Quick weekend reads. What are you in the mood to read?

Images from Goodreads.  Click on photos for links.

If You Need a Laugh: Try You’ll Grow Out of It by Jessi Klein, writer on Inside Amy Schumer.  This book is in the same vein as Tina Fey’s Bossypants, Amy Poehler’s Yes Please, and Mindy Kaling’s Why Not Me? and Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns). In You’ll Grow Out of It Klein tackles topics like wedding dress shopping, pumping in a room at her first Emmys while everyone else celebrated, and the differences between women ("poodles" versus "wolves").  I particularly loved her essay about how other people decide when women have moved from a “Ms.” to a “Ma’am”—a funny essay with the sting of the truth. This book is hilarious, smart, and totally worth your time.  One of my favorite reads of 2016.
 
If You’re in the Mood for Romance: Try Jill Shalvis’s It Had to Be You, a book in her Lucky Harbor series.  It Had to Be You is a contemporary romance that has all of the things that I’m looking for when I read romance: incredible chemistry, a convincing conflict, and a satisfying happily ever after.  There’s more good news if you like this book: there are fourteen other books and/or novellas within the Lucky Harbor series.  Enjoy!
 
If You Want to Re-Visit a Childhood or Teenage Classic: Try To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  I don’t know about you all, but I re-read this book relatively recently for the first time in many, many years.  I think that I was even more impressed with Lee’s towering literary achievement this time around than I was initially.  The themes of this book particularly resonate with me now, when I’m taking a harder look at my own actions and biases and also thinking more about how I can stand up for what I believe in (love, acceptance, and unity; diversity should be celebrated; people should be free to say what they want, worship in whatever way they believe, love whomever they want, etc.) but also not write off the people that I love who voted for (or otherwise supported) a man whom I believe stands in direct opposition to my core values.
I read an NPR article that states that books can help us "bridge the political divide."  To Kill a Mockingbird reminds me of the importance of empathy—which so many people have called for as a means of understanding the “other side’s” political views—but also that there’s a time when anger and conviction are necessary, too.  We shouldn’t stop being angry at what Trump has said and continues to say, and what actions he continues to support because so much of it is racist, xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, among other things.
 
What will you be reading this weekend?