hawt & smoggy august autumn reads!
hello, and welcome to our collection of august’s weekly reading book reviews!
videos & links to each title on bookshop.org appearing every monday mornng of the month! :D
✨📖 weekly reading book review august 2026: episode one!! 📖✨
🥰 i finished ZERO books this week, but have bookmarks hanging out in:
🧡 HOW (NOT) TO RENOVATE A HAUNTED HOUSE by jenny l. howe
(spooky YA fat rep + inclusivity romcom!!)
🩵 SEMICOLON: THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF A MISUNDERSTOOD MARK by cecelia watson (nonfiction; some of it’s great; some of it, my eyes glaze over 😵💫)
💛 HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD by haruki murakami (absurdist surreal this that who knows what japanese fiction in translation)
🖤 SYLLABUS by lynda barry (art/research notebooks from teaching visual communications to college students of diverse/non-art majors)
📚 maybe reading soon/next:
🤎 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA by wm shakespeare
folger library edition: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/troilus-and-cressida-william-shakespeare/1116788673?ean=9781982170127
💚 & 💜 AMARI & THE DESPICABLE WONDERS & AMARI & THE METALWORK MENACE by b. b. alston
🥳
i’ve also got tickets to FOUR staged readings & musicals for the SOUTH CAROLINA PLAY FESTIVAL this week!! (tickets are FREE on their website, so you can go, too!!)
https://www.southcarolinanewplayfestival.org
👉🏽 so expect lots of blogs & posts about THAT excitement!! 🤩🎭🎪🎤
🎟️
otherwise i’ll be working & writing in my studio and sending this month’s CRAYON BOX HAPPY STICKER MAIL!!!!
🥳🎨🖍️💌📬
links to all the fun below!
with confetti frosting for a soul,
💖xo,
*hallie 🤓
✨📖 weekly reading book review august 2026: episode two!! 📖✨
🧡 this week i read:
🍂 HOW (NOT) TO RENOVATE A HAUNTED HOUSE by jenny l. howe
📝 HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD by haruki murakami
👀 GLORIOUS EXPLOITS by ferdia lennon
🎭 attended:
4 staged readings at the south carolina new play festival!
blog one (of two more to come) here: night game: a doozy of a baseball cry
📺 watched:
CASPER (1995)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112642/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
🎬 currently reading:
🤩 THE PRINCESS SWAP: THE FROG PRINCESS & PETER PAN / WENDY DARLING & THE SECRET PRINCE by kim bussing
📚 reading next:
💙 THE PROJECT by courtney summers
📚 gorgeous book mail & at the top of the TBR piles:
😍 KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE & KIKI AND THE NEW MAGIC by eiko kadono
👉🏽 these stunning editions out 8/25!!
what stories are you loving right now?!?
🥰🌟📖🎬📺🎭🎧🩰📚
to the book studio,
💜xo,
*hallie 🤓
✨📖 weekly reading book review august 2026: episode three!! 📖✨
this week i read:
💚 THE PRINCESS SWAP: THE FROG PRINCESS AND PETER PAN / WENDY DARLING AND THE SECRET PRINCE by kim bussing
💜 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA by wm shakespeare
🎬 watched:
🫣 THE ODYSSEY (2026)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33764258/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
🧡 EMMA. (2020)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9214832/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
📚 currently reading:
🩷 THE DALLERGUT DREAM-MAKING DISTRICT by miye lee
💙 THE PROJECT by courtney summers
📚 reading next:
❤️ TWELFTH NIGHT (OR, WHAT YOU WILL) by wm shakespeare
🤍 EAST OF EDEN by john steinbeck
what stories are YOU loving right now?!?
📚😄📖✨🎬🎧🎤🎨🎭🖋️📝📺📸
two more south carolina new play fest blogs to come from me this week (two already posted here & here), a ltd edition print drop now available in the crayon box (here!), an upcoming audition, & illustration portfolio/book(s) prep for the scbwi carolinas conference (only one month away!) for me!! eep!! 😆🖍️🎭
💜xo,
*hallie 🤓
✨📖 weekly reading book review august 2026: episode four!! 📖✨
😎 this week i finished:
💙 THE PROJECT by courtney summers
🩷 THE DALLERGUT DREAM-MAKING DISTRICT by miye lee
(follow-up to: THE DALLERGUT DREAM DEPARTMENT STORE)
📚 currently reading:
❤️ CAST VS. CREW: TECH WEEK by lindsay champion
🧡 EAST OF EDEN by john steinbeck
🤩 new books i can’t wait to read next:
💖 IDEAL LIFE by evelyn skye
💛 THE MAGIC LIBRARY OF WATERFALL WAY by julie abe
📺 watching for hoots & giggles because i love it so:
🖤 COMMUNITY
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1439629/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
what stories are you loving right now?!?
😎🎨⚾️🎭🎬🩰🎨📝🎧📚
four more months to impress santa,
🩵xo,
*hallie 🤓
✨📖 weekly reading book review august 2026: episode five!! 📖✨
⏰ here’s what i read this week:
🧡 parts one and two of EAST OF EDEN by john steinbeck (shall finish second half for september’s book club!!)
❤️ CAST VS. CREW: TECH WEEK by lindsay champion
💙 TWELFTH NIGHT by wm shakespeare
📚 currently reading:
🖤 MONSTERS IN THE ARCHIVES: MY YEAR OF FEAR WITH STEPHEN KING by caroline bicks
🩷 IDEAL LIFE by evelyn skye
📝 prolly reading next:
💙 TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA by wm shakespeare
💛 BRITTLE MAGIC by kate o’shaughnessy (coming 10/20/2026!)
coming this week: crayon box 👻🐰📺, crayon box happy sticker snail mail, substack august shiny review, and then some!! 🥰😘📬🖋️💜🎨🎬
i need a cookie,
💖xo,
*hallie 🤓
✨📚 i’m not sweating, i’m just dripping casual, glimmering book joy tears onto the page! (indulge me, won’t you?) 📚✨
for personal and (mostly) inexplicable reasons, here were a few of my fave reads of august:
💘 TWELFTH NIGHT, by wm shakespeare
the more i read it, the more i love it. the more i read it, the more jokes and funnies i catch. and of course i marked about a million (okay, maybe two dozen) quotes to attempt to choose from for our alphabetical shakespeare canon read-through handlettering quotebook! (only 3 more plays to go!)
🩷 THE DALLERGUT DREAM-MAKING DISTRICT by miye lee
the follow-up to “the dallergut dream department store,” this cozy korean fiction-in-translation title was as surreal and charming and low-stakes conflict as a gal could hope for. (so curious to see what patrick ness does with the screenplay of this duology!)
❤️🩹 MONSTERS IN THE ARCHIVES: MY YEAR OF FEAR WITH STEPHEN KING by caroline bicks
gasp! hallie read a nonfiction book this month! and it was scary! but king snippets out of context were a little more tolerable....? almost? ;) lit professor (and shakespeare expert) caroline explores five novels that scared her the most as a tween and got to compare the printed copies to very first drafts and edits and everything inbetween! as an author and lover of language myself, i gobbled this up. (with much better manners than any emodied fears lurking in his pages!) word choice, enganging the senses, and a bit of how publishing is a bunch o’ dumb luck and hard work, this is a great book for fans of horror or anyone writing anything. or wondering why they enjoy well-written books. :)
💚 THE PRINCESS SWAP: THE FROG PRINCESS AND PETER PAN / WENDY DARLING AND THE SECRET PRINCE by kim bussing
i'm obsessed with this middle grde series that gives our princesses a bit of their own adventures besides being whisked away or kissed awake! the fourth book in this (read-in-any-order) series is as delightful as any trip to swampy neverland could be.
🧡 GLORIOUS EXPLOITS by ferdia lennon.
it's not so much i enJOyED this one as it is that i had just never read AnyTHINg like it. and in the midst of this chris nolan-odyssey zeitgeist season, it was just reallllllly interesting. it's like station 11 in the horrors of war. but greek ones. it posed a lot of questions of ethics (another fave greek topic), the value of the (performing) arts, and how eager we are to OTHER others.
BONUS entry:
the first half of EAST OF EDEN (by john steinbeck, of course) that i’m reading with my bookclub! fascinating!!!! can’t wait to finish it for next month’s discussion!
with a beautiful TBR stack to last me a few more lifetimes,
💜xo,
*hallie 🤓
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