Ryan’s Book Club

Does anyone read anymore? I ask myself this constantly, usually while I am halfway through a doomscroll spiral I swore I wouldn’t start. There is something startling about how easily hours disappear online without leaving anything substantive behind. 

This summer, I tried to break that cycle by rebuilding my attention span one book at a time. I went from a reluctant “fine, I’ll read something” to wandering bookstores. Somehow, reading became a habit again. 

These are the books that brought me back. They were messy, addictive, and beautiful. More importantly, they reminded me what it feels like to be absorbed in something deeper than the world I live in every day.

Queer by William S. Burroughs

This novel follows William Lee, an American expatriate drifting through Mexico City in the early 1950s. He struggles with addiction, existential anxiety, and an obsessive attraction to Eugene Allerton, a young naval man who always keeps him at a distance. Their connection eventually becomes a strange journey through Panama and Ecuador, but the real story is the quiet ache of loneliness and unrequited desire.

Reading Queer forced me to slow down in a way that felt unfamiliar. It took me an entire week to finish, not because of the length (it’s surprisingly short), but because of how Burroughs writes. His prose is raw, jagged, and intimate. It feels almost voyeuristic, as if you are intruding on something private, especially in moments that involve Allerton. It is also deeply uncomfortable. Nothing in this book can be skimmed, so I had to sit with each sentence and let it settle.

Queer is less a narrative and more an emotional exploration. The yearning displayed by Lee is, in itself, a form of geography.

The novel also explores the gritty reality of queerness in the 1950s. There is shame, longing, and a kind of emotional exposure that feels both painful and honest. When I finished, I felt unsettled in the best possible way. If you decide to read it, I recommend doing so before watching Luca Guadagnino’s film adaptation.

Colored Television by Danzy Senna

This book felt close to home, mostly because of how accurately it captures Los Angeles without glamorizing it. Jane, a biracial woman trying to find her place in the entertainment world, is the kind of character you root for even when she makes messy choices. I caught myself cheering for her the whole time, wanting things to finally work out for her, even as she slips and lies to the people around her.

What really got me was how the book slowly peels back the reality of trying to “make it” in LA. The hope, the instability, the people who seem supportive until they aren’t. When I reached the end, I had to close the book and sit with it for a second. It was upsetting in the way only something honest can be. It wasn’t glamorous at all. It showed how easily the entertainment industry can exploit someone who is simply trying to hold everything together.

Senna is really able to dissect how race, ambition, and instinct come together and can add fuel to the fire that is the illusion of LA and its glamour. She perfectly captures the emotional cost of being looked at but never understood by anyone. 

It’s real and surprisingly emotional, and that is why people should read it.

The Secret History by Donna Tart

This book felt like Gossip Girl mixed with dark academia and a hint of occult energy, and I was obsessed immediately. It is almost six hundred pages, which normally would scare me off, but I was locked in the entire time. The main characters, a tight-knit group of friends, seem normal at first, but absolutely none of them are. I kept getting shocked by who liked whom and what was happening behind the scenes. What makes it even better is that the book tells you on the very first page that the group kills one of their own. You know it happens. You just don’t know why. So every chapter feels like you’re getting closer to the moment everything cracks. It’s less of a traditional murder mystery and more like watching a group slowly unravel from the inside. That tension kept me turning pages long past the point when I should have gone to sleep.

Many argue that the true message of the book is about love. Some say assimilation? In my opinion, I think, at its core, it is all about obsession. It's about how beauty and allure can corrupt the most malleable minds, and how elitism further exacerbates this. 

It is dramatic, pretentious, messy, and so much fun to read. If you like dark academia or stories where friendships get a little too intense, this one is absolutely worth it.

We Were Liars/Family of Liars by E. Lockhart

We Were Liars pulled me in from the first chapter. Cadence is part of this old-money family that spends every summer on her grandfather’s private island, and at first it feels like the kind of place where nothing real can touch them. Slowly, the vibe shifts, and you start to see what this family has buried under the surface. Cadence can’t remember one specific summer, and the whole book feels like trying to recover that memory alongside her. When the twist hit, I actually had to stop reading for a second. It was that intense.

Then I read Family of Liars, which is told from the perspective of Carrie, Cadence’s aunt. It takes place decades earlier, when she was Cadence’s age, and shows how the island was already full of secrets long before Cadence was born. Carrie’s story is not just teen drama. It is heartbreak that spirals into something darker. Things go wrong, people get hurt, and the cover-ups start almost immediately. Watching how disaster slowly becomes normal for this family made the first book feel even more haunting. It is the kind of story where one mistake snowballs into something irreversible.

Both books are quick, messy, and incredibly atmospheric. They honestly feel like a darker, more evil version of The Summer I Turned Pretty, where the beach setting looks soft and harmless until you realize something is seriously wrong underneath it. If you like stories that slowly descend into madness and murder, these are perfect.

Lockhart digs deep into an exploration of generational trauma, privilege, and the way wealthy families can navigate financial abuse. Lockhart also emphasizes how memory is not always reliable, as it is shaped by what people refuse to face. 

Now I’m not going to sit here and pretend that literature will save us from doomscrolling (I still fall into TikTok holes like everyone else), but picking up these books made me feel present in a way my phone never does. They gave me characters to root for, sentences to admire, and a version of myself that I genuinely forgot.

So, to re-ask my question, does anyone read anymore? I think we still want to, but we’ve just forgotten how good it feels to get back into the groove of reading. If you’re trying to rebuild your attention span or just want a break from boring, endless scrolling, start with one of these