June 2026 Reading Recap

It says something about how life, and reading, is going when my recap of what I’m reading is like a month late, doesn’t it? June…happened. These summer months have been a DEAD SPRINT and June was crazy—the end of the school year, a huge national conference I did the daily newspaper for, and preparing for moving, but no traveling itself so I didn’t make up any time with a good airplane binge read. Reading in June felt frenetic—I kept staring at piles of books wanting to read them so I could un-pile them, and simply not having the time to engage as deeply as I wanted with any of them.

In June, my book club engagement was also light—no book club for my DAR chapter, I didn’t do the Princeton book club, and I didn’t do the book club at the local bookstore because the meeting was during my conference. 

So…here’s what I did read in June 2026…somehow..

19 TOTAL BOOKS

Pathetic, by my standards. I’m not proud of it. But I get it. I don’t think I touched a book for most of the week of my conference.  A lot of the reading I did do was super small books…but that’s because they felt doable, and also because those were books I wanted to be able to then donate to the school library I was packing up, or return to the library, etc, etc. 

Those 19 books consisted of…

5 Short Chapter Books

4 in the Branches series, wrapping up series I was reading with kids or wanted to read for my own awareness in reader’s advisory. The Super-Villain in Training series was cute, and I finished the Kwame and the Magic Quest series, which is a fun more international read for the Branches series. 

2 YA/Upper-Middle Grade Books I’d Owned for AWHILE

Deer Run Home was a novel-in-verse I’d grabbed at a convention a few years back and always intended to read. It ended up being a quick read and a tear-jerker! As someone who loves to learn ASL, I really appreciated those elements of the book, and it felt like an Ellen Hopkins novel at times. Candace, The Universe and Everything was kind of random for me to find, but I ended up enjoying the mutli-POV story with a good intergenerational friendship at its core. 

1 BOOK I HAD OWNED FOR WAY TOO LONG

In June, I finally read and finished A Thousand Heartbeats by Keira Cass, which I pre-ordered before it came out in fall 2022. I had been meaning to read this book for FOREVER—-I even took it home to KY and back one Christmas unread, and here we are four years later…finally done! It was fine—not amazing, but I enjoyed it. 

6 Audiobooks

You know it’s the end of the school year and I’m cleaning up the library when my audiobook count skyrockets. This 6 included the new Laura Vanderkam time management book (Big Time) as well as 4 Gracie Wei chapter books and a Who Was? Book about American Sign Language. The narrators on all felt like friends by the end of the month. 

1 2026 Newbery Honor Book

It is my goal this year to read all of them, and this month I read the Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest. It was SO GOOD. I laughed, I cried, I sobbed so hard I almost threw up. It was great. 10/10 recommend. 

The New Chanel Miller Book

The Moon Without Stars wasn’t as good for me as Magnolia Wu, but I enjoyed the book and I’m glad I read it. 

1 Book for Booklist

I read and reviewed one book for Booklist, an upper-middle grade book. It was fine—didn’t stand out a lot to me when I look back at it, but I read it quickly and I can definitely see it resonating with middle grade male readers. 

1 Book for the Couples Book Club

My boyfriend and I often read books together, built fro the books I had two copies of, for some reason. This month he started reading My Year of Rest and Relaxation on a work trip, so I picked it up too and enjoyed it! I can definitely see why the dialogue about it was so present when the book came out a few years back. 

And 2 Other Quick Reads

Sometimes you have to revisit the past: so I read the new graphic novel adaptation of the first June B. Jones book, which was adorable, and a little chapter book I had about the cat, Felix, that came aboard the Mayflower II in the 1960s when it recreated the Mayflower sailing. 

Stay tuned to see how my July reading compares. Spoiler alert: It is better, but I’m still probably not going to be happy about it!