What’s the best book you’ve read recently?

My favorite reads and a request for suggestions!

You can listen to an audio version of this newsletter above. Please note that this is unedited and I’m recording in my home office.

Photo by Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash

Three teeny reminders before we dive in:

• I’m currently accepting new 1-on-1 coaching clients (10% discount for paid Tending subscribers).

• I’m booking workshops with universities and organizations for summer and fall.

• I’m collecting questions for the monthly Q&A! Please submit your questions on all things productivity via a comment or an email to kate@katehenry.com.

Let’s talk BOOKS!

I recently finished a book series that was recommended to me by one of the readers of Tending and it was so good that I wanted to dedicate a post to book recommendations! I’ll also create a post on my Substack Notes page for folks to share their suggestions there, so be sure to check that out.

My favorite novels do the following:

• fit the genres of dark academia, magical realism, literary fiction, high fantasy, and alternate history

• have strong female, queer, or nonbinary leads

• do something interesting with point of view or timeline

Photo by Cederic Vandenberghe on Unsplash

Some of my recent favorite reads that check some of those boxes include:

• Robert Jackson Bennett’s Founders Trilogy Series

• Olivie Blake’s The Atlas Six Series

• Octavia Butler’s Kindred

• Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers

• Hernan Diaz’s Trust

• Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House

• Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies and Matrix

• R.F. Kuang’s Babel and Poppy War Trilogy Series

• Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This

• Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility

• Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch

Looking for a book? Have a book to recommend?

Do you have any suggestions for my next read? Did you read one of the above and are thinking “Kate, if you loved X, then you’ll love X!” If so, I’d love to hear from you!

Use the comments or send me an email to…

• Share a recommendation for a book you absolutely loved and think folks should read

• Request a book that lines up with a specific genre, topic, or is similar to other books (even if they are way different from my personal preferences listed above!)

Curiosities

In addition to today’s list of books that made me say “wow!” — here are some curiosities on my mind:

• Rachael Stephen is offering her Constellation Clarity Course again in September! I’m a big fan of Rachael’s work and was impressed with the course when she first ran it in February, so I bet the two-day intensive is going to be even better!

• My go-to playlist for getting into a state of flow when I’m working is the Lazy Jazz Cat playlist on Spotify. I’m also exploring YouTube lo-fi playlists that have cute backgrounds, like a café where there is animated steam coming off of a coffee cup or rain hitting the windows, but I haven’t yet found a good ad-free one! Feel free to send recommendations my way if you have them!

• Kris and I watched Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves last night and it was so fun! Although I am a big video game nerd, I’ve never actually played D&D myself, so I think I missed a lot of the references. That being said, I still liked the movie and would recommend it to folks who like fantasy and comedy.

Can’t wait to hear your favorite books and recommendations and requests! I’ll see you next week for the final part of my series on Discipline. You can read my first post here: “Why Do We Want More Discipline?”

For Your Consideration

• Follow me on Instagram

• Order my book, Tend to It: A Holistic Guide to Intentional Productivity

• Listen to my podcast interviews

Take care,

Dr. Kate

Photo by Amanda Macchia