Words of July || I read my first ever Tamizh book!

July was a long month. I was quite tired mentally and emotionally. My calendar wasn't filled with fun things like June and I felt lonely and distant from friends. It was.. not great. I did read a lot of books, though. That's how I coped with it all.

Grab a drink and settle down, let me catch you up on my July 🧉

allll the books

I had a great reading month. I think I read almost every free minute and picked up books instead of watching anything or fiddling on the internet. I read 16 books, more than my reading for the past few months.

In an interesting twist of events, 3 were non-fiction books. In formats, 8 were digital, 6 were paperback, and 2 were audio. 3 were rereads. In another surprising turn of events, my most-read genre was literary fiction and not romance (discounting rereads). And for the first time ever, I read a book that's not in English!

I made a monsoon TBR in June. I have failed at following TBRs until now and I am quite determined to follow through with this one because I really want to read these books while I'm interested in them. I wrote the list on a few sticky notes and stuck it on my wall to keep track of it. And, surprisingly, I made quite a good dent in the list! I finished 8/10 monsoon TBR books. It's been satisfying to check off the books on the sticky notes haha.

Other than the TBR, I've been doing pretty well on the 52 Book Club 2026 reading challenge too. My friends roped me into it early this year and I have managed to check off several prompts with the books I already read. 4 of the books from July were used for it. My total progress is 39/52 prompts done.

As I said, my reading went well in July. It was the only thing that went well 🙃

I finally finished Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harrari. It took me several months to read this. The only time I enjoyed reading it was when I forgot what the book was supposed to be about and was able to enjoy the random ranmblings about specific events in time. At one point, I became so confused and closed the book to look at the cover to see what it was about again and was actually surprised when I saw "information networks". That's how bad this book this. The author should stick to being a historian. Barely 5% of this book was about the topic on the cover. There was so much repetition, so much delving into history multiple times to make the same damn point about humans repeating mistakes. There was no point to it. I hate that I bought it and annotated it. I have to figure out how to unhaul it now.

After finishing my rewatch of One Tree Hill, I found out via Reddit that one of the main cast members was in a cult and wrote a book about it. The audiobook in some regions has cameos from other cast members so I very excitedly borrowed a friend's Storytel account to listen to Dinner for Vampires by Bethany Joy Lenz. Unfortunately, the cameo version isn't available in India. I really enjoyed the book nonetheless. Bethany Joy Lenz was in a cult throughout the decade of working on the show and went through some really hard things. The way the cult began and the way she got indoctrinated into it and brainwashed and isolated was heartbreaking. It's super detailed too, because she kept detailed journals throughout so she could tell us everything. And the thing is, I understand how she got into it. Her vulnerabilities and insecurities were taken advantage of and the cult leader expertly manipulated her for so long. It's heartbreaking that she lost all her earnings from her decade on the show. It also speaks about her acting skill that none of what she was going through was visible when she was in character. I highly recommend the memoir to everyone. She wrote it so well too. Apparently she has a fictional novel coming out soon, I want to read it.

I resumed my knitting project from last year while listening to the above so I continued by listening to Recitatif by Toni Morrison. This is a short story. The introduction was actually longer than the story itself, lol. This is Morrison's only short story and I've heard that it's popular because she doesn't mention the race of the two main characters while making the story about race itself. Readers usually immediately try to figure out who is White and who is Black. That didn't matter much to me, maybe because I'm not in/from America to say from clues that "this is why this person is this race" and probably because I'm not of both races. I liked the main point of the story more than the "mystery" of the race—that despite being from very different households and races, the main characters had a shared experience at one point in their childhood which shaped them and kept them connected. I liked how, at the end, something one of them did only made sense because of the other person's action. The short story is a good commentary on how we like to label and segregate everyone but we're all part of the same community—we share experiences and so much of what we do and who we are makes sense with and due to each other.

I picked up The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu from the library. I haven't seen the show but I know it's hyped. I simply picked it up because I had no other book in mind and it caught my attention on the shelves. It also had a character list which helped for a reading challenge I'm doing. I liked the science part of the book. The three-body problem was interesting and I liked how it was explained through the video game. The game was really cool. I didn't care for any of the characters, though. This is purely a plot-driven book. I might read the next book, though. A couple of others in the book club I joined here staunchly defend the series and I'm intrigued.

Since I liked the author's Timeless series so much, I picked up To Love a Lady by Gabrielle Meyer, the first book in a series set in the Golden Age. This is one of the monsoon TBR books. Unfortunately, I didn't like this. I wasn't fond of the characters or the romance. I didn't care for the plot. I figured out the twist very early on. I will not be continuing this series.

I finally got to Foster by Claire Keegan. This is another book from my monsoon TBR. I really liked Small Things Like These and have heard a lot about this one so my expectations were a bit high. It didn't quite meet up to my expectations but I still liked it. It's less than a 100 pages so it's a quick one-sitting read. It's easy to read too because it's from the perspective of a kid. The story is quite emotional. The topic wasn't necessarily new and I wouldn't call the story groundbreaking, but it was good. I liked what the author showed and it had a bittersweet ending.

After months of it waiting in my TBR, I read Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy. It was beautiful. I loved it. The story, the writing, the characters, the descriptions which painted a vivid image in my mind—it was all done so well. Many parts of the book were stuck in my head for days after I finished it. I wanted to write a full review on it but I didn't get the time. I don't know if I'll write it now. Sometimes, I find it so hard to write full reviews of books that I really loved. How do I convey just how the book impacted me? I loved the overall story and the specific words. There are quotes from this that are still in my mind and thinking about one of them still makes me emotional. Maybe I'll try to write a full review of it later.. I don't know. I highly HIGHLY recommend this book. Brilliantly written. It's one of my best reads of the year.

Another monsoon TBR book, and one that has been sitting on my shelf for a while: Letters from the Ginza Shihodo Stationery Shop by Kenji Ueda. I think this genre is now saturated, guys. We have enough of cosy Japanese books which are made of multiple short stories centered on a specific place or concept. It was nice in the beginning but the newer books don't have the charm and they don't have anything to say. The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop wasn't good but I somehow made it good by making it a fun project. I could not do anything with this one. Basically, characters come to this shop to buy something and end up sharing their life story with the shop owner and he encourages them to write a letter and sends them off. We don't even see what happens the letter is given, we find out that "it ended well" 2 months later like an epilogue. This was disappointing, unsatisfying, and boring.

Someone from the book club spoke highly of Orbital by Samantha Harvey so I picked it up on my next library visit. I needed a book title starting with the letter O for the 52 Book Club challenge too and this was convenient. It's a short book (little over 100 pages) and won the Booker Prize. The books that win these prizes are usually a miss for me so I didn't have too many expectations going into this. That was a good thing because this book was just vibes. It follows 6 astronaughts who are in a spaceship that orbits Earth 16 times in one day. The book tracks one entire day and the chapters are broken up as orbits. Obviously, the sense of time is whack for them and they're constantly staring at Earth but not in Earth. There's no real plot, the book just tries to make us feel what the astronaughts would feel—the lost sense of time, lost sense of "day", homesickness while constantly staring at Earth, the way everything feels ephemeral. There's a lot of repetitiveness in the writing. I'd like to believe that it's intentional, to make us feel the repetitive nature of orbiting so many times and going by so quickly. But it quickly gets annoying to read. It's not a must-read. It's alright as a random pick to read in commute/travel or in short bursts over multiple days. Do not read it in one or two sittings, you will likely hate it. And don't expect to love it.

Ann Liang has been writing bangers after bangers so I was excited for her latest release. I Could Give You The Moon by Ann Liang is my least liked of her books but it's not bad on its own. It's okay. I liked subtle allusion to the idea of fate being written in stone vs us having control over it. I wish it was disussed or explored more on page. It had some character growth and an okay romance. I think it's the weakest book because it missed an overaching theme or commentary which every other book had. It didn't delve into the main character's emotions, unlike all of her other YA books. I hated how the main character's relationships with her parents was unresolved at the end—it's not a 10/10 happy ending just because she's with the boy. I still read it in one sitting because the writing is so easy to fall into as usual but the story wasn't as good or impactful as her other works.

Furyborn by Claire Legend has been on my shelf for almost 2 years. I finally got the motivation to read it. The writing was a bit slow and dreary but I was able to finish it quickly when I took it with me to a waiting room where I had to wait for 4 hours. The plot is pretty good. I'm not a huge fan of the writing style with the alternate chapters in different times following the two queens—it doesn't leave any room for good reveals or foreshadowing. Everything is on page and easy to figure out. It's not as enjoyable as other fantasy books I've read but I want to continue the series. Just to see if it has anything new to show.

I read Into the Fading Twilight by Catherine Cowles, the author's latest release, a couple of weeks after its release. After many books of being blindsided with the reveal, I managed to guess the villain in the last book. I thought I had the formula figured out and was less suspicious of characters in this book. So of course, the author blindsided me again. I did not even suspect the person who turned out to be the villain in this one. At this point, I'm not interested in the romances, I'm just reading the books because they're quick and easy and surprising.

The book club chose Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi as the book of the month in July. I had read it several years ago but since it's quick to read, I reread it to be able to discuss it. I actually hadn't read part 2 back then so I had some new information too. The book was alright. I liked some things about it—the way her childhood experience was shown, how it showed good parenting, and bite-sized information about Iran's political landscape. I didn't like some things about it—touch points on many things but nothing was really delved into, the author/main character many times, and how several topics were abruptly dropped. A good book for discussion and as a starting point to information about Iran. I liked some of the artistic representations. Overall, it was okay. I prefer books with more infomation and depth.

Lastly, I finished யானை Doctor by Jeyamohan! My first ever Tamizh book, hopefully the first of many. It took me over a month to read the first 30% and only a week to read the rest 70%. It was just a matter of getting used to reading the script. As I kept reading, the number of words I had to look up reduced. Around 70%, I started to understand the context even without understanding every single word. Towards the end, I could read entire pages without hiccups or looking up any words. The book is only 63 pages so it went by quickly once I got the hang od reading Tamizh. I'm so proud of myself.

I have wanted to learn to read and write my mother tongue for years and I finally did it. I read a whole novel, albeit a small one. I'm glad I picked up a small book to begin with, it felt really good to have a quick win. I won't consider myself a fluent reader yet, there's a long way to go, but I can read basic things. Finishing this book removed a huge rock of shame from my shoulders. It's not a very easy script because it works differently compared to the other scripts I know (Hindi and English) so it took me a while to get comfortable reading it. But once I got used to the positional nature and contextual usage of the letters, I was able to read much more quickly. Once I could read faster and read entire sentences without breaks, I was able to grasp the meaning faster by matching the written words to my spoken dialect in my head.

Finishing யானை Doctor was the highlight of my July. It was a good choice as a first Tamizh book because of multiple things. The length, of course. But also, the writing is mostly simple. Much of the descriptions are of mundane things like making tea, conversation, looking at animals, and descriptions of the forest. Once I learnt the forest vocabulary used in this, it got much easier to read. There were only a few instances where the author used creative writing. For example, in one part, he describes the forest officers as "fingertips of the goverment that reaches down to touch labourers/villagers". Stuff like that tripped me up. I actually got the context of one of them in the middle and I was confused whether I'm understanding it right, and I was so happy to use translator and realize that I understood it correctly. In fact, in one of the pages, Google Translate was wrong and I knew it because I understood it before using the translator! The Tamizh words were used in a certain way which actually meant the opposite than the direct translation which the app did.

The only thing I didn't like about this book was detailed descriptions of gore. Detailed descriptions were great for setting the scene or scenery but gore... ugh no. Like, in the beginning, he describes a rotting elephant corpse in minute detail and proceeds to describe the main characters' disgust in detail (he dreams of and hallucinates worms in other places after seeing it on the corpse). I was so confused when I read it in Tamizh because I didn't make the connection with the word used for worm/maggot. When I used Google Translate and realized.. ew. In one of the later chapters, the author describes how a beer bottle carelessly thrown by touristsin the forest can kill an elephant step-by-step. It was a commentary on how humans don't care about wildlife and conservation etc. but I did not need to read about it in that much detail. It's hard enough to read Tamizh, I don't want to read gory or sad stuff! Especially because I figure it out only a paragraph in and I can't easily figure out where to skip to.

I just realized that I wrote so much but did not tell you what the book is about. யானை Doctor is a fictional short story inspired by a real-life legendary "Elephant Doctor"/veterinarian Dr. V. Krishnamurthy. He devoted his life to wildlife conservation and care in Tamil Nadu and was consulted by many across the country and the world. The book is written from the point of view of a forest field officer who meets Dr. K and learns about his philosophies about wildlife, how human exploitation of wildlife is destroying ecology, and has his worldview opened up. I really liked the the ending scene of the book, it succinctly showed elephant intelligence, the beauty of caring for wildlife, and the main character's growth. The last line was actually beautiful.

media consumed

TV Shows & Movies

• I finished rewatching One Tree Hill! All 9 seasons. I didn't like the later seasons much, mainly because of the new characters. I just didn't care for them. It was so evident that even the authors gave up on one of them after 1 season of trying to make her a main character. The storyline of one of the major characters was completely contradictory from what we saw in Season 1. It ruined the character for me. I wish the show ended in season 4 or 6. Other than a few parts, I want to forget seasons 7-9. I'm pretty sure I watched it back in high school and wiped it from my memory for the same reason.
• I like Chad Michael Murray so I started watching Sullivan's Crossing. I don't like him much in this show, though. I can't accept the hair and facial hair. It hides his handsome face. I don't care for the show's plot. I LOVE the setting, though. My favourite parts of the show are the drone shots of Nova Scotia. That's not enough, though. I somehow managed to watch 2 full seasons by putting it on during meals or on the background while I did other stuff and then season 3's episode 1 was SO BAD that I stopped there. How does it make sense to not show how the cliffhanger of season 2 resolved? We see them after a time jump and are told summaries of what happened, that's it. What the heck. I will return to this show if I want to hate-watch something.
• I watched A Cinderella Story with a friend. The same friend who I pushed to watch One Tree Hill and he ended up finishing it looong before me. I think he has rewatched the first 4 seasons 3 more times already. So, I convinced him to watched CMM's iconic movie and one of my favourites. I think he found it okay.
• On the same vein, I watched Freaky Friday. I actually have not seen it before and I loved it. It was so fun. I love that it's a show about a mom and a teen daughter understanding each other and loving each other. If that was the guaranteed ending, I wish I could have switched with my mom for a day when I was in high school 😂 I really liked it. I will watch Freakier Friday soon.

No, I did not watch Odyssey. I kept procrastinating going to the movies and now all the good screens are showing Spiderman instead. Meh. I'll probably watch it on OTT later on.

YouTube videos

• I really liked Call Me Daddy's interview of Bethany Joy Lenz about One Tree Hill, being in a cult, and her book. Lenz spoke so well. This interview is what convinced me to give her book a shot.

Blog Posts

I forgot to include this section in my June wrap-up so some of these links are from my June saves too.

• The Book Gatekeepers: Why Literary Snobbery Is Ruining Reading Culture
• The lost experience of shared TV
• Let's Talk Bookish | (N)Etiquette for (Book)Nerds
• My Journal Ecosystem (July 2026)
• I don't think "they" are hiding classics from you
• Yellow
• Monday Musings: ‘Catch-up culture’

hobbies & social life

I wasn't very consistent with working outin July due to a few personal things which took up most of my time and energy. Unfortunately, I felt really low for most of July. The first week or two were probably the worst because I felt super lonely and overwhelmed and disconnected from everyone. I didn't have time or energy to plan any social interaction—online or offline—and I went about a week without a single meaningful conversation with anyone. It was hard. I took steps to get myself out of it later when I could but I'm not fully out of it yet. I went to book club meetings whenever I could, and I hung out with new friends a couple of times. It was a bit tiring but I had fun.

At the end of the month, I splurged a bit and bought myself a ton of aesthetic/cute stickers. I've never really been a huge sticker person and I still have some stickers from years ago. But I was with some new friends recently and one person brought her new sticker book to show off. It was really cool so I went home and ordered some for myself. I already spent a couple of evenings decorating the covers of my TN notebook refills with them haha. I like them. It was the only thing I did that was purely for fun in July.

On a side note, I had a dark sesame matcha drink in a café recently (it's a part of their seasonal menu which I missed last year and I'm glad they brought it back this year) and it was so good. I am already planning to go have it again.

chat with me!

How was your July? What did you read or watch? Did you do anything purely for fun?