R29 Reads: The Books We’re Reading This July

With pubs, restaurants and cinemas all opening back up this month, it feels like the days of lockdown boredom are starting to draw to a close. Now that we can now head out into the world and enjoy the sunshine with friends, it is starting to feel like quarantine hobbies will soon be relegated to a thing of the past. But despite the changing tides, one isolation habit team R29 are hoping to continue long after lockdown ends is voraciously reading everything on our bookshelves.

Last month, R29 staffers made their way through a variety of fantastic novels, as a well as a handful of revealing memoirs. From The Chiffon Trenches by André Leon Talley to Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, diving deep into someone else’s life story proved to be the perfect remedy to lockdown boredom. But it wasn’t just memoirs helping us escape to another world, with fictional reads like Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty and Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan also ranking high on the list.

This month however, the R29 team are turning their attention towards more educational reads, with July’s booklist featuring a plethora of non-fiction works by Black British authors. The selection includes an in-depth analysis of how hair is racialised and a re-examination of British history, this time (unlike at school) without excluding Black history.

Click ahead to discover the books on R29's reading list this July…