August Review

A look at what's been making me tick this month

Photo by Eléonore GAUTIER on Unsplash

It’s time for this month’s review of the best reading, writing, and watching!  This is an extra end-of-the-month post for paid subscribers.  

If you enjoy essays on literature, community threads, as well as monthly reviews, please consider a free or paid subscription.

This month I wrote about some really interesting books I’ve been reading of late.  

My newsletter often features the stories of twentieth century women writers and their struggles, stories, novels, and real lives.  These all often intersect for obvious reasons.

But my essays this past month have been more grounded in the contemporary books I have been reading, the ideas that have been taking shape in my own life, and that of my reading and writing life.  Like the intertwining of women’s stories and their lives of the past, I suppose this is an inevitable evolving of my own work.

My morning writing sessions have been sometimes replaced by reading sessions, I have to confess.  Although, it did occur to me that this is still all a process of the writing.  I have had a good reading run of late, and I can see when I look back at this month’s essays that this has been having a profound effect on my ideas and writing.  

My reading of All Fours by Miranda July left an indelible effect on my psyche and thinking around how women create art and the narratives of midlife.  My essay on this took in the work of Judy Chicago and was a joy to write.  I have also this month written about a new to me writer, Melissa Bank, and featured on one of my favourite newsletters A Reading Life in an interview with

Petya K. Grady

which was so much fun!   

I’ve been thinking a lot about art and women artists this month, through both my reading and watching, including my own writing and reading practices. 

Photo by ONUR KURT on Unsplash

Once the middle of August has passed, it always feels like a bit of a freewheel towards the end of the summer and the start of the new school year.  As a parent of two, with my youngest entering their final year of sixth form, and a husband who is a school teacher, I still get those new term vibes come September.  Although, I wonder if this is true even when you are not a parent?  Perhaps the ways in which we move through the seasons and our earlier experiences of education still drive this feeling of newness in autumn.

Whatever the case, I love that tingly feeling of newness!  It feels like a nicer version of the New Year to me.  I feel like January is really the wrong time to make resolutions; September and the changing of the seasons is where it’s at for me.

Do you have any exciting plans for the coming new season?

Photo by Agence Olloweb on Unsplash

This newsletter is going to be celebrating its second birthday right at the beginning of September, and this post marks my 150th newsletter!  

It has been a joy to share the work of some absolutely awesome women over the past two years, and I am humbled by those of you who choose to open, read, comment, like, and share my essays each Sunday.  I am so grateful for all my subscribers for believing in my work and wanting to know more about the lives and stories of women.

Now, on with the review…