Summer Reading List With Rachel Soo Thow

The Twits by Roald Dahl. I still remember it today – the illustrations combined with the whimsical prose. To this day, every time I come across a copy with a different cover I've never seen before, I have to stop and flick through it.

I've always loved reading and, alongside working in the corporate world, I wanted an outlet to share my thoughts and opinions with others who also love literature.

Purely as a visual diary of sorts. I started the account a few years ago with the sole purpose of sharing my thoughts on books I had read and books I was discovering. I was going to book sales regularly and had accumulated quite a collection on my shelves, which I loved. There was something about looking at my shelves and knowing that any book on them could unite a community of fellow readers who shared the same passion for reading.

Rytual by Chloe Elisabeth Wilson. For anyone enamoured with the beauty industry and the toxicities of that work-life balance, this is the book for you. It's fast-paced and will have you gasping throughout, especially at the end, as you try to work out which real-life beauty brand it's actually based on.

Being able to discover new readers, accounts and writers has been invigorating. I'm in complete awe of the way language can be moulded, manipulated and reformulated through the eyes of such talented creatives.

Most of the time, they are inspired by thoughts and feelings that either I or my friends and family are experiencing. Drawing inspiration from those around me makes the recommendations feel less surface-level and more relevant to people who may be going through similar situations.

I'm such a mood reader! My method usually involves reading the first page of a book and, if it doesn't grab me, I put it aside and move on to the next one. Alternatively, if I feel like reading a few books at once, I try to ensure they're from different genres or are different kinds of think pieces. That way, they don't tend to merge in my mind while I'm reading.

Usually graphic novels or personal essays. I particularly love Japanese graphic novels because of their ability to evoke the feeling of a Japanese film. To me, reading a graphic novel is like watching scenes from a film flash before my eyes. Substack and Medium have amazing personal essays, as well as lifestyle and opinion pieces. Russh, Fashion Journal and The Cut are a few of my favourites.

My top essays right now:  1.https://open.substack.com/pub/theebookclubx/p/it-didnt-work-out-because-you-wouldve?r=20rm8y&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web  Sometimes, replaying what you want most because you missed out on having it can be the most damaging thing of all. I think about this essay often when I reflect on my decision to leave my corporate job. It was scary stepping into the unknown, but I knew that if I didn't at least try, I'd always be left wondering, 'What if?' So I bit the bullet. 2. https://open.substack.com/pub/storieswithkiki/p/why-do-i-always-feel-like-im-running?r=20rm8y&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web  There are so many things we want to achieve in life, so many things we want to do, and yet we often feel like we’re chasing our tails trying to attain them all. But is it worth it? What happened to simply living in the present and seeing where things might take us? 3.https://open.substack.com/pub/hersecondthoughts/p/thefriendshipbreakupweshould?r=20rm8y&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web   Some friendships are meant to end, and I think about this from time to time. As we grow older, our priorities and interests change, often to our detriment, and the people we once were evolve into versions that don’t always align with how others see their lives. The ones we thought would be by our side until the end are now falling away one by one, and that’s completely okay – it’s just the way life is. 4. https://open.substack.com/pub/ayushithakkar/p/let-us-stop-pretending-burnout-is?r=20rm8y&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web**  Somehow, burnout has come to be misconstrued as ambition, and that’s where the problem in what we’ve been told lies. All our lives, we’ve been told to work overtime, to be the first one in and the last one out of the office, but what is it all for? Is it at the expense of our mental health?

How a writer chooses to phrase an ending can either have me moving on to the next book, frantically jotting down my thoughts, or sometimes staring at a wall, wondering what it was that I’ve just read…

Start with shorter books, or even better, short stories – bite-sized pieces that intrigue the mind but don’t require too much commitment.