring 15 years after Handmaid’s TaleThe Testaments’ narrative form assumes the perspective of three women, one of whom was also in the previous book.

A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN | VIRGINIA WOOLF

Though I do jump at any excuse to talk about Virginia Woolf, it’s actually relevant this time. A Room of One’s Own is an almost 200-page essay based on a couple of lectures Woolf gave at two different women’s colleges affiliated with Cambridge. The book is about how society does not nurture women in the same way that men are to become great writers and probably a lot of other professions. This is summed up in the title, which references an excerpt of the essay, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” A good chunk of the book explores the idea of a female Shakespeare and whether society is capable of producing one, at one point creating a hypothetical character, Judith Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s sister.

INANNA, LADY OF LARGEST HEART: POEMS OF THE SUMERIAN HIGH PRIESTESS | ENHEDUANNA

It’s women’s history month. Why not read the earliest known author in human history? That is correct, folks; the first writer in recorded history was the poet Enheduanna, the priestess of the moon in ancient Sumeria. Enheduanna wrote hymns inscribed on clay tablets dedicated to various Sumerian deities. The most recent translation of her work was published in 2000 and comes to about 250 pages. While this is the most lauded on Goodreads, it is not without some criticism. Mostly if readers took issue with it, they condemned the translator’s personal interpretations, not the translation itself.

TIME IS A MOTHER | OCEAN VUONG

In an effort to provide something more contemporary, I’m going to suggest a male author. Last month I wrote about Melissa Broder. All of her books are written by a woman. You can also look into Mira Gonzalez and Darcy Wilder for more contemporary female-written literature. None of these authors and poets have a work that focuses specifically on womanhood, nor have any published this year. Ocean Vuong has something that satisfies both of these requirements. His second poetry collection and third publication, Time is a Mother, is set to release in April and was written as a response to the death of his mother. His novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, published in 2019, is also about a son’s relationship with his mother and will be adapted to film by A24.

Curated by Andrew Scott

FEBRUARY 2022

THE PISCES: A NOVEL | MELISSA BRODER

Melissa Broder is a poet, author, and essayist. She has a viral Twitter account called “so sad today” with almost 100k followers. Previously having written only poetry and essays published in Vice, The Pisces is her first prose work. It follows the story of a graduate student’s love affair with a merman. The merman character can be seen as an analog for her real-life husband, who has a neuroimmune disease that forces him to stay in bed for extended periods of time, depending on Broder to care for him. Broder goes into more specific detail on their relationship in her podcast Eating Alone in My Car. Lionsgate picked up the book, and Broder is in the process of adapting it to a film script.


RICHARD YATES | TAO LIN

Tao Lin is known for blending fiction and reality with his brand of Kmart realism. Kmart realism has been around since the 80s. It is a form of minimalist literature that portrays the lives of its characters as being consumed by capitalism or entrenched in consumer culture, if you will. Lin’s style often involves writing what would be straightforward autobiographies if not for the characters having different names and other minor artistic liberties. Lin based Richard Yates on a long-term relationship with a 16-year-old when he was 22. The two characters converse extensively through the Gmail chat client. It landed Lin in some trouble when the 16-year-old in the relationship, who now goes by E. R. Kennedy, accused him of abuse on Twitter. Though once feminist magazine Jezebel reported on this, Kennedy deleted the tweets and asked them to remove the article. While Taipei features what is probably a healthier relationship with a character based on Lin’s ex-wife, Megan Boyle, it feels less focused on the relationship and more on his life at the time in general. Richard Yates exclusively focuses on one romantic relationship.


SHAKESPEARE ROMANCES

The fun thing about literature is you can go back and read some of the works that inform how people think about the genre of romance today. A great place to start is Shakespeare. Though formally referred to as tragicomedies, Shakespeare produced many tales that embody what we now easily recognize as love stories, which he developed from chivalric romances. The obvious choice is Romeo and Juliet, but there are quite a few other options. Henry V though technically classified as a “History” play, chronicles the story of an English king seeking the hand of a French princess despite her apprehension due to her inability to share a common language with him. The Two Noble Kinsmen, based on Chaucer’s A Knights Tale, is the timeless tale of two friends and cousins who fall for the same girl. Then there’s Much Ado About Nothing about a young suitor who is convinced that his love interest is fornicating with another man. Twelfth Night follows the story of Viola, who is separated from her brother in a shipwreck. She falls in love with a duke while disguised as a man. These are just a few options, being that many Shakespeare plays feature a love story, there are many more.


THE GREAT GATSBY | F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

If you didn’t read this in high school, there’s no time like the present. Though somewhat of a tragedy, there’s no doubt that love fuels The Great Gatsby. Love, unfortunately, ends up seeing its demise to capitalism, class politics, and conspicuous consumption as we see two characters, pulled apart by social circumstances, find themselves in a distressing situation when they try to be together. The book seems to reflect F. Scott Fitzgerald’s own struggle with trying to find love without wealth. Several films have been made of The Great Gatsby, but none of them garnered particularly favorable reviews, one even earning the direct scorn of the author and his wife. Apparently, they’re trying again, this time as a CGI animated feature.

Curated by Andrew Scott

JANUARY 2022

WILL | WILL SMITH

Will Smith is the titular character of his own story in his new book WillWill is the motivational, true story of a man who made it big in Hollywood, that man, of course, being Will Smith. Will Smith wrote the memoir with Mark Manson, the self-help author who defined himself from the mountain of other self-help authors by using the “F” word in the title of his two novels, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck and Everything Is Fucked: A Book About Hope. If that wasn‘t enough positive energy, Smith also recorded a reality television show while writing the book called Best Shape of My Life about, you guessed it, getting back into shape after lockdown caused him to lose his action-hero physique. The show is available for free on YouTube.


A YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING | JOAN DIDION

This December, we lost award-winning investigative journalist Joan Didion at age 87. Now seems like a better time than ever to read her Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography, A Year of Magical ThinkingMagical Thinking is about the sudden death of her husband, John Dunne, and her daughter’s fatal illness. Dunne was a journalist himself, and they often collaborated on work. He died of a heart attack while their daughter Quintana was in the hospital with pneumonia. Joan didn‘t know it at the time, but Quintana would die soon after she published this book.


TAKIN’ OVER: BY IMPOSING THE POSITIVE! MY PERSONAL RAP TO YOU | BRANDON MCCARTNEY

Most people know Brandon McCartney as Lil B, “The BasedGod.” McCartney has recorded thousands of tracks since splitting from his group The Pack in 2009. That same year he released his self-help book, Takin’ Over: By Imposing the Positive! My Personal Rap to You. Released at the beginning of his solo career, Takin’ Over lays the groundwork for the philosophy present in a lot of Brandon‘s work, an introduction to BasedWorld, if you will. The main thing about Brandon‘s “based” philosophy is boundless positivity. Reviews on Goodreads compare Takin’ Over to the Bible, calling it “the most valuable book ever created.” One reviewer noted, “I feel strangely at ease now.” Takin’ Over is a great way to bring in the new year if you can manage to find a copy of it.


ATOMIC HABITS | JAMES CLEAR

Atomic Habits is a wildly popular self-help book by James Clear. Clear is a former athlete and weightlifter awarded the ESPN Academic All-American title for pitching in baseball. Atomic Habits is Clear’s first book, released in 2018 and has nearly 60 thousand positive reviews on Amazon. Clear‘s self-help method revolves around controlling habits, replacing bad habits with good habits. Clear motivates his readers by asking them to think hypothetically about improving their life. If it were possible to improve by 1% each day, “you would end up 37 times better at the end of the year.” Clear asks his readers to set tangible goals for themselves to become the person they want to be and envision themselves failing, so they can make detailed plans to reach those goals.

Curated by Andrew Scott

DECEMBER 2021

LETTERS FROM FATHER CHRISTMAS | JRR TOLKIEN

Also known as The Father Christmas Letters, this book was released posthumously by the Tolkien estate in 1976, originally written and illustrated by Tolkien for his children. Tolkien frames the story in the form of letters between Santa and his elf secretary. It features a battle with goblins, which many interpret as reflecting Tolkien's views on the Nazi Party. I had the smaller copy growing up, but I've heard the newer, larger version gives you a better look at the illustrations.


MR. DICKENS AND HIS CAROL | SAMANTHA SILVA

You’ve probably experienced A Christmas Carol in a number of ways by this point in your life. Samantha Silva’s book explores how Charles Dickens came up with the quintessential Christmas classic. You can also check out Les Standiford’s take on the same phenomenon called, The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens‘s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits. Standiford’s book focuses on how Dickens effectively popularized the holiday. It’s received slightly less glowing reviews but has recently been turned into a film.



IN GOD WE TRUST: ALL OTHERS PAY CASH | JEAN SHEPHERD

“You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!” That iconic phrase from the 1983 film A Christmas Story finds its origin in In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd. Shepherd rose to fame on the radio in the late 40s and 50s. As a humorist, Shepherd didn‘t consider himself a writer when children’s poet Shel Silverstein tried to convince him he was. To prove this to him, Silverstein transcribed several of his stories. This inspired Shepherd to start writing, publishing long-form essays regularly in Playboy. This book is a collection of those essays and some of his more popular radio stories.


SKIPPING CHRISTMAS: A NOVEL | JOHN GRISHAM

John Grisham is known for his legal thrillers, but this book is quite different for him. Grisham imagines a couple who opts to eschew all holiday festivities one year and instead book a cruise to the Caribbean. The novel was adapted into a film called Christmas with the Kranks. Critics panned the film version, but it has 20,000 five-star reviews on Amazon, so make of that what you will, and have a great holiday!

Curated by Andrew Scott

NOVEMBER 2021

THE COLLECTED POETRY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

A lesser-known fact about Abraham Lincoln is that he wrote poetry. Since he’s essentially responsible for Thanksgiving, November seems like an appropriate month to delve into this president’s side project. There’s probably no insight into the spirit of the holiday, but his work is generally regarded by critics as being worth reading. Lincoln’s love of literature was a point of contention for his family, who considered him lazy for reading so often.



THE CRACK-UP | F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

If you’re looking to read something more festive, check out F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Crack-UpThe Crack-Up is a collection of essays written by Fitzgerald. The collection includes unpublished letters, notes, and three essays originally published in Esquire. You can read the titular one on Esquire’s site if you already have a subscription. The Crack-Up features instructions for Thanksgiving leftovers and a three-page recipe for turkey.



THE THANKSGIVING VISITOR | TRUMAN CAPOTE

Truman Capote’s The Thanksgiving Visitor is a sequel to A Christmas Memory. A Christmas Memory was an autobiographical short story has become a holiday classic that was broadcasted, recorded, filmed, and staged several times. The Thanksgiving Visitor is a tale about a boy and his bully. It was also adapted to film the same year it was published with Geraldine Page, who won an Emmy for her performance in it.

Curated by Andrew Scott

OCTOBER 2021

THE INSTITUTE | STEPHEN KING

It’s the perfect time to check out Steven King’s last horror novel. It wouldn’t be a Halloween reading list without Stephen King. Institute is actually King’s third newest book. His latest two books are crime novels, and being prolific as always he has another one slated for next year. The New York Times called Institute King’s scariest novel to date. The book is about a 12-year-old named Luke. Intruders break into Luke’s house, kill his parents, and kidnap him, taking him away to a facility with a bunch of other kids who have been kidnapped for the same reason. They all have telekinetic powers.



AMERICAN PSYCHO | BRET EASTON ELLIS

You’ve seen the memes. Maybe you’ve even seen the movie, but have you read American PsychoAmerican Psycho is indeed about a playboy investment banker who has had everything handed to him, descending into madness and becoming a serial killer. The film is fantastic in its own right. Christian Bale really takes to the character. The book is more about Ellis’ writing style. Written as a stream-of-consciousness narrative, American Psycho takes you on a roller coaster through the main character’s mind.

HOUSE OF LEAVES | MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI

House of Leaves is a sprawling novel about a family that moves into what is essentially a haunted house. What exactly is haunting the house isn’t a ghost, however. Instead, the house is somehow larger inside than it is outside. But hold on because there are actually two stories. The plot in House of Leaves is nestled in a story about a tattoo artist who finds what is read as the main story in the form of a manuscript left in his new apartment when he moves in. The novel features commentary from the tattoo artist and follows him on his own journey as he reads about the house himself.

RING SHOUT | P. DJÈLÍ CLARK

A Ring Shout is a religious ritual performed by African slaves in America where worshipers shuffled in a circle, stomping, clapping, and occasionally shouting was incorporated. It’s also the title of P. Djèlí Clark’s latest book. Aside from being horror, Ring Shout is in the alternative history genre. It is about a quest to fight demons summoned by the Ku Klux Klan in 1922. NPR said the book was driven by history and hatred and that history was as much a part of the book as fiction. The main inspiration for the novel is The Birth of a Nation, a silent film about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln that has been called “the most reprehensibly racist film in Hollywood history.”

SEPTEMBER 2021

September brings not just Virgo season but for many it is a time for back to school, and with a new school year comes fresh lists of reading material. From learning about Chess, Addiction recovery, moving forward in a career, family history, or discovering a new comic book or video game. We assembled our September collection in the hopes of finding a good book, podcast or movie to curl up with as the fall season begins.

Please let us know your favorites and your own favorite way to welcome Autumn with your favorite books, TV shows, movies, or podcasts. We’d love to hear from you!

Virgo Season 

Teen/Young Adult

Kids


National Drug & Alcohol Addiction Recovery Month

American Chess Day – Sep 1

Labor Day – Sep 6

Grandparents’ Day – Sep 12

National Video Games Day – Sep 12 

National Comic Book Day – Sep 25

Ask A Stupid Question Day/National Neighbor Day – Sep 28

Curated by: Media Smart Citizens Content Creator Martha Reckers.

AUGUST 2021

To continue the celebration of summer, we present our August collection of curated ‘reads’ ‘watches’ and ‘listens’.  With August being Leo season is a time for generosity, to be generous to others and as always to be generous with ourselves by keeping an eye out for our own physical and mental health. 

August is National Immunization Awareness Month, it is also the month playing host to Grief Awareness Day (August 30). Thus inspiring our selection of self-care podcasts, and hopefully plenty of books and movies throughout the month to escape into. Whether that's escaping onto a mountaintop for National Climb a Mountain Day, spending time with friends and family, listening to your favorite song, or to cheer on your favorite athlete in the Olympics. 

Please let us know your favorites and your favorite way to celebrate the final month of Summer with your favorite books, TV shows, movies, or podcasts. We’d love to hear from you!

August National Immunization Awareness Month 

Kids

Leo Season


Young Adult

The Olympics

Young Adult/Teens

National Mountain Climbing Day/International Friendship Day - August 1st

Book Lover’s Day - Aug 9th 

National Son & Daughter Day - Aug 11

Curated by: Media Smart Citizens Content Creator Martha Reckers.

JULY 2021

Here we present a curated selection of July and all things summer-themed books, podcasts, and movies to enhance your summer season. Whether lounging on a beach with a fresh book or working from home/office, here are some pieces to read, watch, and listen to help pass the time in and out of the sun.

Despite the high energy of Cancer Season, it is also a time for family, friends, personal reflection and self-care. The Cancer season collection was compiled in the hopes of meeting both the high energy and expectations of the season, while allowing the space to take (for some) a much-needed exhale. 

Our selection of Eco-Fiction to commemorate the small holidays in July to raise environmental awareness, from Clean Beach Week (July 1-7) to Plastic Bag Free Day (July 3). 

It's difficult to summarize the history and culture of America on the Fourth of July within one word, let alone one book, movie, or podcast. But here some

Feel free to share your favorites that remind you of summer and all that it entails. We’d love to hear from you. 

Previous
Previous

Watch Guide

Next
Next

Listen Guide