May Recommendations Roundup
What are all the Badass Women reading, watching and listening to this month? First up is this new release that’s getting a lot of buzz!
Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster, and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love. In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than it provides answers. You can read more and get your copy here.
I’m not sure what genre you’d call this book (fantasy?), but if you like it, I have two more similar recommendations for you!
Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn’t want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories—literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her. Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas and soon begin to defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves. The Cemetery of Untold Stories asks: Whose stories get to be told, and whose buried? You can read more and get your copy here.
When Lauren returns home to her flat in London late one night, she is greeted at the door by her husband, Michael. There’s only one problem—she’s not married. She’s never seen this man before in her life. But according to her friends, her much-improved decor, and the photos on her phone, they’ve been together for years. As Lauren tries to puzzle out how she could be married to someone she can’t remember meeting, Michael goes to the attic to change a lightbulb and abruptly disappears. In his place, a new man emerges, and a new, slightly altered life re-forms around her. Realizing that her attic is creating an infinite supply of husbands, Lauren confronts the question: If swapping lives is as easy as changing a lightbulb, how do you know you’ve taken the right path? When do you stop trying to do better and start actually living? You can read more and get your copy here.
Every day, tens of thousands of Google employees, from executives to interns, rely on Laura Mae Martin’s tips and best practices for how to make the most of their time. Now, with Uptime, Laura brings her unique approach to productivity and well-being to anyone who wants to be more effective and experience “calm accomplishment,” whether at work, at school, or in their own personal lives. You can read more and get your copy here.
Dinosaur on Hulu is a joyful new release from the producers of Fleabag. It centers on two sisters – as they adjust to life and careers and relationships. It’s garnering rave reviews as one of the first positive presentations of neurodiversity in comedy. You can watch the trailer here.
We’ve waited a long time for the adaptation of Queenie, the novel by author Candice Carty-Williams. It’s about Queen Jenkins, a young Jamacian woman living in South London who’s struggling to navigate two diverse cultures. You can watch the trailer here.
Our family watched the new John Mulaney show on Netflix (we liked it!). He invites a number of comedians to join him and that reinforced for me how few women there are in standup. But he does include Fortune Feimster and Mae Martin. They, along with Tig Notaro, host a podcast called Handsome. It’s worth check out here!
Speaking of podcasts, Hello Sunshine is out with a new podcast - I recently enjoyed the episode breaking down The Met Gala outfits! You can check out all the episodes here.
Finally, we’re used to the page-to-screen trajectory. How fun is this story about the opposite path – a movie adaptor becoming an author?! You can check it out here.
Our 2024 Badass Women’s Book Club Summer Reading List is out in two weeks! So excited to share all these great summer reading recs with you!