When I was a boy, my dad would sometimes pick me up from school on "bad speech days" and take me down to the river. On those days, my mouth would just stop working. Every word was painful, the laughter from classmates unbearable. I just wanted to be quiet.

I'm always intrigued by sophomore novels by authors whose debuts I loved: Will they live up to my expectations? Will they feel the same or different--and which do I prefer?

I read cookbooks the way some people read travel guides. I spend hours imagining myself re-creating impeccable meals we enjoyed at fancy restaurants on our travels.

As readers, we sometimes have the complicated task of loving stories that disappoint us. Early on in the wildly imaginative Lovecraft Country, both the novel by Matt Ruff (Harper Perennial, $16.99) and the HBO adaptation, comes the observation, "Stories are like people.... Loving them doesn't make them perfect. You try to cherish their virtues and overlook their flaws. The flaws are still there, though.... Sometimes, they stab me in the heart."

I was so young when Marilyn Monroe died in 1962 that she was almost like a mirage to me. Marilyn was not just a movie star but a mood, a mystery and a mirror to mid-century America. Though typecast as a blonde bombshell, Marilyn was so much more: a producer, poet, painter, gardener, avid reader and the brains behind her brand. 

That headline is deceptive. It promises safe, sundrenched verses--beach read poems. But the amazing poetry I've been reading this summer is anything but safe. These words open eyes, minds and hearts. 

The intricacies of connection, and disconnection, between siblings have been on my reading mind lately.

Gardening board books generally have a dual purpose: to teach kids about the natural world and to speak to a larger moral theme--be it kindness, sharing or giving thanks.

Opal Adisa- Program Host. Author & University Director of the Institute of Gender & Development Studies, RCO at the University of the West Indies, Mona in Jamaica.

As a university instructor, I'm used to having students in my office on campus. But this year, like so many other teachers, I've gotten used to having students in my home office: able to see the messy bookshelf behind me, how my houseplants are faring and whether my cat is vying for my attention (thus theirs, too) on my desk. My students are likewise aware that many of us are now peering into a slice of their lives, whether they're Zooming from a dorm room, kitchen table or childhood bedroom. 

When the 19th amendment granted women the vote--100 years ago today--the battle didn't end. Historians Kate Clarke Lemay and Martha S. Jones each trace the ripples of the suffrage movement through equality campaigns in the civil rights era, and the current expansion of women in elected offices and calls for voting reform.

My antiracist reading this summer includes the usual suspects (White Fragility; How to Be an Antiracist), but just as crucially, I've been spending time with Mildred D. Taylor's Logan family.