Read Like Me!: 5 Ways to Kickstart Your Bookworm Era
Photo taken at Chicago Public Library’s Harold Washington Learning Center
There’s no better time to take up reading as a cozy hobby than Fall! Even though National Library Card Sign-Up Month was in September, you can visit the library year-long and get access to TONS of titles. I only bought 4 of the books featured in this post — all of the others were read with the help of my shiny library card. Check out 5 ways to kickstart your reading journey, reviews of books I’ve read so far this year, then “read like me.”
5 Ways to Kickstart Your Bookworm Era
Look at your reading hygiene.
Take a look at what reading habits you have right now.
When do you read? Log your reading habits and brainstorm ways to read more. Can you read on your commute to work? If you drive to work, can you use an audiobook? Do you use social media a lot or watch more TV than you should? Replace this time with reading instead.
Make a reading routine.
Make reading fun!
Take yourself to a coffee shop or make a special little treat at home to focus on something else than your usual responsibilities. Buy a fun reading themed blanket you use when it’s time to read. Whatever sounds enjoyable for your reading routine, keep it simple but keep it consistent. Remind yourself reading is good for you!
Read more than one book at a time.
This one isn’t going to be everyone’s jam, but similar to cycling through different genres of TV shows, reading more than one book at a time may help you read more.
Choose two (or more) different genres. Maybe you want a cozy romance to read in the morning while you’re still waking up but a more challenging non-fiction book for midday. You know you!
Audiobooks!
Audiobooks are reading!
Everyone reads differently. I wouldn’t have read through as many books on my “TBR” (“to be read”) list as I have the past few years without audiobooks. With audiobooks, you can read at the gym, on the bus, while gardening or doing dishes — whenever! Write down by-the-chapter comprehension check-ins if listening is a challenge at first. Any reading is good reading.
Join a book club — or start one!
Like having a gym buddy, having a reading buddy helps.
Book clubs help with more than just accontability. Book clubs also help with reading comprehension. Find a group of folks who love reading as much as you or join a book club hosted by a library. Like most events, food helps persuade people to come! Find your bookwork people and “let’s get reading!”
My 2026 Reads So Far
Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert by Bob the Drag Queen
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Review: With a title like Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert can’t help but be intriguing. RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Bob the Drag Queen takes readers on a journey in a reality where historical figures can come back to life. Modern day Harriet Tubman has started a band with other “returned” members of her runaway crew to tell her story of gaining freedom in a new way. Modern day Tubman is written with as much of a “no nonsense” sensibility as she was logged in history, and it is truly a joy to read. Tubman enlists the help of fictional music producer Darnell Williams who is told by a bygone character he is “not the first William Dorsey Swann [he] met,” or otherwise said, a queer man. The character of Darnell is honest, humorous, and thoughtfully crafted.
Exploring themes of queerness through the ages, intersectionality, “outing,” race, and religion, Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert tells history then in the context of now, demonstrating how history repeats itself. Fans of the musical Hamilton would enjoy this kind of storytelling as well as enjoy the two original songs fully realized at the end of the audiobook.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Review: “When the going gets tough, the tough reinvent themselves.” RuPaul – unarguably the biggest American drag queen of the past century – shares life lessons and sayings in GuRu. Any Drag Race fan, notably other creative minds, will enjoy learning about RuPaul’s inspirations in forming his drag personas over the years in this brief read.
Working Girls: Trixie & Katya's Guide to Professional Womanhood by Trixie Mattel and Katya
Rating: ⭐⭐
Review: Working Girls: Trixie & Katya's Guide to Professional Womanhood is dedicated to “all the divas who slay and serve and work the house down boots, hunty.” Like the funny dedication, this farcical guide will bring a smile to any currently employed person’s face, especially fans of Trixie and Katya’s RuPaul’s Drag Race television presence or YouTube videos.
Full of tongue in cheek advice as well as stunning – and hysterical – photos, this is the perfect read for someone who has reached the “I can’t even” stage of their career. Laugh along with your fave queens and learn how to take work – and yourself – a little less seriously.
My Name’s Yours, What’s Alaska? by Alaska Thunderfuck
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Review: Fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race and/or the art of drag in general will enjoy All Star’s season 2 winner’s tell-all memoir. Alaska covers a “live fast, die young” lifestyle packed with drag, drugs, and rocky relationship dynamics — notably addressing dating season 4 Drag Race winner Sharon Needles.
This memoir shares how the company one keeps can inform behavior and lifestyle changes. Readers seeking to glean more on balancing a career in entertainment with discovery of the self will enjoy indulging in the ups and downs of Alaska’s stories.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Review: Lorenzo Marquez and Tom Fitsgerald’s Legendary Children: The First Decade of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Last Century of Queer Life is a treasure. This book is not only a thorough study of the Drag Race franchise but an overview of decades of history of the Art of Drag. Any reader with an interest in drag, or performing in general, would enjoy learning about different types of drag and other LGBTQIA+ performance styles and art.
From ballroom culture to sapphic erotica to queer representation in photography to drag ranging from pageant to punk to Drag Race fan favorite reads and lip syncs, Legendary Children is a record that gives voices to those who historically were made to feel voiceless. The perfect read for Pride Month – or any time really.
The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Review: Tiffany Jackon’s The Weight of Blood is an impactful riff on Stephen King’s Carrie. Covering topics like racism, the bystander effect, and the importance of learning history, this Young Adult Horror novel packs an emotional punch. Told through multiple point-of-views, including a true crime podcast, the narrative follows Maddy Washington in place of Carrie from the source material. Maddy is a light-skinned Mixed Black high schooler whose father makes her pass for white. In the small fictional town of “Springville” in the South that still allows segregated proms, Maddy ultimately has a reckoning with racism – and reveals to Springville her previously hidden powers. Readers will be on the edge of their seat from the action, suspense, character development, and impactful discussions on race.
Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Review: Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany Jackson is a 5-star read. This Young Adult Mystery follows Claudia whose best friend, Monday, goes missing. The writing is well-paced, raw, and lyrical when describing different characters as colors.
The reader will feel for these characters as Claudia and Monday and other teen characters go through so much. Sensitive topics are handled delicately — gentrification, generational trauma, sexual abuse, sex work, bullying, peer pressure, dyslexia, and mental illness. If you don’t usually read Young Adult novels, take a chance as even though the main characters are teens, they deal with adult themes due to living near and in underprivileged neighborhoods – and the story is undeniably moving no matter your age.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Review: I can’t stop telling people to read this book now that I finally have! You could read All About Love by bell hooks again and again at different points in your life and glean something new every time. In just 237 pages, hooks covers so much: the definition of “genuine love” (a combination of care, commitment, trust, knowledge, responsibility, and respect); the patriarchy and the gender binary; how self connection, divine connection, and community connection leads to love; reminders that “love is as love does”; encouragement to give ourselves the love we dream about receiving from others, combatting nihilism with a love ethic, that “living simply makes loving simple”; and so much more. Everyone should read All About Love.
Fake It Till You Bake It by Jamie Wesley
Rating: ⭐⭐1/2
Review: Reality TV star falls for cupcake-making football player! Fake It Till You Bake It by Jamie Wesley is a sugary sweet slow burn opposites attract fake relationship romance.
Donovan runs a cupcake shop, Sugar Blitz – while being a professional football player. Jada is a reality TV star who is infamous for turning down a doctor heartthrob — and infamous in Donovan’s world for dissing Sugar Blitz. Jada also happens to be granddaughter of the owner of Donovan’s football team. To get her inheritance, Jada has to work at the shop following her grandmother’s ultimatum. In a sticky situation, the two start a fake relationship that slowly turns real! For the romance reader who likes sweet low stakes over back-and-forth heartbreaks, this one is for you.
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2
Review: I usually don’t write reviews for books considered Classics because there is not much new for me to say — but wow was this an interesting read. So much of the patriarchy was explored in this book — the way women are viewed as baby-making machines yet simultaneously infantilized, how men categorize different women as different “currencies,” fiscal oppression through showing the law force women to quit their jobs, the way power structures are upheld by other oppressed members who have resigned themselves to it and perpetuate it for shreds of power within the corrupt system, and more.
I wish the author explored race more within the text as the narrative would have hit that much stronger. But what a read!
Bad Fat Black Girl by Sesali Bowen
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Review: Sesali Bowen’s Bad Fat Black Girl is a must-read memoir. A book that openly covers body politics, sex work, finances, and queerness – all from the point of view of a “Bad Fat Black Girl” – is tea! And long overdue. Representation of those topics centering women of color without judgement is much needed.
Anyone who wants to truly walk it like they talk it when it comes to understanding how Black women navigate oppressive systems in America have to read this book. Along with learning about “trap feminism,” the reader will get insanely good music recs!
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Review: Influencer Drew Afualo’s memoir Loud helps readers become more radical in the journey to decenter the patriarchy and men’s feelings and center women’s safety. Afualo uses her intelligence and wit to give advice to women to “accept nothing less than the life you deserve.”
In addition to covering confronting misogyny online, Afualo shares stories about her Samoan culture, processing her sister’s queerness, openly discussing her abortion, and her desire to not become a mother – a stance still seen as radical in a time where a woman’s worth is still equated with what she provides to a man and to society as a child-bearer. I recommend the audiobook to celebrate her words through her voice. A great read for a “beginner feminist.”
Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Review: Haymitch’s long-awaited story held up to the hype. Sunrise on the Reaping revisits The Hunger Games world in the same memorable, heart-breaking fashion packed with sci-fi shockers and dramatic irony.
Haymitch, a fan favorite character, is front and center in the immersive narrative. Reading Haymitch’s introduction to The Games was satisfying, however, the storytelling using Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” came across as heavy handed at the end. That said, overall, Sunrise on the Reaping was an enjoyable look into the characters we all know and love.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐1/2
Review: Revisiting The Hunger Games world through a young Cornelius Snow’s eyes is an interesting treat. Readers learn about early Hunger Games – and that the war for power is the real “game.”
As with most of Suzanne Collins’ writing, the story is full of rising action in preparation of a huge truth bomb. The concept of if humankind is inherently good or inherently evil is explored in various characters’ perspectives. Cornelius Snow and Lucy Gray’s love story fell a bit flat, as it is difficult to believe that someone who has endured a life like Gray’s would trust a Capital-born. However, the nature of Gray being “Covey” instead of “Rebel” like Katniss Everdeen is the explanation given – as well as her more optimistic look on humankind foiling Snow’s pessimistic view. That said, more hesitation toward Cornelius on Lucy’s end throughout would have made the complicated pairing more believable. Even so, this is a thrilling story ending with the truth that all characters, even Cornelius Snow, are victims of the hunger for power.
A Lowcountry Bride by Prelaysa Williams
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Review: Looking for your next comfort read? Prelaysa Williams’ A Lowcountry Bride is a sweet romance all about following your dreams and honoring your heritage.
Maya Jackson, an Afro-Filipina dress designer, wants to incorporate her heritage into her dress designing. However, Maya’s creativity and culture is not valued at the company she works for. When her father experiences a health emergency that calls for her to move back to the South Carolina Lowcountry, Maya finds her calling at a small wedding dress shop. She also just might find love in Derek, the shop owner.
Through ups and downs, Maya as a character handles her struggles with grace, including managing sickle cell anemia. The story also ties in the Black Christian faith and the strong community values that come with that religion. A hug of a book!
Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte
Rating: ⭐⭐1/2
Review: This collection of short stories speaks to the all-encompassing feeling from the book’s namesake emotion. The short stories are thematically tied – and some linked with shared characters – and center how society is on an overdrive of sex, technology, and individualism.
The humor in Rejection is not for every reader – and in my experience it was difficult to even get through in some sections! That said, Rejection is a powerful statement on how many Americans' current state of being zoned in on the self can end in undoing.
A Renaissance of Our Own by Rachel E. Cargle
Rating: ⭐⭐1/2
Review: A Renaissance of Our Own is a part self-help, part-memoir that embodies the phrase “the personal made political.” Author Rachel Cargle shares her pathway to her work and success in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging advocacy spaces. Cargle speaks of her own experiences facing the “red tape” while trying to get into college as a Black woman in America – and more barriers once in college. She also speaks on challenging gender norms and discovering her own queerness when realizing the “trad wife” role was not for her in a former heterosexual marriage. Cargle provides tools for healing to readers to help them craft their own “renaissance.”
Rating: ⭐⭐1/2
Review: This quick read follows Wicked star Cynthia Erivo’s rise to fame. Performers and performance art lovers will enjoy Erivo’s reflection on her journey from stage to the silver screen – from youth performances, humbling performing art college struggles, her Broadway debut in The Color Purple, and of course, her triumph as Wicked’s “green girl.”
Simply More is a simply short memoir reminding readers that it is okay to be different and to never give up on their dreams.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐1/2
Review: August Lane by Regina Black is a Black Country Romance lovers of Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter would be all over.
The story is told in flashbacks, intermittently tracing back to August Lane and Luke Randall’s budding romance as high schoolers then returning to hardships that impacted their romance. The main hardship? A song. “Another Love Song” – which Luke wrote the music to and August wrote the lyrics for. August never got the writing credit on “Another Love Song,” as if she didn’t live in another country artist's shadow enough of her famous mother, JoJo Lane.
August Lane is gritty, addressing real complicated romance and family dynamics. What August Lane lacks in a tight-knit plot, it makes up for in heart.
The Mother of Black Hollywood by Jenifer Lewis
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Review: One of my favorite memoirs ever. Jenifer Lewis’s first memoir, The Mother of Black Hollywood is as hilarious as it is heartfelt. Beyond her singing and acting training and experience, Lewis is raw with the reader. She shares how she faced her bipolar disorder diagnosis, sex addiction, career highs and lows, depression, and complicated familial relationships in her classic Jenifer Lewis way – with drama, humor, panache, and earnestness. By the end of this book, Lewis becomes more than “the Mother of Black Hollywood” – but a maternal figure to the reader as well.
Walking in my Joy: In These Streets by Jenifer Lewis
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Review: A laugh out loud collection of stories. Walking in my Joy: In These Streets by Jenifer Lewis is as entertaining as one would imagine from “The Mother of Black Hollywood.” Lewis speaks of her experience as not only a performer but as an activist who uses her songwriting, singing, and impeccable comedic timing to help shine a light on politics in America in pop culture spaces. From stories of meeting the Obamas to scammers to foreign travels – Walking in my Joy is truly a joyful experience.
The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Review: The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest is such a cute “shy girl read.”
Lily Greene comments on her favorite fiction writer’s website. To her surprise, obscure High Fantasy author N. R. Strickland responds. From there, Lily experiences a whirlwind connection – only for him to ghost her. When her new neighbor, Nick Brown, moves in across the hall from her and her sister’s apartment, she thinks she may have found the key to forgetting all about her email pen pal romance gone wrong. The kicker? She doesn’t know that Nick is actually “N.R. Strickland.”
Full of dramatic irony, warm and fuzzy feels, fun side characters, emotional monologues, dives into family dynamics, and all of your other favorite Romance genre features – The Neighbor Favor is a modern Romance reader’s must-read.
The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Review: The perfect Fall re-read. Some friends and I wanter a nostalgic autumn read — and The Bad Beginning holds up. I haven’t read soemthing that had me so invested I didn’t even want to move from my bed because I wanted to keep reading in a while.
The appeal of A Series of Unfortunate Events is beyond elementary school readers. Whether a re-read or reading for the first time, The Bad Beginning is a page turner full of humorous dialogue, witty prose, five-star characterization, and perfectly paced action from Snicket and striking illustrations from Brett Helquist.
The Christmas Tree Farm by Laurie Gilmore
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Review: Looking to get into the seasonal spirit with a cozy and spicy Christmas romance? Yes, please.
Kira North is new to Dream Harbor and the small town’s new Christmas tree farm owner. However, she knows nothing about running a business after years of living off her parents’ money. Bennett Ellis thinks nothing more will come of his Christmas vacation in Dream Harbor besides visiting his sister – enter Kira. Bennet’s “fixer” attitude along with Kira’s bad one is a classic “opposites attract” or “grumpy x sunshine” romance.
Packed with classic Christmas romance tropes, lovable dog side characters, healing from past family and romantic dynamics, love letters, and a sprinkle of mystery, this page turner holds all the cheery feels while still grounded enough in reality.
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