Forget Hot Girl Summer. We’re Having an Unoptimized Summer
Nine books for a summer with nothing to prove
Every summer arrives with a theme. Sardine Girl summer. Brat summer. There was even a Tomato Girl summer. Before the season even starts, someone hands us a word for how we are going to feel for the next three months, and somehow it sticks.
This year, my word came from a creator named carmscrolls: unoptimized. We’re tired, she said. We don’t want to streamline. We don’t want to do it better, faster, with goals to check off.
There is a particular kind of tired going around right now. Not the kind that a good night of sleep resolves. This exhaustion is the kind that comes from years of treating yourself like a project with a deadline. We have optimized our mornings, our workouts, our grocery runs, and even our sleep. We’ve turned hobbies into side hustles and side hustles into brands.
An unoptimized summer is the opposite of all that.
Here is the part that surprised me. When I heard unoptimized, I did not immediately picture a wellness trend. I pictured being 7 years old. The summers of my childhood had goals, technically. Make a new friend. Don’t get sunburned. Be home by dark. But nobody was tracking anything or asking me to become a better, more productive human. The days were long and shapeless, yet we have spent the years since slowly forgetting that a summer is allowed to be exactly that.
We did not optimize those summers, we just lived them.
Unoptimized does not mean lazy or that you stop caring. It means you stop measuring. There is a difference between a summer you turn into a self-improvement project you complete on the way to something else and a summer you actually live inside of as a real person.
I will admit, I am a little conflicted here because I run a summer reading challenge. A list with a goal can give a shapeless season some spine, and reading challenges encourage me to read outside of my comfort zone. A challenge is one good way to spend a summer. It is just not the only one. Not everyone needs a project, and no one needs one every single year.
This list is for the other kind of summer, the kind with nothing to prove and nowhere to be.
Of course, I can’t not give you a reading list, but this isn’t a 20-book homework assignment. It’s just 9 books that linger and wander and refuse to hand you a finish line. Abandon one on your picnic blanket, and reach for another. Reread the same one all summer if it is the only thing that sounds good. Just please, don’t optimize anything.
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A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
A shell-shocked veteran spends one golden summer uncovering a medieval mural in a country church. Nothing in particular happens, but the emotion and the vibe are intense. Whenever I need a break from real life, I close my eyes and let my mind wander to Oxgodby. (book / audiobook)
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
A prickly scholar holes up in a freezing village to study the fae, recording it all in field journal entries. This book is cozy, funny, and faintly mysterious. The pleasure lives in disappearing into a world where the line between real and fantasy is precariously thin. (book / audiobook)
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The City in Glass by Nghi Vo
A demon haunts the ruins of a city she loved and rebuilds it slowly, across centuries, beside the angel who destroyed it. A story of devotion stretched over time, which is about as unoptimized a premise as it gets. I wish this book got more hype. (book / audiobook)
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
A retired man posts a letter, then keeps walking the length of England in his yachting shoes instead of going home. One of the least efficient journeys in fiction, and all the more moving for it. May this book inspire a few of your own destination-less meanderings. (book / audiobook)
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
A mother tells her grown daughters the story of an important summer in her life while they pick cherries on the family orchard. Tom Lake is slow by design, gorgeous. It’s more about the people than the plot and rewards those who are in no hurry to arrive. The audiobook is read by Meryl Streep and is an experience unto itself. (book / audiobook)
Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan
A teenage girl idles away a hedonistic summer and ruins everything she touches. Feels like The Great Gatsby on the French Riviera. It’s also compact enough to carry along and read anywhere you go this summer. (book / audiobook)
Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh
A Wild Man has lived in the deep of the wood for centuries, alone with his cat and his dryads, until a curious folklore scholar buys the hall nearby and starts digging up what should have stayed buried. A slim novella, this one is lush with Green Man myth and old English forest. This is the first in a duology, so if you love it, there’s more to read. (book / audiobook)
Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics by Ina Garten
Hear me out. Nobody has ever made a stronger case for unoptimizing than Ina, whose whole philosophy is that store-bought is fine and the point of dinner is the people at the table, not the performance. Flip through it for the gorgeous photos in the hammock. Make one easy thing for yourself. Have people over without making it a whole to-do. (book)
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Tom Ripley talks his way into a summer on the Italian coast and simply declines to ever work or earn his place again (that not work part is goals…). Think languid sun, crisp linen, and a slow beat of menace underneath. Tom is proof that optimizing your life and improving your character are entirely different things. (book)
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That’s All
The goal this summer is the same one you had when you were 7. Don’t get sunburned, maybe stop for ice cream, and find something nice to read. And I think that’s enough.
Tell me what kind of summer you’re having. Are you a challenge person, or are you opting into a more relaxed season?
While you’re here, give me your most unoptimized book, the one where almost nothing happens, yet you loved every page, so we can all check out your recommendations!
I read most of these from the library, as usual. But if one of them grabbed you and you’d rather own it, here’s a link for 20% off at Bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores instead of you-know-who. The complete list of books mentioned in this post is here. Happy reading!
I love how you include Ina. Books like these are some of my favorite ways to read unoptimized.
Don’t forget rat girl summer!! It was that just a NYC thing?
Love this reminder to wind down!!