Here's what the cool kids (me) are reading this soggy, smoggy summer.

What do you get from a debut author with a degree in archaeology and a tenure at CollegeHumor? You get Excavations: Mamma Mia meets Indiana Jones with a heavy dose of millennial disillusionment. Listen: if I can ~influence~ you to read anything off this list, let it be this one.

Yahgulanaas has an art style that you’ve gotta see to believe. He isn’t constrained by convention, instead creating a flowing, watercoloured style all his own. Through this bold medium, Yahgulanaas takes us on a journey from first contact to forced resettlement on Haida Gwaii.

At this point, anyone hyping Silvia Moreno-Garcia is just preaching to the choir. Let me hype anyway: every single one of her novels is a dialogue between Mexican history and the western artistic canon. She deftly weaves us through different historical settings and this time, it’s 1980s Mexico City, in the editing room of a deeply cursed horror film. Her MIND… 

This critically-acclaimed and sob-inducing classic is getting its 20th anniversary reprint! I read it for the first time a few years ago at the behest of a close friend, who explained to me that this was the story that had changed his life. (I get him now). I can’t wait for this new version, which counts a brand-new cover and an afterword by Thompson detailing the process of writing Blankets all those years ago.

How do you paint a picture of those who came before you based only on the things they’ve left behind? Adherent imagines a kind of postapocalyptic archaeology and prompts us to think about how our own ancestors will make sense of our strange, hyperconsumerist society.

This is a graphic novel adaptation of Park Wan-suh’s eponymous 1970 work, now regarded as a classic of South Korean literature. It’s a story of first love, resilience, and desire set at the height of the Korean War. I’m looking forward to picking it up!

My beloved archaeology - like so many of the social sciences - has suffered from a profound lack of professional curiosity surrounding the lives of women. This book gives the prehistoric European girlies their due through the lens of female art and craftsmanship, asking: what can the objects left behind by women tell us about how they lived? (J'ai lu la version française - l'original - et ce fut une révélation).

This one is an absolute rollercoaster of urgent, all-consuming obsession. A woman sleeping with a married man becomes enthralled with one of his other women - an influencer who has everything our narrator could want. Longlisted for the 2023 Women’s Prize, this novel is a scathing indictment and turbulent exploration of wealth, privilege, and social media. (It's a raunchy one, too, and the person sat beside me on the airplane definitely noticed.)

In these tangled short stories, Aotearoa and Vancouver Island sit side-by-side in the Pacific. I bought this book a little while back, saving it for my visit to B.C. There, I read those stories surrounded by all the lush greens and blues that bring Tauhou to life. If you aren’t on the west coast at the moment, I still think you’ll enjoy this masterclass in web-weaving.

I genuinely don’t know how to summarize this book, but I’ll try: a 21st century woman with the power to travel through time by forming connections with objects. A mysterious fallen city. A bunch of people with dreams of freedom, scattered throughout history. A story that weaves them all together.