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I started out, when I was younger, wanting to be a novelist.

In the ultimate act of tween nerdery one year for my birthday I was given the choice to get contact lenses or a typewriter, but not both.

Up until that point in my life I had been tormented for being a bespectacled nerd by my classmates, and so I knew what that was like; I could handle that. A new, glasses-less identity was appealing, but unknown.

It’s summer blockbuster season! Which means the cineplexes are filled with all sorts of over-the-top action flicks. Some have argued that the action/disaster genre as a summer staple started with none other than Spielberg’s JAWS, about a murderous shark and the men who come together to stop it. But what if JAWS wasn’t a disaster thriller? What if it was a romantic comedy. What if Sheriff Brody didn’t want to kill the shark, but had far more deeper, intimate feelings about it?

[TV still from The Ellen DeGeneres Show, A Very Good Production Inc. and Telepictures Production]

This season of The Bachelorette started with eleven million suitors (okay, it was 31) vying for Rachel Lindsay’s attention.  Since that fateful first cocktail party, most of those men have said their goodbyes. But now that they aren’t flying off to Norway and Switzerland and Hilton Head Island every other week, they’re certain to have a lot of time on their hands. We’ve picked our favorite Bachelorette goodbyes, pairing them with some reading material to keep them company.

Welcome to Riverdale, where Archie is hot (and full of angst—at least at the beginning), Veronica’s father is in jail and her mom seems to be making some shady deals, Betty has some serious family drama, and Jughead has put down his burger obsession for true crime writing—oh, did we mention there’s been a murder?!

It's Shark Week 2017! Every year, we kick up our feet and watch terrifying sharks on our TV screens—but you weren't going to the beach again this summer, were you? No? Not anymore?

But what are sharks without frickin' laser beams? Share this post if you can find the one shark without a frickin' laser beam.

Infographic created for Quirk Books by Mike Rogalski, eyewashweb.com.

[TV still from Insecure, 3 Arts Entertaiment and HBO]

The second season of Issa Rae’s incredible Insecure premiered last night on HBO and we’re so excited.  To celebrate this masterful show’s return to television, we read Issa Rae’s 2015 memoir The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. And then we couldn’t stop reading. Here are all the showrunner-penned memoirs and non-fiction books we read this summer, colored with our expert opinions and graded so you know what to pick up and what to pass on.