I Keep Starting Books and Ending Up on TikTok (Send Help)

I feel like the theme of this column is that I am one giant, walking contradiction. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I always need a book in my head — that it's basically a mental health requirement at this point — and then, as if the universe heard me and decided to have a little fun, I fell into the most stubborn book slump of my life.

It started with Christina Applegate's memoir, which, listen, I wanted to love it. I just think I wasn't quite the demographic. And then I picked up The Secret Lives of Murderers Wives, which had everything going for it on paper: a juicy title, a premise I was fully ready to commit to. Except it turned out to be a lot of character development and not nearly enough, well, murder. Down it went.

Since then, nothing has stuck. I'll read fifteen pages, put it down, pick up my phone, and somehow end up watching a video about botched lip filler at midnight instead. (We've been over this.)

I do wonder if it's partly the weather: there's something about actual sunshine that makes sitting on the couch with a book feel slightly criminal when a patio and a margarita exist in the world. And if I'm not doing that, I'm watching Big Mistakes on Netflix, which is so good that I'm not even a little sorry about it.

If you have a recommendation (literary or contemporary fiction, please!) send it my way, because left to my own devices I will simply keep watching reality TV until the sunshine runs out and I remember who I am.