June recap and July preview
In an effort to read more in 2025, this series is dedicated to a monthly recap of what we at TGP have been reading each month. Feel free to add what’s on your TBR below!
June Home Runs
Title: Julie Chan is Dead
Author: Liann Zhang
TGP Contributor: Allie
Synopsis: A young woman steps into her deceased twin’s influencer life only to discover dark secrets hidden behind her social media facade.
Review: I’m no stranger to books with weird plot lines, especially thrillers, and this one definitely fits the bill. What started as a strange but unique premise turned into an utterly wild story that I could not put down. If you want a book that’s going to make you say “WTF” every few pages, this is definitely a pick for you.
Title: “I Ain’t an Athlete, Lady” My Well-Rounded Life and Times
Author: John Kruk with Paul Hagen
TGP Contributor: Joe Edinger
Synopsis: “The popular three-time All-Star discusses his years with the Philadelphia Phillies, his philosophy of the game of baseball, and his small-town roots in West Virginia.”
Review: Obviously, this book should be required reading for all Phillies fans. Published in 1994, it’s John Kruk at his finest, as the book reads as one long stream of consciousness. There are stories from the 1993 Phillies, about being managed by Larry Bowa, and a rather fascinating look and perspective on Kruk’s time in winter ball among many more topics. If you ever wait with bated breath when Kruk says “Did I ever tell you about…” on a Phillies broadcast, this book is for you.
Title: Jurassic Park
Author: Michael Crichton
TGP Contributor: Ethan Witte
Synopsis: “An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them—for a price. Until something goes wrong. . . .”
Review: I was shocked that I had never read this book before. Of course everyone has seen the movie and I’d heard how different the movie was from the book, but I’m not sure I was ready for how different it was. I don’t want to give anything away for anyone who was in the same boat as me, but man – it’s different.
I enjoyed the book, even if some of it got a little preachy. Seems like most books do these days, but that’s fine. It moved quickly and in the summertime, that’s about all I can ask for.
But boy was John Hammond a jerk in this book. Not the kindly old man from the movie; something far different.
Title: The Celebrant
Author: Eric Rolfe Greenberg
TGP Contributor: Jared Frank
Synopsis: “The first two decades of the twentieth century were a time of promise and innocence in America. Hardworking immigrants could achieve the American dream; heroes were truly heroic. Eric Rolfe Greenberg brilliantly and authentically chronicles the real-life saga of the first national baseball hero, Christy Mathewson, and the fictional story of a Jewish immigrant family of jewelers.”
Review: The themes of this book— baseball as a metaphor for American life, baseball as a civic religion— are familiar, but rarely, and perhaps never, have they been handled so magnificently. The story built around Christy Mathewson, his real-life career and fate, but told through the eyes of Jack Kapinski, a jewelry designer who sees in Mathewson an almost divine presence. He’s not quite a fan, and not quite a worshipper; what he is, of course, is shown by the book’s title— though what, precisely, that means has to be revealed through the text. The main events of the book mostly do not surprise; in part because those relating to Mathewson are real history, and in part because the events relating to the Kapinski family seem almost inevitable. The defining feature of a great tragedy is that its climax takes your breath away even when you’ve seen it coming for ages. That is precisely what The Celebrant does.
Title: Space Opera
Author: Catherynne M. Valenta
TGP Contributor: Smarty
Synopsis: Sentient races compete for glory in a galactic musical contest…and the stakes are as high as the fate of planet Earth.
Review: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is my favorite book of all time, so when a book is promoted as “Hitchhikers meets Eurovision,” it seemed like something I needed to check out.
Naturally, I hated it. It felt like this was a novel that could have been a short story, as it seemed to drone on and on, being weird for weirdness sake, and then ending extremely anticlimactically. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t actually finish a book, but as I slogged through this one, I was tempted at times.
There is a sequel to it, and I won’t be reading it.
On Deck for July
Title: Moneyball
Author: Michael Lewis
TGP Contributor: Allie
Synopsis: I don’t think anyone needs a synopsis of this one…
Preview: I was really looking forward to reading this in June, but unfortunately it wasn’t available at my library before I left for vacation. Thus, it is once again on deck for me this month.
Title: The War of the Worlds
Author: H.G. Wells
TGP Contributor: Joe Edinger
Synopsis: You probably know, but it’s the original alien invasion novel published in 1898.
Preview: I’ve been on a bit of a sci-fi kick lately and have never actually read this, so I’m greatly looking forward to it.
Title: The Lost World
Author: Michael Crichton
TGP Contributor: Ethan Witte
Synopsis: “It is now six years since the secret disaster at Jurassic Park, six years since the extraordinary dream of science and imagination came to a crashing end—the dinosaurs destroyed, the park dismantled, and the island indefinitely closed to the public. There are rumors that something has survived. . . .”
Preview: I mean, I read the first one, as you saw above. Why not read the sequel?
Title: Short Game: Mitsuru Adachi’s Baseball Short Story Collection
Author: Mitsuru Adachi
TGP Contributor: Jared Frank
Synopsis: “From the pen of Mitsuru Adachi comes a collection of…what else but high school baseball themed short stories. Compiled from magazines such as Superior, Spirits and Shonen Sunday, this release also features a special short from the limited edition Shonen Sunday Graphics TOUCH which Shogakukan produced in honor of the thirtieth anniversary of Adachi’s legendary series TOUCH. Whether looking for romance, drama, mystery or comedy, this is the definitive modern collection of Adachi’s sports manga.”
Preview: Baseball comics are a mainstay of the Japanese manga world, and Mitsuru Adachi, famed for his ability to mix baseball and romance, is one of the foremost practitioners of that discipline. Only a few of his works have made their way into English (including Cross Game, which I enjoyed), so this is a rare treat.