What we’re reading: writers and readers on the books they enjoyed in July

Max Porter, writer

I recently read Gaining Ground by Joan Barfoot. It’s one of the best novels I’ve ever read about what it means to live with others, or decide not to; what we owe the people we love, the natural world, and ourselves. I also really enjoyed Robert Frost, by Robert Frost and Stacy Skolnik. It’s not that Robert Frost; it’s an itinerant young American Robert Frost who jots down his thoughts and observations on homelessness, food, value, music, drugs, the philosophical wastelands of contemporary life, and Stacy Skolnik has turned them into these delightful, oddly profound, poems. Also, coming soon, End Times Fascism by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor. Everyone should read it. It tells us exactly what’s going on.

Max Porter is the author of books including Shy and Grief Is the Thing With Feathers

Richard, Guardian reader

I am reading Headlights by the American horror writer CJ Leede. This is her third novel. I think she has the potential to be the 21st century’s Stephen King – she’s that good! Headlights is a pitch-black horror novel with overtones of Silence of the Lambs and Osgood Perkins’ fabulous film Longlegs. It is also a love letter to King’s The Shining and has a strong environmental message too, concerning man’s uneasy and destructive relationship with the natural world. Leede is such a wonderful writer of prose. Her characters are three-dimensional and you care about them almost immediately (which makes what she does to some of them all the more horrible!). She has an obvious love of the American landscape and describes it beautifully, and the book’s relationship with The Shining will have horror lovers squealing with delight – there are little Easter eggs peppered throughout the book.

Daisy Johnson, writer

Lately I am to be found loudly and excitedly recommending The Corner That Held Themby Sylvia Townsend Warner, first published in 1948. Set over 200 years and taking in the Black Death, the Great Revolt of 1381 and much bickering, the novel follows a convent of nuns living in the British Fenlands. I’ve also loved reading The Empusium, an equally claustrophobic book by Olga Tokarczuk which, thrillingly, is described as “a health resort horror story” on the cover. It follows a young man with failing health who visits a sanatorium in the mountains to recover. It is a rather glorious and surreal romp.

Long Wave by Daisy Johnson is published by Jonathan Cape (£18.99). To support the Guardian buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Sarah, Guardian reader

This month (perhaps not so subconsciously) I seem to have been drawn mostly to both fiction and nonfiction featuring women facing personal challenges. In fiction, Tamarin by Priya Hein and Under Water by Tara Menon have been favourites this month, and I think the books pair well together: both feature women who return to their homeland after life-changing experiences. In nonfiction, My Cantopop Nights by Emma-Lee Moss was a thoroughly enjoyable read about one woman’s search to find home and her identity in Hong Kong. Her experiences of motherhood resonated with me, and I was transported back to my own time spent in Hong Kong a decade ago. Finally, a hybrid of the two genres: Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa. I devoured this book, which vividly brings to life the stories of a number of women who inhabited a psychiatric hospital in Ireland in the 1890s and early 20th century, the result of obsessive research by the author.

Avni Doshi, writer

While researching for my next novel, in which one of the characters is an artist, I came across a brilliant book called Colour by Victoria Finlay. Finlay dives deep into the fascinating history of where colour comes from. It reads like an adventure into the painter’s palette. Expect intrigue, beetles and dead bodies. Andrea Bajani’s The Anniversary was also a recent favourite. The story follows a grown man unpicking the web of his painful childhood. A slim book written in crisp prose, there isn’t a word out of place. I read it in one sitting. I also loved and have been widely recommending A Splintering by Dur e Aziz Amna, in which a cunning and ambitious woman from a village in Pakistan reshapes the future that was set for her. Rarely have I read a character so ruthless and irresistible. Her hunger growls on the page.

Reporting from The Guardian contributed to this story.