Summer 2025 Reading List

Whether you’re snuggling up in a cozy armchair or basking in the sun on a beach towel, having a book that’s so good it can be read in one sitting is far superior to doom scrolling. While I’m no stranger to either of those activities, I much prefer giving my eyes a rest from screens. And I encourage you to do the same! My Summer 2025 Reading List is the place to start.

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Public Libraries

As a reminder to everyone: the public library is free and a wonderful place to visit. Buying books can get expensive! If you’re unsure whether or not you will like a title enough to keep it, the library is a better option. Any books I deem collection worthy, I try to buy from local booksellers. Support your libraries and local bookstores first and foremost!

Non Fiction

To be upfront, there are no fiction books on this list. Fiction is something I have to be in a particular mood for and it happens rarely. My apologies to fiction lovers.

Now that we have expectations settled, let’s continue on to my recent reads that I believe to be page turners.

Topical Investigations

You Didn’t Hear This From Me by Kelsey McKinney

Gossip: a frowned upon practice that despite being villainized is ubiquitous in most cultures. As a fellow gossip enthusiast, this book both validated my experiences while also making me question them.  Not only was it relatable since I grew up in a similar time as the author but it also provided me with a lengthy list of other books I now need to read.

I first heard of Kelsey McKinney through her podcast, Normal Gossip, which I have listened to since its inception. (And have included in my best podcasts of 2023 and 2024.) One could argue that this is also a memoir, and truly it is, but McKinney so elegantly weaves her own history with gossip to larger themes. Her introspection becomes universal.

My only complaint is her inclusion of Elizabeth Loftus, a memory “expert”, without mentioning the gossip surrounding her work! Loftus has been a paid expert witness to testify and consult for NUMEROUS defence teams. Some of the accused she has worked for are: Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Robert Durst, OJ Simpson, Ghislaine Maxwell, and TED BUNDY. That’s just her greatest hits list. You can watch a particularly interesting cross examination of her here where she reveals she charges $600/hour for this work.

You Didn’t Hear This From Me by Kelsey McKinney

Selling The Dream – Jane Marie

What began as an excellent podcast exposing the scam that is Multi Level Marketing (MLMs) is now a book delving deeper on the subject. Jane Marie covers the history of famous MLM brands and their rise throughout the decades due to intense lobbying and lack of government oversight.

While that may sound a bit dry, I can assure you it’s quite fascinating. Thanks to Jane’s style of writing and the way she connects all the threads to the present, it shows the context with which MLM’s exist today. It’s an insidious industry that preys on women. If you’ve ever wondered how people end up in MLMs or cults, this provides deep insight to the circumstances with which they do. There are more than enough stories within the book that are inconceivable.

Check out The Dream podcast as it continues to deliver new stories about scams that are sold to us. (It was on my list of best podcasts in 2023). My favourite episode this year was Jane’s interview with Terra Newell, the daughter who survived the Dirty John attack and the way her life rights + story were stolen for profit.

Selling the Dream by Jane Marie

Big Mall: Shopping for Meaning – Kate Black

Edmonton, my hometown, is a city predominantly known for being home to the an incredibly large mall (WEM). Since its deeply ingrained in the city’s perceived identity, it stands to reason that the mall has left an indelible impression on many of us, author included.

I spent an inordinate amount of time walking the cacophonous halls of the mall while growing up and well into my early twenties. Naturally, I worked there too. It’s hard to sum up the way it shaped the development of my sense of self and the world but Kate Black does so beautifully. Big Mall weaves her own personal experiences at the mall (namely West Edmonton Mall) and the broader history of the inception, rise, and subsequent demise of malls in general. These hallowed halls of commerce provided a backdrop to many people coming of age.

I mourn the malls of my youth. The whimsy and wonder that once peppered the different wings of my local malls have been stripped and replaced with a soulless bland sheen. It’s hard to believe that my recollections aren’t just a figment of my imagination. This hits even harder since the closure of Canada’s last department store. (RIP The Bay).

While the book uses West Ed Mall as the starting point, you don’t need to be familiar with this specific mall to appreciate the overarching themes. Much of what is covered is universal to mall goers.

Side note: West Edmonton Mall lost its status as World’s Biggest Mall in 2004. The title was usurped by the Golden Resources Mall in Beijing.

Big Mall by Kate Black

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self Delusion – Jia Tolentino

It’s stunning that this book was published in 2019 but is more relevant than ever. Trick Mirror is a collection of essays reflecting on topics that continue to be pervasive in culture: reality tv, scamming, the monetizing of oneself, surveillance, and more.

I love the format of personal essays, I know the author has something at stake – they’re invested. It’s easier to write about difficult topics in an academic and removed way; there’s no personal anecdotes that leave you vulnerable. Jia Tolentino is a brilliant writer; there’s style and substance to each of her pieces.

Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino (gifted from Penguin Random House Canada)

Career Memoirs

Ambition Monster – Jennifer Romolini

Jennifer Romolini is a force within the world of magazines and online “content” and has the achievements, horror stories, and workplace gossip to back it up. This is a memoir for fellow workaholics who have avoided processing their trauma by throwing themselves in the never ending treadmill of career progression and overworking.

How badly I wish this book had been written when I was at the beginning of my career! Back in 2010 when I graduated university, my dream was to work at a magazine but in the wake of the recession that career trajectory was near impossible. Not to mention media was undergoing a mass transformation and I inadvertently pivoted into blogging by accident. Suffice to say, this book spoke to me as the generation that came up right as the author was exiting her salad days.

Ambition Monster by Jennifer Romolini

Strip Tees: A Memoir of Millennial Los Angeles – Kate Flannery

Immerse yourself in the world of working for American Apparel during its heyday at the epicentre of its power. Kate Flannery’s Strip Tees chronicles her career working for Dov Charney at the AA head office in downtown LA. In the early to mid 2000s it was impossible to go anywhere hip and not see someone wearing American Apparel; it permeated style and culture as if it had always been there. And perhaps, in some ways it had – many of the iconic pieces were directly ripped off from vintage garments.

I was in fashion school when AA peaked; I even recall having an advertising project entered around the brand! Strip Tees is truly a time capsule of that time period when misogyny was pervasive and indie sleaze reigned supreme.

Strip Tees by Kate Flannery

The Currency of Love – Jill Dodd

This book was mind blowing. It combines all of the things I love: fashion, 8 degrees of separation rabbit holes to get lost in, and the enduring wisdom that truth is stranger than fiction.

I first came across The Currency of Love when I was researching Roxy Quicksilver perfume releases and what happened to the woman who started the brand. There wasn’t a wellspring of information available. But I did discover that she had wrote a memoir; a precursor to her life at Roxy.

In the 1980s Jill moved from Los Angeles to Paris in the hopes of becoming a top model. While working abroad she began an untraditional relationship with a billionaire Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi as part of his harem. This is where the 8 degrees comes in: Adnan was uncle to both Dodi Fayed (Princess Di’s boyfriend at her time of death) and Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident journalist who was assassinated when her entered a Saudi consulate in Turkey.

Dodd recounts the swift love affair and eventual dissolution, choosing her independence over glamour, excess, and the safety wealth can bring.The book ends right before her design career begins. As a fashion girlie and Roxy-head, I truly hope she writes a follow up memoir that covers this time period too. I NEED IT.

The Currency of Love by Jill Dodd (Gifted from Simon & Schuster Canada)

Music Memoirs

Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk – Kathleen Hanna

Bikini Kill changed my life as a teen. The alternative music landscape and punk music in general, was dominated by male voices that never fully resonated with me. Kathleen Hanna’s music made me feel seen at a time when I was my most impressionable. And while it didn’t save me from making a plethora of my own mistakes, it did crack the door open for discovering feminism.

Being able to read about her journey into and through the music industry while navigating the shitloads of misogyny and mistreatment felt like a gift to my younger self. From the starting of the riot grrrl movement to marrying a Beastie Boy, Kathleen Hanna contains multitudes of which I delight in all the details.

Also, Rebel Girl is littered with famous names but not in a name-dropping kind of way – they were just people who happened to be around and part of the story. Kurt Cobain anyone?

Rebel Girl by Kathleen Hanna

Earth To Moon – Moon Unit Zappa

You may know Moon Unit from her 1980s musical debut hit “Valley Girl” or from her days being a VJ on MTV but that’s just the tip of her fascinating story. She’s the eldest daughter to Frank & Gail Zappa – a musical power couple. They were a fixture in the groovy Laurel Canyon scene of Los Angeles in the 60s and 70s.

Her memoir exposes her unconventional childhood living with two self-centered parents that failed to show up for her in more ways than one. While it’s the classic tale of a parentified child desperate for love and recognition but with the added glamour of Hollywood. Her nanny was Pamela Des Barres for goodness sake! And there’s even a loosely veiled chapter about the Richards sisters for any Real Housewives of Beverly Hills fans out there.

Make no mistake, while much of the book is heartbreaking, there is comedy and joy throughout the pages. Even when confronting her parents deaths, the financials surrounding a musical legend, and the fights over an estate divided by favouritism.

Earth to Moon by Moon Unit Zappa

High on Arrival – Mackenzie Phillips

Mackenzie Phillips is the daughter of John Phillips, singer and lead songwriter of the Mama’s and the Papa’s. Since her parents divorce, Mackenzie’s life was split between her middle class life at her mom’s and the chaotic drug fuelled party mansions of her father.

This memoir is a harrowing account of her magical but unstable childhood and her entrée into young Hollywood as a (what we would describe in modern terms) “nepo baby.” From hanging out at Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco to starring in the hit movie American Graffiti, Mackenzie opens up her interior world bringing to light the reality of her swift rise to fame and subsequent drug addiction.

It’s a beautifully written dark story that is much more forgiving to the people who let her down than I could ever be. And it reveals the life of a child who was forced to grow up faster than she should have. Today Mackenzie is a counsellor at a drug rehab facility while still picking up acting roles here and there.

High on Arrival by Mackenzie Phillips

I’m With The Band – Pamela Des Barres

This book has always be on my recommendations list ever since I read it 20 years ago. Pamela Des Barres is a world famous groupie who wrote this loving tell-all memoir back in 1987. A few of her notable boyfriends include Mick Jagger (Rolling Stones), Keith Moon (The Who), and Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin). Every time I reread her memoir, there is a new name that pops out to me in greater context as if each memoir I consume criss crosses each other. (See Moon Unit Zappa’s book above.)

Miss Pamela diligently kept a diary from a young age and all throughout her groovy days on the Sunset Strip in the 60s and 70s. Passages from those diaries are peppered throughout the book along with magnificent photos of her outfits!

To say I was obsessed with her writing is an understatement. Not only did I go on one of her Laurel Canyon Rock n Roll Tour, I also interviewed her for a magazine what went under so I self published it on my blog. She reaffirmed my love of journaling, influenced my style at the time, and turned me on to even more music that I love to this day. AND she even gave me the hot tip on what time I could run into Rodney Bingenheimer at Canter’s deli.

DO NOT SLEEP ON THIS BOOK!

I’m With the Band by Pamela Des Barres

Celeb Memoirs

The Woman in Me – Britney Spears

Britney Spears came crashing into my life during the fall of 6th grade. Her sound, her style, her charisma, all of it captured my attention in a deep way and continued to do so for the next decade. Though a few years younger, I felt like I was growing up alongside her. Being able to finally read The Woman in Me did not disappoint.

After all these years clouded in secrecy under a conservatorship, her memoir was illuminating. My empathy for Britney has only deepened now knowing the breadth and depth with which she was tortured by her own family, the media, and the judicial system. How her love and extreme talent for performing was nurtured then exploited. Despite her well earned right to be bitter, she maintains an optimism that I cannot comprehend.

The Woman in Me by Britney Spears (Gifted from Simon & Schuster Canada)

Love, Pamela – Pamela Anderson

Another maligned woman from the 90s (that I idolized) setting the record straight. While generation z and beyond may only know Pamela as a 90s style inspiration reference or as the actress who doesn’t wear makeup, but her journey to this latest version has been fraught.

The saying “don’t mistake my kindness for weakness” is Pamela Anderson personified. She endured and survived an industry known to use up and discard women by the thousands. Since her fairytale adjacent story of being discovered from a football game jumbotron in Vancouver, her life has been a trail of Hollywood dreams and horrors complete with the marriages to abusive rock stars.

Love, Pamela is a perfect example of why I love memoirs – it’s fascinating reading about one’s career and life journey in their own words. How, in this case, Pamela went from living in a small town on Vancouver island to starring on a hit tv series. Pamela allows her true inner artist to roam freely on the page and I delight in the details. She’s finally being celebrated for her work and I cannot be more thrilled to see it.

Love, Pamela by Pamela Anderson

The Meaning of Mariah – Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey is legendary. Beyond her 5 octave vocal range ability and lovable diva tendencies, she has an awe-inspiring life story. Carey recounts growing up on Long Island navigating the confusing world of being a biracial child to divorced parents and two siblings who were less than kind. Her mother, a former opera singer, began vocally training Mariah at a young age. This kickstarted Mariah’s work as a demo singer in her teens. That alone would have been enough compelling material for an autobiography but the story goes on!

Moving to Manhattan, attending beauty school, and breaking through into the music industry. Followed by marrying a senior music mogul who immediately moved her out to a sleepy suburban town (in order to control her every move) all by the time she was 24! She even narrowly escaped being put into a conservatorship by her money hungry family.

This is one title that I would HIGHLY recommend listening to the audiobook of. Mariah’s soothing voice and cadence adds to the already captivating material. And she sings! Ugh, it’s so good.

In addition to my eternal gratitude for her seminal album Daydream, I also thank her for my distaste of fluorescent lighting. She was right, though to be fair, she’s rarely ever wrong.

The Meaning of Mariah by Mariah Carey

Fashion Memoirs

Betsey by Betsey Johnson

Fellow fashion enthusiasts gather round, here is a tale that touches on the great modern decades of clothing design, art, and music. Betsey may be most known for her liberal use of floral prints, yellow and pink colour combinations and frothy cocktail dresses worn to all special occasions by a certain demographic of girls. However, her journey from small town Connecticut to international fashion brand is worthy of a tv series.

Betsey’s career truly began when she won the guest editor-ship at Mademoiselle magazine. The very same internship that Sylvia Plath won and subsequently wrote about in her “fictional” novel The Bell Jar. I live for connections like this. From there, she became enamoured with illustrating patterns and wound up designing for the ultra hip Manhattan store Paraphernalia in the 1960s. Edie Sedgwick even modelled her designs! And she married John Cale from the Velvet Underground!!!!

The rest that follows is a steady rise through the fashion industry that was motivated solely by creating clothes that made people joyful. How each piece of her life came together organically both in business and love. It’s a cautionary tale about the perils of ignoring your gut. Her abusive romantic relationships as well as accepting VC funding were, in retrospect, just that. The latter of which ultimately destroyed the brand she had painstakingly built over the decades. Yet she continues to flourish, choosing to focus on the positives that have come from her accomplishments. Would we expect anything else from a woman who ended every runway show with an exuberant cartwheel?

Betsey by Betsey Johnson

The Chiffon Trenches – Andre Leon Talley

Andre Leon Talley once said “It’s a famine of beauty” when describing fashion week in NYC and I would argue there’s been a famine of beauty since his passing in 2022.

Compared to his first memoir ALT (released in 2003), The Chiffon Trenches is a swan song, a final fuck around / find out for the numerous fashion luminaries he considered close friends who let him down in the most egregious ways. A final chance to write candidly on record and to be truly seen.

Like the trailblazer he’s known as today, Andre was treading new and difficult ground being a gay Black man in the fashion industry. His ascent included all the usual job tropes: countless hours of under or unpaid work, watching opportunities bestowed upon highly unqualified peers, and falling out of favour once you’ve outstayed your use to an egomaniac. Then add in the racism, hyper-sexualization of Black men, and fatphobia to top it off. He truly never received the recognition or renumeration he deserved for his work or talents.

Beyond the beauty he strived to create and share with the world, there was unimaginable personal trauma buried beneath his ostentatious exterior – from being sexually abused as a child to watching friend after friend succumb to the AIDS virus in the 80s.

Does Andre sometimes fall into the stereotypes of the frivilous grandioseness that the fashion world seemingly breeds? Of course. However, I find his fabulosity both deliciously enjoyable and backed by his expertise. His wealth of knowledge in every aspect of the arts is incomparable. It’s damn near encyclopedic but with the added flair of his cadence and whimsical choice of words. He’s where sophistication meets extreme wit.

Each heartbreaking detail or glorious triumph is laid out with tremendous thought throughout the book. The experience is not dissimilar to browsing a grande estate sale auction at Sotheby’s which, coincidentally, was a favourite pastime of the legendary ATL.

The Chiffon Trenches by Andre Leon Talley

NYC Memoirs

Don’t Call Me Home – Alexandra Auder

The daughter of a Warhol Superstar recalls her upbringing in the infamous Chelsea Hotel. This is one of those memoirs where the subject may be unknown to the masses but her story is so fascinating that she needn’t be a familiar entity. In fact, I knew her to be a zany character in a tv series I adored, High Maintenance (does anyone remember when it was a web series on Vimeo!?). Oh and her younger sister is Gaby Hoffman.

Not only was Auder a resident in the Chelsea Hotel, she was BORN there. The memoir chronicles her free range childhood living in the lower east side of Manhattan as the daughter of mercurial artists. Coming of age in late 80s early 90s Manhattan is enthralling on its own but throw in avant-garde family members, a legendary hallowed hotel, and a cast of recognizable names and I’m sucked in.

Don’t Call Me Home by Alexandra Auder

Down the Drain – Julia Fox

Every so often a memoir comes along that feels like it was written as if the author’s life depended upon it. Just as if the only option was to be resolutely candid about the highs and lows of life without skirting over the role they played. Down the Drain is that. A compelling read that leaves no rock unturned regardless of the pain.

New York City is a place where dreams come true. A place where you can go from working as a dominatrix to starring in a movie where Adam Sandler is a jeweler making unhinged diamond furby necklaces. And she did so. With a name like Julia Fox, she was destined to be an It Girl and this book has only confirmed that in my mind.

Down the Drain by Julia Fox (Gifted from Simon & Schuster Canada)

How to Murder Your Life – Cat Marnell

This title could fall under two other categories: career and fashion memoirs. But at the heart of it, there’s New York City. Cat Marnell was a messy beauty editor at Lucky Magazine, Vice, and XOJane who was heavily addicted to drugs. She was a beautiful mess turning fashion media upside down with her alternative views on beauty. It’s hard to explain how her writing and point of view changed the landscape of beauty reporting because her style is ubiquitous now.

If you love It Girl lore, old NYC clubbing scenes, graffiti artists, and the glamour of magazine culture all wrapped up in the seedy haze of illicit drug use, then this memoir is for you.

How to Murder Your Life by Cat Marnell

Summer Vacation Reading

Many of the titles on this list could have fit in multiple categories but I did my best picking the predominant theme. All but one of the 19 books on my Summer 2025 reading list were written by women. Some may say I’m a misandrist and that’s fine by me. I much prefer the writing of women and people from the LGBTQ2S+ community.

As always, if you have any recommendations for me, please leave them in the comment section below!

photographs by sandy joe