Transcript
Kristin Paulin: Hi, I'm Kristin, the host of Kristin's Next Chapter, a podcast to help you find your next read and introduce you to debut authors. Well, summer is officially here, and I already feel like it's starting to slip away.
Kristin Paulin: So today i wanted to chat about my summer TBR, specifically the books that feel like summer. i always think of these as beach reads, but to be honest, it likely is not going to include me reading on a beach anytime soon, but I do love adding books for the current season into my TBR plans.
Kristin Paulin: And for this summer, i decided to shop my existing TBR shelves because, to be honest, My TBR is overflowing at the moment. So what I have for you today is a mix of new releases and some older books.
Kristin Paulin: But before we get to that, I wanted to share what I'm currently reading and some of my bookish moments. For what I'm currently reading, I just started the first book on my summer-themed TBR, and it's Summer Romance from Annabelle Monaghan.
Kristin Paulin: I chose this one among the books that I have on my TBR shelf from Annabelle because it's about a professional organizer. Not only am I just really organized as a person, I've always thought that a career as a professional organizer would be really cool. So in this book, Professional Organizer, Allie's Life, is a mess. Her husband is just leaving her one year after her mother passes away and she's still grieving that loss.
Kristin Paulin: So She's kind of a mess. And after her husband leaves her, she unexpectedly meets someone new. But she swears it's just going to be a summer fling.
Kristin Paulin: The benefits of this kind of summer romance, it's always fun. It's always brief. No one gets their heart broken. Well, let's see about that. And before we get to the remaining list, I wanted to share just my recent bookish moments because it's been really fun around here.
Kristin Paulin: First, I moderated another book club at my local bookstore. This time, i took on my first nonfiction book, and it was it was quite challenging, but it really ended up being pretty rewarding.
Kristin Paulin: The discussion was about the book, One Day Everyone Will Have Been Against This by Omar El-Aqad. It was a tough subject about Gaza and also just in general the power in the West and their treatment of anyone that doesn't look like them.
Kristin Paulin: So one of the challenges of the book club was that we didn't know each other's backgrounds. We don't know where our perspectives were, where we were coming from. So a lot of people were really hesitant to open up in the beginning, we Ultimately, it really ended up being a great discussion, really respectful, and i I got nothing but good feedback about it. So I'm really, really happy.
Kristin Paulin: And then I also hosted that book bedazzling party that I mentioned on my last episode. It was amazing. We had so, so, so much fun. The books looked great, and it was actually so much easier to do than I expected.
Kristin Paulin: This was a party for the Classy Ladies Book Club that I'm a part of. It's a group of really fun, silly women that don't take themselves too seriously, but we all love to read really good books.
Kristin Paulin: Next, I also started attending silent book clubs. They are really popular around me right now. If you're not familiar with them, the ones that I go to have the format that's two hours long. The first half hour is mingling, socializing,
Kristin Paulin: Everyone grabs a name tag. Sometimes there's a book exchange. And then the host sets a timer for an hour and everyone just sits and reads their book silently, sitting among the rest of their book community.
Kristin Paulin: And when that hour is up, we pile up our books on a table and take a picture of what we've all been reading. And then we continue to socialize for another half hour or so.
Kristin Paulin: And then finally, i do have to gush for a few minutes about the book retreat that my Classy Ladies Book Club had over the weekend. So while I often hear about book retreats being a mix of fun activities together and then time spent independently reading,
Kristin Paulin: And we did things just a little bit different than this. We held our normal book club discussion. And as a side note, this was about What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown.
Kristin Paulin: This book is set at the advent of the internet in the 90s. And it's about the lengths that one dad goes to to try to shield his daughter from what he sees as the future that he was expecting with the internet and what that would bring. He just didn't see good things.
Kristin Paulin: And there are really interesting parallels in this book to the moment that we're in today with AI. So it was just really interesting timing to read this book. But anyways, at the book retreat, we discussed this, had a really great discussion.
Kristin Paulin: And then we also had other activities. We played games. We made dried flower laminated bookmarks. We did some watercolor note cards. We ate, we drank, we had a sleepover, we had great fun.
Kristin Paulin: And there were also countless really special little details that our hosts put together about our club and the book that we were reading. So it was just really, really fun and really special.
Kristin Paulin: And now, just to get back to that main topic about summer beach reads, I always have a lot of book clubs going on, a lot of buddy reads. So I just wanted to make sure that I could pepper in some beach reads over the next few months.
Kristin Paulin: And so I just wanted to put five books on this list. So I've already talked about one, Summer Romance from Annabelle Monaghan. And so then i wanted to talk about the four remaining ones on my list.
Kristin Paulin: So the second book is Our Perfect Storm by Carly Fortune. This is Carly Fortune's new book for the summer. Her books are always set at a lake rather than an ocean. And as a Midwestern girl, i love that.
Kristin Paulin: i am nowhere near an ocean, but I do live relatively near to Lake Michigan. And in this book, best friends Frankie and George, they've been best friends since they were like eight years old.
Kristin Paulin: And it sounds like they've always had some kind of feelings for one another. And then in this book, Frankie is dumped by her fiance on her wedding weekend.
Kristin Paulin: And what ends up happening is that Frankie and George go on Frankie's honeymoon. So you can see where this is going. and I think it sounds really great. I'm here for it.
Kristin Paulin: The third book is the View from Lake Como by Adriana Trigiani. And this is one woman's quest to build her own life before it's too late.
Kristin Paulin: The main character, Jess, takes care of everyone else. Now she's divorced and there's some sort of precipitating event in the book that causes her to go back and visit her ancestral home in Italy where she ends up reinventing herself. It just sounds really great to me.
Kristin Paulin: Number four, I have This Summer Will Be Different by Carly Fortune. Yes, Carly Fortune is weighing heavy on my short summer Beach Reads TBR, and that's just because her books are so perfect for the summer.
Kristin Paulin: ah brought one with me at my Door County vacation last summer, and I'm thinking to do the same this year with this particular book. So the book is described as, this summer they'll keep their promise.
Kristin Paulin: This summer they won't give in to temptation. This summer will be different. While on vacation, Lucy is irresistibly drawn to her best friend's brother, Felix.
Kristin Paulin: And in Carly Fortune's books, the ones that I've read already at least, there are always some spicy scenes. And I would say it sounds like this one is probably going to be the same.
Kristin Paulin: And normally i kind of shy away from books that have too much spice in them, but I'm trying to kind of expand a little in a bunch of different ways and a bunch of different ways with my reading. So I'm kind of interested in this now. So let's see how that goes.
Kristin Paulin: And then last, number five, i have Grace and Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon by Matthew Norman. Okay, when I say holiday movies, I do mean Christmas movies, but hear me out about it.
Kristin Paulin: I really wanted to read this one at Christmas time and I just ran out time. So at the time I decided i would just maybe read it as a summer in July book instead.
Kristin Paulin: So let's see how it goes. I've never tried to do this before. if it seems too out of place to read a Christmas book, I'll just set it aside until next Christmas. But in this book, a sentimental advertising creative and a blunt no-nonsense bar owner find a second chance at love while binge-watching iconic holiday movies.
Kristin Paulin: This book came out last year, and i heard nothing but great things about it at the time. So let's see. Let's see if I get to it this summer as I want to or if I set it aside until Christmas because it seems too weird to read a Christmas book in the summer.
Kristin Paulin: Now, finally, for my reading intentions until we meet again, i have two book clubs coming up in the next two weeks. One is for the Lilac People by Milo Todd.
Kristin Paulin: This was a really interesting look at the treatment of transgender people basically during World War II or under the the Hitler regime. And then i also have my goat book club.
Kristin Paulin: We'll be discussing the Briar Club by Kate Quinn. And this is another historical fiction book. This one sat in Washington, D.C. during the era of McCarthyism.
Kristin Paulin: And then looking just look a little bit further ahead, My classy ladies are going to be reading Yesteryear by Carol Claire Burke, the extremely popular book about a trad wife influencer who wakes up back in the 1800s and must actually do all of the homemade things to actually survive. So it's really popular, but it has some divisive reviews. So i think it'd be great for a book club.
Kristin Paulin: And then, of course, I have other buddy reads and book clubs going on in July too. So I'm just going to be trying to make sure that I can fit in some of these summer beach reads where I can just for myself.
Kristin Paulin: And then that's it for today. Thank you for listening. If you liked this episode, please do tell a friend. and in the meantime, you can always find me on Instagram at kristinsnextchapter, all one word.
Kristin Paulin: I'd love to hear from you. What's on your TBR this summer? and whatever it is happy reading.
