July has always been an in-between month for me. There is still so much of summer left, and yet so little. You are somehow caught between a sense of urgency and the need to slow down. The July edition of our Lazies’ List captures that quite well and tries to find a balance between the ease of summer and the need to be present.
Featuring a possible summer read, a show to binge watch, a podcast that won’t leave your mind, an invitation to find your third places and some coffee to keep you going during long days, there is something for everyone.
READ
Lauren is reading Tom Lake.
My reading recommendation this month is one of 2023’s hottest releases – because lazy women are not about jumping on the latest trends, but wait to savour something good.
Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake, with its very pretty cover, is set during the pandemic, but draws on what I like to think were the benefits of that otherwise horrendous time. The slowness that came with nowhere to be. The time to talk with loved ones. And with that, the sharing of tales never before told.
Lara is approaching 60, and during long days of cherry picking on their rural Michigan farm, and long nights of homemade dinners and crafting, is recounting to her three daughters a summer of love that happened almost 40 years before, as she was on the cusp of becoming a famous actress.
This is a coming of age tale told in retrospect, to three younger women who all have their own complex tales to come. The truths of their lives are interwoven with their mother’s, but through this story she lets them see her as something else.
She speaks honestly of the ups and downs of a theatre group season at Tom Lake, and the relationship with a man who defined it; and defined so much more; for her, and others. That said, some stories she must keep for herself, holding them in her memory alone.
The reader is invited into these memories, which deal with themes of sex, abortion, and trying to judge the uncertain intentions of men. While the book is a largely wholesome read, Patchett does well to show how many lives a woman may lead.
Tom Lake is pure summer escapism, with characters that’ll come home with you after the holiday. Find yourself a comfy seat, grab a cool drink, and dive in.
WATCH
Zsofi is watching Too Much and Secrets We Keep.
By the time you’re reading this, chances are you’ve already given Too Much on Netflix a go, which was meant to be my original recommendation for the month. But after actually watching all 10 episodes, I unfortunately can’t rave about it the way I intended to. Being a zillenial essentially brought up on Girls, and someone who’s even read Lena Dunham’s memoir, I probably had too high hopes for this – and was met with disappointment, clichés, and superficiality. I even found myself doomscrolling while watching, which is quite unlike me, I must say.
All in all, if you want to keep up with the zeitgeist, Too Much is probably still something you’ll be too curious not to watch. However, sometimes it’s also nice to ditch the trends and find something that doesn’t promise to be overly cool, and just is what it sets out to be, like my favourite watch of the month, Secrets We Keep.
It’s a good old trusty Scandi crime mini-series: an intense six-episode drama set in a small Danish town, where a rich family’s Filipino au pair goes missing. The neighbour begins to suspect something, and what unfolds is a revealing airing of high-society dirty laundry, offering an interesting insight into the hypocrisy of the Western elite and the parallel lives of immigrant women living on the cusp of Danish society.
LISTEN
Teodora is listening to The Retrievals, Season 2.
Women’s pain is often a footnote, easily ignored by medical practitioners and disregarded by scientific research. That unfortunate and yet all too familiar truth is the premise of New York Times’ The Retrievals. In the first season, journalist Susan Burton sets out to investigate the story of a Yale IVF clinic where women had their eggs harvested without any pain relief and the institutional failures that allowed it. The second season follows the same thread of institutional failures but in another direction: pain during C-sections.
The official NHS page for caesarean section says ‘’you may feel some tugging and pulling during the procedure.’’ There is no mention of pain. This is a phrase told to pregnant women both in the UK and the USA. What is often not said is that the administered pain relief can fail. Now, you may think that surely, these cases are rare. “Cutting someone’s body open and then operating when they can feel it – that is not supposed to happen,” says Burton towards the end of the first episode. Then comes the bomb. A review of studies published May 2025 found that about 11% of people undergoing a C-section in the States will feel pain during it. For most countries, there is no available data.
While season one is a compelling but classic style investigation, season two walks us through the case like a medical drama. But it isn’t, no matter how unbelievable some of the things we hear appear. What The Retrievals does exceedingly well is answer the question we all ask ourselves when we encounter something fundamentally wrong: what can be done? Be warned, this is, at times, a harrowing listen. Yet, it is exactly that which makes it urgent and essential, especially if you are a woman.
DO
Teodora: Find your third place!
Recently, I’ve been thinking more and more how crucial it is to have those places you can catch your breath in, places that become part of your social make-up. The cafe you always pop by when the city feels like it is swallowing you whole, the neighbourhood restaurant that always gives your dog treats, your public library with the kind-faced librarian- these are all necessary spaces to survive for a healthy, balanced life.
I often tell my friends that the biggest lie we’ve been sold is that we don’t need community, that sacrificing your village so you alone may strive is simply the way of our world. This is, of course, the same world afflicted with a loneliness epidemic. The point makes itself. In any case, this doesn’t just mean finding your people but also the places to inhabit where you can belong. Why do you think the internet is so popular? Platforms like Tiktok, Reddit, tumblr and Letterboxd give people, especially Gen Zs, something they fundamentally lack: an active community space. The downsides of this are too expansive to cover in this tiny section, so I will just stick with this: digital ‘villages’ are poor, lackluster substitutes for the real deal, just like digital social conventions don’t teach you how to properly function in our society.
So, really, my entry is less of a recommendation and more of a plea. Go exist in the real world. Our world really needs it.
INDULGE/OBSESS
Julie is drinking drip coffee.
I’m a creature of habits and rituals. One of them is, of course, morning coffee — ideally something I can make quickly. That’s where drip coffee comes in handy.
Every time I mention ‘drip’ and ‘coffee’ in the same sentence, I get blank stares. The concept is quite popular in Eastern Europe (especially Russia and Ukraine), but finding something similar in Paris? A real pain in the neck. While specialty coffee shops are more common here than they were five years ago, drip coffee still feels like a mystery — or worse, an overpriced novelty.
Unwilling to give up my homegrown habit of good-quality coffee on the go — and refusing to settle for Richard-level bitterness — I was thrilled to discover something that finally ticked all my boxes: Kava pochette! I came across it about a year and a half ago, and I’m still obsessed — so it definitely counts as a favourite!
So what is it?
KAVA is a drip coffee bag brand introducing the ‘pocket coffee’ concept. Each small filter-paper pouch contains specialty blends from different coffee-growing regions. Brewed like a V60 or Chamex filter coffee, it takes just 5 minutes and delivers rich flavour and aroma.
Each bag is a single serving of ground coffee in a paper filter that can be brewed anywhere with hot water. Thanks to airtight packaging filled with inert gas, the coffee stays fresh. Brewing is simple: you just open the bag, hang it on your cup, and pour hot water over it in three stages. No equipment, no fuss — just excellent coffee, anytime, anywhere.
Aside from the ritual of making them at home, I love packing a few in my bag when I travel — they take up zero space (because obviously that space is reserved for five pairs of trousers on a three-day trip). A perfect solution for August vacances!
My favourite of the new flavours is Colombia Parasio 92 Yellow Bourbon, with notes of elderflower, peach, and passionfruit! I call it ‘brilliant coffee for brilliant people’. Highly recommend.
I’m thrilled to talk about KAVA in this month’s favourites — not just a coffee brand, but a trusted travel companion and ritual enabler. You can explore their blends (the brand is currently shipping across Europe), and thank me later!
Contributions by Lauren Powell, Zsofi Borsi, Teodora Strugaru & Julie Antropova.
Illustration by Gretchen Blackwell.
