The Best Books I Read This Spring

That muggy, humid feeling in the air seems to tell me that spring is unfortunately over, which means that it’s time for a new edition of The Best Books I Read This Season. I got into quite a few good titles this spring, and I’m excited to share them here. I’m still wondering how the anecdote about Prince Harry’s frozen penis contributed at all to the overall narrative, you guys. Some titles here I have reviewed separately from this list, so there are links below each book for your reading convenience. Scroll on!

Spare by Prince Harry
It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow — and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling — and how their lives would play out from that point on. For Harry, this is that story at last. For the first time, Prince Harry tells his own story, chronicling his journey with raw, unflinching honesty. A landmark publication, Spare is full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.

Read my full review here, and buy a copy here.

Finding Me by Viola Davis
In her book, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life-changing decision to stop running forever. This is her story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path she took to finding her purpose but also her voice in a world that didn’t always see her. Finding Me is a deep reflection, a promise, and a love letter of sorts to self. Her hope is that her story will inspire you to light up your own life with creative expression and rediscover who you were before the world put a label on you.

Buy a copy here.

Digressions on Some Poems by Frank O’Hara by Joe LeSueur
Joe LeSueur lived with Frank O’Hara from 1955 until 1965, the years when O’Hara wrote his greatest poems, including “To the Film Industry in Crisis,” “In Memory of My Feelings,” “Having a Coke with You,” and the famous Lunch Poems, so called because O’Hara wrote them during his lunch break at the Museum of Modern Art, where he worked as a curator. (The artists he championed include Jackson Pollock, Joseph Cornell, Grace Hartigan, Jane Freilicher, Joan Mitchell, and Robert Rauschenberg.) The flowering of O’Hara’s talent, cut short by a fatal car accident in 1966, produced some of the most exuberant, truly celebratory lyrics of the twentieth century. And it produced America’s greatest poet of city life since Whitman. Alternating between O’Hara’s poems and LeSueur’s memory of the circumstances that inspired them, Digressions on Some Poems by Frank O’Hara is a literary commentary like no other, an affectionate, no-holds-barred memoir of O’Hara and the New York that animated his friends, lovers, movies, paintings, streets, apartments, music, parties, and pickups. This volume, which includes many of O’Hara’s best-loved poems, is the most intimate, true-to-life portrait we will ever have of this quintessential American figure and his now legendary times.

Read my full review here, and buy a copy here.

Different For Boys by Patrick Ness
Friendship, masculinity, sex — Anthony “Ant” Stevenson has a lot of questions. Is it different for boys who like boys? He isn’t sure when he stopped being a virgin. Or even if he has. The rules aren’t always very clear when it comes to boys who like boys. In fact, relationships of all kinds feel complicated, even with Ant’s oldest friends. There’s Charlie, who’s both virulently homophobic and in a secret physical relationship with Ant. Then there’s drama kid Jack, who may be gay and has become the target of Charlie’s rage. And, of course, there’s big, beautiful Freddie, who wants Ant to ditch soccer, Charlie’s sport, and try out for the rugby team instead. Ant’s story of loneliness and intimacy, of unexpected support and heart-ripping betrayal, is told forthrightly with tongue-in-cheek black-bar redactions over the language that teenagers would actually use if, you know, they weren’t in a story. Award-winning author Patrick Ness explores teen sexuality, friendship, and romance with a deft hand in this structurally daring, illustrated short novel.

Buy a copy here.

One Sunny Afternoon: A Memoir of Trauma and Healing by Amanda Jetté Knox
From the bestselling author of Love Lives Here, a deeply personal memoir about facing life-long trauma head on, and bravely healing the scars that endure. One Sunny Afternoon is a searing testament to Amanda Jetté Knox’s extraordinary reckoning with their past and present, to find hope in their future. Triggered by online harassment, they wade through their personal history and details the incidents of violence, addiction, and sexual assault that have haunted them. When Amanda eventually receives a diagnosis of Anxiety Disorder and Mood Disorder (also known as complex PTSD) and dedicates themself to recovery, they emerge with newfound strength, resiliency, and confidence. One Sunny Afternoon is a profoundly moving and candid account of how trauma can shape us, but not define us, and reveals how even in our darkest moments — and on our most hopeless days — light can find its way in.

Thank you to the publisher and to Librairie Clio for the advanced copy!

Read my full review here, and pre-order a copy here.

My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin
It’s the winter of 1998 and Isabel Rosen has one semester left at Wilder College, a prestigious school in New Hampshire with a wealthy, elite student body and the sort of picturesque buildings college brochures were invented to capture. The only daughter of a Lower East Side appetizing store owner, Isabel has always felt out of place at Wilder, and the death of her mother shortly before she arrived on campus left her feeling unmoored in a way that’s proven hard to shake. Now, right as she’s coming to believe she’s finally found her place, the fallout from a nonconsensual sexual encounter with one of the only other Jewish students on campus leaves Isabel reeling. Enter R.H. Connelly: a once-famous poet and Isabel’s married writing professor, a man with secrets of his own. Connelly makes Isabel feel seen, beautiful, talented; the woman she longs to become. His belief in her ignites a belief in herself. The two begin an affair that shakes the foundation of who Isabel thinks she is, for better and worse. Set against the backdrop of the Clinton and Lewinsky scandal, My Last Innocent Year is a coming-of-age story about a young woman on the brink of sexual and artistic awakening, navigating her way toward independence while recognizing the power, beauty and grit of where she came from. Timely and wise, it reckons with the complexities of consent, what it means to be an adult, and whether or not we can ever outrun our bad decisions.

Read my full review here, and buy a copy here.

Maurice by E.M. Forster
Maurice is heartbroken over unrequited love, which opened his heart and mind to his own sexual identity. In order to be true to himself, he goes against the grain of society’s often unspoken rules of class, wealth, and politics. Forster understood that his homage to same-sex love, if published when he completed it in 1914, would probably end his career. Thus, Maurice languished in a drawer for fifty-seven years, the author requesting it be published only after his death. Since its release in 1971, Maurice has been widely read and praised. It has been, and continues to be, adapted for major stage productions, including the 1987 Oscar-nominated film adaptation starring Hugh Grant and James Wilby.

Read my full review here, and buy a copy here.

Everyone Rides the Bus in a City of Losers by Jason Freure
In the words of Margaret Thatcher, “A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure.” Everyone Rides the Bus in a City of Losers is about wandering Montreal’s streets, with an eye on the storefronts and alley cats, and one foot already in the nearest dive bar. From a series of poems about every station on the Metro to music venues long shut down, it’s sometimes fantastical, nostalgic, funny, and even joyful — a sucker for landmarks, always looking out for glimpses of the Farine Five Roses sign, the Jacques Cartier Bridge, the cross on Mont-Royal, and anything still neon. Montreal’s rich literary tradition is celebrated: A.M. Klein, Leonard Cohen, Heather O’Neill, Gail Scott, Richard Suicide, and Gaston Miron all make their way into the poems. The book also ventures from the hip hot spots of The Plateau and Mile End to Verdun, Côte-des-Neiges, NDG, St-Henri, Petite-Patrie, and Ahuntsic. A restless spirit propels the text further and further into new neighborhoods, but always returns downtown. This is a book about those who’ve seen the city turn its back on them and leave them out in the cold. Who get lost in boroughs east and west. Who get lonely, garble their French, and never manage to find a seat at their favorite coffee shop. In Jason Freure’s psychogeography, everyone’s a flaneur. And everyone rides the bus.

Buy a copy here.

Hi Honey, I’m Homo! by Matt Baume
There’s a secret storyline hidden across some of the most popular sitcoms of the 20th century. For decades, amidst the bright lights, studio-audience laughs, and absurdly large apartment sets, the real-life story of American LGBTQ+ liberation unfolded in plain sight in front of millions of viewers, most of whom were laughing too hard to mind. From flamboyant relatives on Bewitched to network-censor fights over Barney Miller, from military secrets on M*A*S*H to a little-known man behind The Muppet Show to a primetime power-kiss on Roseanne, Hi Honey, I’m Homo! is not only the story of how subversive queer comedy transformed the American sitcom, from its inception through today, but how our favorite sitcoms transformed, and continue to transform, America.

Read my full review here, and buy a copy here.

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice from Dear Sugar (10th Anniversary Edition) by Cheryl Strayed
For more than a decade, thousands of people have sought advice from Dear Sugar, the pseudonym of bestselling author Cheryl Strayed, first through her online column at The Rumpus, later through her hit podcast, Dear Sugars, and now through her popular Substack newsletter. Tiny Beautiful Things collects the best of Dear Sugar in one volume, bringing her wisdom to many more readers. This tenth-anniversary edition features six new columns and a new preface by Strayed. Rich with humor, insight, compassion, and absolute honesty, this book is a balm for everything life throws our way.

Read my full review here, and buy a copy here.

Never Silent: ACT UP and My Life in Activism by Peter Staley
In 1987, somebody shoved a flyer into the hand of Peter Staley: massive AIDS demonstration, it announced. After four years on Wall Street as a closeted gay man, Staley was familiar with the homophobia common on trading floors. He also knew that he was not beyond the reach of HIV, having recently been diagnosed with AIDS-Related Complex. A week after the protest, Staley found his way to a packed meeting of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power—ACT UP—in the West Village. It would prove to be the best decision he ever made. ACT UP would change the course of AIDS, pressuring the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, and three administrations to finally respond with research that ultimately saved millions of lives. Staley, a shrewd strategist with nerves of steel, organized some of the group’s most spectacular actions, from shutting down trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to putting a giant condom over the house of Senator Jesse Helms. Never Silent is the inside story of what brought Staley to ACT UP and the explosive and sometimes painful years to follow—years filled with triumph, humiliation, joy, loss, and persistence.

Read my full review here, and buy a copy here.

Flamer by Mike Curato
Award-winning author and artist Mike Curato draws on his own experiences in Flamer, his debut graphic novel, telling a difficult story with humor, compassion, and love. I know I’m not gay. Gay boys like other boys. I hate boys. They’re mean, and scary, and they’re always destroying something or saying something dumb or both. I hate that word. Gay. It makes me feel . . . unsafe. It’s the summer between middle school and high school, and Aiden Navarro is away at camp. Everyone’s going through changes — but for Aiden, the stakes feel higher. As he navigates friendships, deals with bullies, and spends time with Elias (a boy he can’t stop thinking about), he finds himself on a path of self-discovery and acceptance.

Buy a copy here.

If we aren’t already, let’s be friends on Goodreads!

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What were the best books you read this spring?