This summer, I haven’t been able to get enough of recent first-person creative nonfiction. June started off with Spinster by Kate Bolick. That led to Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed, edited by Meghan Daum, and her collection of her own personal essays, Unspeakable. Rounding out the group was Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham.

Right before the cascade of memoirs, I read George Saunders’s CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, In Persuasion Nation, and the Tenth of December. After Saunders takes consumerism to its extreme, horrifying conclusion, stories from real women in media serve a relieving counterpoint. First, the fictional maniacs of satire, who resemble living people a little too closely. Next, unbelievably cool living people, whom I would love to emulate.