Welcome back to Sylly, a podcast for the curious and critical. We’re your hosts, Mbiye Kasonga and Tembe Denton-Hurst. In episode 14, we’re coming to you with our annual summer reading special. Before we get to the books, we take stock of summer as a season and a feeling: the joy, the pressure, the ennui, and why August is, as Tembe puts it, “the Sunday of the year.” We also get into the song of the summer debate (is it Drake’s? Is it ever anyone’s anymore?), the lineage of Corinne Bailey Rae, Denise Williams, and Minnie Riperton, and why the Congolese national team’s airport fits deserve their own conversation.

Then we get to the actual reading matrix: sexy vs. banal, short story vs. epic, and share our picks for the season, which range from a gorgeous Rastafari memoir to a 727-page Argentine horror novel, with stops at Zadie Smith, James Baldwin, and a very surprising debut. We also make a case for summer as the right time to read something devastating, something transportive, and yes, something sexy.

We round things out with some relationship advice nobody asked for, and a reminder from Tembe that we owe each other everything.

As always, if there’s anything you want us to talk about on the pod during our office hours, email us at: [email protected].

• How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair
• Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez
• On Beauty by Zadie Smith
• If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga
• Leave Your Mess at Home by Tolani Akinnola
• Another Country by James Baldwin
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• The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Khemiri
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
• The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi
• Homebodies by Tembe Denton-Hurst
• Pool House by Mary H.K. Choi

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