Rhody Reads: Symposium Books’ Six July Picks and an Event

Several recent releases are part of this month’s list, curated from downtown Providence’s independent bookstore.

In Stephanie Wambugu’s coming-of-age story Lonely Crowds, readers follow the intense, decades-long friendship between two Black girls, Ruth and Maria as they navigate their childhoods and the competitive New York City art world of the 1990s. Ruth owns the narrative here, and explores the nature of intimacy, desire, class, and time. Lonely Crowds challenges readers to reckon honestly with ambition and intention.

Set in the early 2000s indie music scene, Gabrielle Korn’s Long Island Girls is a queer coming-of-age novel about an intense, on-again, off-again relationship between protagonists Susan and Eliza and their dysfunctional coupling. Through Susan’s perspective, readers learn she reunites with Eliza and forces her to confront where she’s from and her ultimate destiny. Universal themes of first love, identity, career, and the lasting impact of a formative connection reign here.

Follow a year in the life of a family that moves from California to rural Vermont in Daniel Mason’s Country People. Husband and Ph.D student Miles becomes involved with eccentric locals while his wife starts a new professorship. From the cast of characters, Miles learns of a local legend that may be… a fraud? Marriage and parenthood, the nature of belief, the power of stories, and the importance of connection in a fragmented world are the themes here.

In the aptly-named novel I’m a Lot, Surviving

Myself and All the People I’ve Been, author Alison Lieby proudly embraces the identities we’re often encouraged to hide: Housewives stan (stalker/fan), discount shopaholic, former jock, happily single, childless by choice, and proud cat mom. With deadpan jokes, tender moments, and incisive social commentary, Leiby urges readers to embrace ambiguity. Leiby reveals her hard-earned wisdom about what it’s like to be a woman who does it all.

In her debut Agnes Lives!, Hallie Elizabeth Newton’s readers encounter a fading socialite named Agnes who’s on the hunt for someone to kill her before her next SoulCycle class. Candidates include an icy magazine editor with a special cutlery set, an eccentric designer from her past, and her cruel novelist boyfriend. As she moves from Upper East Side shopping to Craigslist gun deals, she becomes more desperate before her existential despair culminates in a worthy, intense denouement.

In A Philosophy of Shame: A Revolutionary Emotion, author Frederic Gros argues that shame is a powerful, revolutionary force for political and personal change, rooted in collective anger at injustice, inequality, and exploitation, rather than just individual guilt and negativity. In a survey that draws on literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, Gros reframes shame as a catalyst for transformation and a necessary emotion for the polycrises of today.