Today’s TTT is books on our summer reading list; as I normally do, I’m going to look back at the last quarterly TBR to see how I did. As it turns out, I batted .500 again! The ones I missed were a Cory Doctorow title on the internet getting worse, a book on black baseball in Alabama, GIRLS, a biography of Polk, and “something by Annie Jacobsen”. But first, the tease!
“How are you, Lyndon?” the physician inquired, as the boy dramatically writhed in pain. “Oh, I’m killed! I’m killed!” Lyndon cried. When the doctor suggested administering a “shot” for pain, his young patient’s hysterics escalated: “Oh, please doctor, don’t shoot me! I want to live awhile longer!” BAD BLOOD: LBJ, RFK, AND THE TUMULTUOUS 1960s. Jeffrey Smith.
Ten Books on my Summer TBR
(1) GIRLS, Freya India. I support her brilliant substack and ordered the book, so I definitely plan on reading this.It’s a reflection by a Gen-Z woman on the commodification of girlhood — how growing up on social media made them turn themselves into brands. Her writing is really good and I’m sure I’ll love the book once I can escape the clutches of Mr. Nixon & Mr. Kennedy.
(2) Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner. Working away at this one.
(3) Inventing a Nation, Gore Vidal
(4) Bad Blood, Jeffrey Smith. RFK vs LBJ. I’ll have a review posted for this one before the week is out. It’s a fast read and I’m so familiar with the context at this point that I recognize practically all the quotes being pulled.
(5) Rupture, Regina Kay. Dark urban fantasy, I think. Outside my usual range, and definitely outside the scope of my current obsession, but it’s a debut book from a friend.
(6) Black Baseball in Alabama: Rough Diamonds of Dixie, Shane Earnest. Somewhat similar, but in this case baseball and local history are definitely in my wheelhouse. The only reason I haven’t started this yet is because because 2026 is The Year of Presidents, apparently.
(7) End of the Road: Inside the War on Truckers, Gord McGill. This is of both personal and academic interest to me; my family is full of OTR drivers, including my father, and I love reading about transportation. McGill writes on Substack at Autonomous Truckers.
(8) Communion, J.D. Vance. A memoir of coming back to Christianity via the Catholic Church. I should preface this by saying I read Hillbilly Elegy back in 2016, well before J.D. was a politician, let alone the vice president, so I’m reading this out of personal interest in the man and his story rather than as a politician: my personal interest is redoubled by the fact that I have a fascination with Catholicism that dates back to 2011 and which persists today. Although I worship in a different communion, Catholic authors and priests account for the overwhelming majority of my Christian formation. It helps, of course, that a strong part of my own conversion to Christianity involved Communion or the Eucharist.
(9) Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy vs Jimmy Hoffa, James Neff.
I’ve wanted to read this since seeing Jack Nicholson playing Jimmy Hoffa giving RFK as righteous telling-off in HOFFA.
(10) Six Crises, Richard Nixon. A pre-presidential memoir. Chatgpt suggests that this may not be a healthy choice for someone trying to escape dead presidents. I actually had a dream a few weeks ago that I met Nixon in a back-country dive bar and we talked about Ike and Dick as he shook his head ruefully.
Reading Freely 
I hadn’t realized that Vance had converted to Catholicism until I saw some of the articles in the news about his new book. That was an eye opener for me.
Yep! Several years back. He’d approached Rod Dreher — they’ve been friends since Dreher reviewed his Hillbilly book and helped make him a national figure — about getting back into the faith. Rod and JD have a comparable “working class white boy” background, and Rod was Catholic himself before becoming Eastern Orthodox. I forget the entire story but Rod was slightly disappointed that JD didn’t go EO himself, heh.
LOL – He’s *such* a ‘Catholic’ that he said that “I think it’s very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology….” I have a sneaking suspicion that the **POPE** has more of a handle on **THEOLOGY** that J D (bloody) Vance! [rotflmao].
Benedict knew theology; Francis and Leo know old liberal moralizing.
Not if he keeps claiming to be The Voice of God on earth…
I like to joke that it’s the idea of the pope that kept me from becoming Catholic. Not just any one man, but the entire idea of the office — I think it happened because of the Roman empire, not because Christ wanted one ‘vicar.
I was already pretty anti-pope before I became an SDA’er 🙂
I thought that ‘Voice of God on Earth’ (or at least the Catholic version of God) was a goodly part of the Pope’s job description? Maybe even the first of his listed responsibilities whilst in post. That certainly looks to be the case from a (very) cursory reading of extracts of Vatican I & II on Wikipedia….
*shudder* The less said about Vatican II the better. Goodbye hymns, hello happy-crappy folk songs.
I think the ‘role of the pope has become greatly (and adversely) magnified in the 20th and 21st century because of technology — he’s become more of a celebrity than an authority, and as such they tend to act like celebrities and try to keep the audience happy. The social media popes have been especially weak in this way, I think.
Not according to the Bible.
That is one interesting dream!
It’s hard to imagine Nixon in a rural bar, but that’s what my brain decided to conjure up!
Girlhood sounds like a great read. Thank you for visiting Long and Short Review’s post earlier.
Welcome! I’ve already got my post for tomorrow’s prompt ready to go. 😀
My ‘knowledge’ of Vatican II is limited (for obvious reasons) but I’m ‘planning’ to dip my toes into more religion-based reading later in the year….. It is one area that I’m *vastly* ignorant of (again for obvious reasons).
As to the Pope’s power… I’m pretty sure, from previous reading, that he had a LOT more in centuries past than he does today. But, thankfully, most of the world has moved on since then!
Oh, and I definitely agree that Social Media is responsible for LOTS of (mostly bad) things including *VASTLY* inflated ego’s all over the place!
It depends on what we mean by power. Medieval and early modern popes had a lot of geo-political power because they owned much of Italy and were major actors in state-vs-state conflict. That could be good if you had a pope who was genuinely meditating between Christian brothers, but often it degenerated the papacy into a political actor wearing a religious hat, and you get silliness like the Avignon papacy. But ordinary people weren’t aware of the pope’s policies on a day to day basis; they weren’t talking about his latest tweet or arguing over encylicals, etc. Both the king and pope were distant, removed authorities. I’m thinking of reading a book on the papacy myself…maybe Norwich’s, but in 2027. This year is spoken for, apparently.
This is such a cool variety of books! I’m hearing of Girls for the first time, it sounds great. I’ll have to check out the Substack.
Here’s my TTT if you’d like to check it out!
A new face! Hello! Headed your way now.
hello! TTT is definitely a great way to find new blogs 😀
As I work in the trucking industry, I am curious about the War on Truckers.
Here’s my TTT for this week: https://readbakecreate.com/summer-2026-tbr-ten-books-i-hope-to-read/
The Black baseball book sounds interesting. I learned some years ago when living in Indianapolis on the A-B-C-s and the Clowns–both Negro Baseball League teams in Indy.
Dark Urban Fantasy sounds awesome, thanks for sharing!
Angle of Repose was the first Stegner book I read and I don’t think I did it justice. I keep meaning to reread. I started my list in May. It’s here: https://readerbuzz.blogspot.com/2026/05/summer-reading-challenges-2026.html
The trucking book sounds interesting! My FIL is a retired OTR driver, and my brother is a dispatcher. Also, my last name before I got married was McGill! I don’t see it much.
I’ve previously only heard it from Jimmy McGill on Better Call Saul!
Enjoy your summer reading!
Happy TTT (on a Wednesday)!
Susan
http://www.blogginboutbooks.com