Book Love: Recommendations From Lindsey Mead
Whenever I'm in a book rut, there are a few women I think of: Lindsey Mead, Amy Clark, Jessica Turner, and Lucrecer Braxton. These are women I have met through blogging and developed big love and admiration for personally and professionally over the years. A few weeks ago I was thinking about putting together a big book list so I asked them what they were reading. Their responses were so wonderful that I decided I wanted to feature their recommendations individually. Today I’m sharing Lindsey's picks; stay tuned for more recommendations in the coming weeks!
Lindsey Mead
Wife, mother, writer, headhunter, redhead, runner, and a thousand other things.
But first, a few words about Lindsey. Lindsey is one of my favorite women in Boston. She is an ambitious, successful businesswoman, yes, but I actually primarily think of her as an artful, insightful writer (her wonderful blog is A Design So Vast) and an incredibly loving and real mom of two. Lindsey is also a fellow library haul nerd and I’m always so curious about her recommendations. Here are 5 title recommendations from Lindsey (and you should totally go follow her on Twitter and Instagram):
1. Saints for All Occasions by J. Courtney Sullivan
My favorite novel so far this year, Saints for All Occasions is an engrossing, empathetic portrait of a large Irish family in the Boston area, with themes of faith, love, secrets, and loyalty. So good.
2. The Burning Girl by Claire Messud
In The Burning Girl's spare, muscular prose, Messud outlines what it is to be an adolescent girl, a territory of shifting allegiances and nascent identity. I could not put this slender, tense book down, and it felt particularly germane given that I have an adolescent daughter.
3. Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage by Dani Shapiro
Dani Shapiro's Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage is my favorite memoir of the year so far. I love all of Dani's writing, and this memoir is no exception: in short pieces, Dani evokes so much about long marriage, about the sometimes confounding way memory works, about life itself. My review is here.
4. The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs
How can a memoir about tragic death (from cancer, on the cusp of 40, with two small children) be so vibrantly about life itself? I'm not sure, but Nina's luminous memoir The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying is. This is on the shortlist of books I've read that I think about often. Beautiful.
5. Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me by Bill Hayes
I love Oliver Sacks, and loved this loving, intimate portrait of him by his partner, Bill Hayes. Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me feels like a long love letter to Oliver, and he emerges from its pages as lovably erudite and intellectual as I imagined. A wonderful book.
Featured photo by Jessica Ruscello on Unsplash