from the study: my Q2 2024 reading roundup

Bit of a shorter review this quarter 😊

Stats breakdown from Apr – June 2024

Books Read + Reviews

Dune by Frank Herbert Medium: audiobook

Truthfully, my review of Dune as a whole is not much different than what I wrote for Book 1. I really enjoyed reading it, as well as the weekly discussions and memes it spawned. I can tell that this is the type of book where you can get something new out of it each time you read, so I may revisit it in time. All that to say, the book was very unique, clever, and well done in my opinion. Looking forward to reading Dune Messiah next.

Everything I know About Love by Dolly Alderton Medium: Audiobook

I added this book to my TBR after hearing Dolly Alderton’s dinner party mentorship to Jessica Pan in the book I read last quarter. This book felt like a grown up version of when you were a kid and read those Chicken Soup for the Soul books. The book is a collection of vignettes from Alderton’s twenties that made me laugh, cry, and brought me comfort. Alderton tells the stories of her youth in a way I found quite riveting, personally nostalgic, and inspiring at times. She also occasionally peppers in recipes or other comedic bits that made this feel like I was reading through her life's scrapbook. The book has been adapted as a TV series and I think it lends itself well to that given how I felt like I had followed her and her friends through multiple seasons. Looking forward to watching it in the future. I also liked the transition from girlhood to womanhood and themes of friendship. Someone summed this up as a cross between Bridget Jones’ Diary, Sex and The City, and a self-help book and I'd say that's pretty dead on. Not groundbreaking but enjoyable and good for the soul.

Also if you saw that cute trend going around sometime ago to the audio of “nearly everything I know about love I learnt in my long-term friendships with women”, it comes from this author.

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell Medium: Audiobook

Amanda Montell is both an author and a linguist who uses the latter as the lens in which she views the topics she addresses in her books. I read her first book “Wordsl*t: A Feminist Guide to Talking Back the English Language” back in 2021 and have taken a lot of learnings from it to this day. I highly recommend everyone read it at some point because what she discusses and uncovers from meta-analysis is not quite what you would expect (especially following the girlboss era).

That said, I was curious about her second book – Cultish. The title of the book is also what she has named the language that surrounds cults and other fanatical groups (kinda like a portmanteau of Cult + English). This book is paced more like a six part video essay and makes its way through “traditional” cults (Scientology, Jonestown, etc), MLMs, fitness societies (cross-fit, peleton, etc), and more. Like many others, I've always been curious about what drives people to join cults, how leaders amass their followings, and if a certain type of person is more likely to end up in a cult. Montell also touches on some of the research on this (while infusing her linguistics lens) and pulls at the threads of all these fanatical groups (big or small) to weave an engaging and interesting tapestry of this culture. I really enjoyed listening to the audiobook and it's given me a lot to think about since reading. This has been my favourite non-fiction read of 2024 thus far.

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert Medium: Audiobook

I blitzed this as my hold finally came in after the bookclub had finished this. While I appreciated the brevity of this one, I unfortunately didn't like it as much as Dune. But maybe that's to be expected. Aside from that, I think my sentiments echo those of other bookclub members (or at least the ones I heard when Saturday coffee was hosted in my backyard).

Thanks for reading if you got this far!

Q2 2024 reads