It's the briny armpit of another June. The presidential race already reeks like an abandoned diaper. The orcas might be organizing? The "Barbie" movie is tragically not out yet. The stream of online Pomeranian content never ends.

Add in the daily toll of work, home repairs, summer camps, appointments with loan officers: Where does this leave books in your world? I don't know about you, but I can't focus. I'd give my 2023 reading life a solid C grade, which feels inadequate at this dot on history's arc. There's a particular urgency these days, a pressing need to celebrate diversity of thought when intellectualism is unquestionably under attack.

But checking all the brain's boxes can be laborious, right? I've been doing this thing where I read four or five books at once for, uh, a really long time, an agonizing amount of time, an amount of time that signals a throwing-in of the scholarly towel, and then I finish them all in a burst of energy nearly at once. I have myself a little cookie and start the depressive cycle over again.

It felt like the right time to unleash a summer rut-busting reading list. The common factor is simply that I found them hard to put down in a disorderly world. It's not that they're easy reads — they will impress anyone who glances across your coffee table — but they don't feel like homework.

I hope this list will help get you reading again if you, like me, cannot go four minutes without toggling between presidential indictment reports and hypnotic videos of travel bloggers playing Tetris with packing cubes.

"Really Good, Actually" by Monica Heisey: My favorite novel this year. You will know it by its unforgettable cover, a woman's mascara-stained eyes topped with a mass of red hair. The title alone is full of words Microsoft Word tries to make me delete. The anarchy! Three-quarters into this dark comedy about a post-divorce mental spiral, you will look up, glasses on the nose, and say, "Wait ... nothing has happened." And that will feel invigorating. And freeing. And really good, actually.

"Last Night at the Lobster" by Stewart O'Nan: Can we have a moment for a short book? I LOVE short books! Why are books so long? My colleague brought a rumpled copy of this sweet novella to our staff meeting, and I had to know more. The story is contained in a single, final night at a closing Red Lobster, following the harried manager as he tries to keep the dinner shift, and his own life, together. Chef's kiss.

"Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon" by Kate Andersen Brower: I know, I know. Long book! But here's the twist: Try this biography in audio form as read by Eleanor Caudill. I picked away at it on my regular commute, fake-smoking a lip balm and falling lusciously into Taylor's diamond-crusted world as told via never-released diaries, letters and interviews.

"My Sister, the Serial Killer" by Oyinkan Braithwaite: I polished off this noir dramedy cover-to-cover on a flight from Tampa to Cleveland. It's so tasty, I couldn't even stop to awkwardly sleep against the window. The novel's two Nigerian sisters have a spectacularly one-sided relationship when it comes to certain favors. If you're paying attention to the title, you'll know what that means.

"The Chiffon Trenches" by Andre Leon Talley: Talley's memoir, published two years before he died in 2022, charts his rise from a boy growing up in the Jim Crow South buying copies of Vogue to one of fashion's most iconic and captivating figures. It's irresistible for anyone interested in the history of fashion, not to mention the friendship foibles of folks like Anna Wintour and Karl Lagerfeld. And not to sound like I'm 5, but this book has pictures.

"Olga Dies Dreaming" by Xochitl Gonzalez: Here's how much I liked this novel: My book club picked it for a meeting I couldn't attend, and I still read it to the end. If you're in a book club, you get why that's big. Gonzalez, a recent finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, tells a deeply readable, heartfelt and propulsive sibling story set to a backdrop of politics in Puerto Rico and a quest for cultural identity in the U.S. Plus: family secrets!

"You Could Make This Place Beautiful" by Maggie Smith: Let's say you're craving a solid divorce memoir but need something firmly out of the fuzzy, feely self-help category. Ta-da! This is the messiest of messes. Smith admits to figuring out the narrative, and her own feelings about the end of her marriage, as she writes. The text reads in parts like poetry; not shocking as Smith is an accomplished poet best known for her viral piece "Good Bones," which factors heavily into the story. Some chapters are just a couple lines. Did you hear me? A couple lines! This kind of artful brevity is a gift we simply cannot reject.

Stephanie Hayes is a columnist at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. Follow her at @stephhayes on Twitter or @stephrhayes on Instagram.

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