Tips for Mercury Retrograde + My Favorite Books of the 21st Century

It’s time to lean into Mercurial themes like reading, writing, and content creation.

Mercury retrograde is officially upon us, so I wanted to do an explainer on it since there’s always misleading information floating around social media every time it happens. And because Mercurial themes like writing, processing information, and learning will be emphasized at this time, I’m doing a two parter. The second half of this newsletter is my own version of The New York Times’ “The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century” that they published last month. If you’re looking for a late summer read, I’ve put all of my favorite fiction books from the past 15 years or so.

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Mercury Retrograde, and How it Will Impact You 

Mercury stationed retrograde on August 5, and it will remain retrograde until August 28. This retrograde is unique in that it's happening across two signs - Virgo and Leo. It stationed retrograde at 4 degrees of Virgo, and will station direct three weeks later at 21 degrees of Leo, so anyone who has Virgo placements from 0-4 degrees, or Leo placements from 21-29 degrees, you will likely feel the impact of this Mercury retrograde the most. Before we get into chart specifics though, let’s first get clear on what the planet Mercury represents in astrology. 

Mercury has to do with:

• Everyday communication 

• Translating knowledge in a way that it’s applicable to your everyday life

• Easily accessible writing and speaking related content, like newsletters, short articles, podcasts, social media content, etc

• Describes how you absorb information, like your learning process 

• Encompasses travel, logistics, planning, smaller details

When Mercury is retrograde, all of the above themes are called to your focus, but they may also feel slowed down or need some reworking. For instance, you may realize that you need to work on your communication skills, and you could be figuring out how to best approach an important conversation with someone. It could also be that a job contract or project gets pushed back or needs to be revised. On another note, you may feel called to return to past writing or a subject you were once interested in, picking back up where you left off. You may have to work harder to find inspiration with communication based work though, or you’re returning to the basics to build a more solid foundation in order to move forward again once the retrograde lifts. 

What to lean into at this time?

There’s no need to put your life on pause during Mercury retrograde. However, it may flow more easily for you if you’re leaning into the themes below. 

• Going back and reviewing work before you announce it to the public

• Reconnecting with people from your past

• Allowing yourself to slow down and not putting so much pressure on yourself at work

• Returning to hobbies you’ve loved in the past, and reconnecting with what your individual interests are

• Rethinking and experimenting with ideas you’ve had recently, but not trying to fully flesh them out yet

What to avoid?

And then there are also activities that aren’t exactly off limits during Mercury retrograde, but are areas in which you may want to proceed with caution. 

• Rushing into any major decisions

• Confronting people in the heat of the moment 

• Hiring people if you run your own business. Whenever I hire people during Mercury retrograde, they only end up working for me for a few weeks after the retrograde ends.

• Seeking out new opportunities or signing contracts on anything that came about during the retrograde. 

  • If the opportunity or idea presented itself before the retrograde began, you’re usually fine, but expect there to be adjustments or a slight change in plans that occurs once the retrograde lifts. 

• Jumping back into a relationship with an ex - it’s likely that the same problems will resurface once the retrograde ends. 

Other themes that will be relevant to pay attention to.

With Mercury retrograde happening across the signs of Virgo and Leo, you will feel themes coming from both of these signs over the next three weeks. You can expect thoughts surrounding your work-life balance, as well as what work is most meaningful to you to surface. You could also be thinking about how you can better take care of your body, and you may  be returning to a past workout routine or a way of healthy eating in order to feel your physical best. For example, I recently returned to acupuncture after not going for three months.

In addition, you could be reflecting on your creative skills, and how you might use them in a side project or at your job. You will be thinking about what sets you apart, and how you might lean into that more. Finally, you could return to the interests you loved as a child, and you may be rediscovering what brings you joy in your everyday life. 

Understanding how Mercury retrograde will affect you, based on your birth chart. 

Like we just went over, Mercury retrograde will be happening across the signs of Virgo and Leo. These two signs rule two different houses in your chart (for anyone new to my content, I use whole sign houses). Even if you don’t have planets in Virgo or Leo, you still have two houses that will be affected by this retrograde. If you need help identifying what those houses are for you, refer to the diagram below and then identify the themes associated with those two houses by rereading my article on the twelve houses.

In the diagram above, identify Mercury retrograde (the orange symbol circled on the outer ring of the chart). You can see how Mercury retrograde is currently in Virgo, the 2nd house of this person’s chart. When it moves back into Leo, it will then be in the 1st house of their chart. Even though they have no planets in their birth chart in either Virgo or Leo, the retrograde will still bring up the themes of the 2nd and 1st houses for them. Let’s now look at the diagram below for another example.

The chart above is essentially the same chart from before, but this person has their natal moon in Virgo, so they have a planet that will be affected by this retrograde. Not only will the retrograde still bring up themes of the 2nd and 1st houses, but it will also have them reflecting on moon related themes, like home, family, living situation, childhood memories, or their innermost emotions. You could take this exercise one step further by locating the house the moon rules in their chart, which in this case is the 12th house, ruled by Cancer. So 12th house themes may also be relevant for them during this retrograde. If you have planets or angles in Virgo and Leo, blend the themes associated with that planet or angle with the general themes we went over at the start for Mercury retrograde.

Finally, these are some important dates to note within the Mercury retrograde. 

August 5: Mercury retrograde begins in Virgo

August 14: Mercury retrograde moves into Leo 

August 18: Mercury-Sun cazimi takes place in Leo, marking the start of a brand new cycle between these two planets. You can think of this as the “new moon” phase of Mercury. From here on out, you will be building upon new ideas or communication based work. 

August 28: Mercury retrograde ends in the sign of Leo.

September 4: Mercury reaches its point of greatest elongation as a morning star, meaning you will start to see ideas, projects and opportunities come together and be made more visible at or right around this date.

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My Favorite Books of the 21st Century

The other month, The New York Times published an article titled, “The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.” I am a voracious reader, and consider reading to be my main passion outside of astrology. However, from that list of 100 books, I had only read like six of them. This naturally had me reflecting on all of the other books I have read in the past and have loved, some of which were included on the list, but most of which were not. As I wrote a synopsis for each of these books, it transported me back to the time in my life when I read them and how much they affected me then, which is actually a very Mercury retrograde theme of the past coming back up again.

The common denominator across all of the titles listed below is that while reading them, I never wanted them to end. These are the books that I couldn’t put down, and that I happily chose to read over looking at my phone or watching tv. This list is entirely adult fiction books, because that is the genre that moves me the most and allows me to lose myself in another world and be overcome with emotion. In addition, all of these books have made such a lasting impression on me, that I’ve continued to think about them every now and then over the years. 

Books that I read when I was younger that have stuck with me

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld (2005) - I think this is my favorite book of all time. It’s set at an East Coast boarding school in the 1990s, and follows Lee who is an outsider from the Midwest. As the book goes on, you realize it’s not her classmates who are excluding her, but that it’s actually herself who is to blame for her feelings of isolation. I went to boarding school, so this one hits a little too close to home. I also think everyone feels like an outsider in some way or another in high school, so it’s very relatable. I’ve read it three times over the years, and I continue to find it just as relevant as an adult. 

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld (2008) Another book by the same author. Curtis Sittenfeld is an auto-buy author for me, meaning I will buy anything she publishes without even looking at what the book is about. American Wife is a fictionalized version of the life of Laura Bush. It is not a political read though! It is more a coming of age story, as it leads you from her childhood and teen years to her meeting her husband, who then becomes the president. The tragedies and life experiences that happen to her in this book left such an impact on me that I have been unable to stop thinking about them since I read it at the age of 16. I’m due for a reread on this one soon. 

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer (2013). I recently reread this book, since I hadn’t read it since college and remembered loving it at the time. It resonates a lot more now, as it mainly takes place in New York City, where I live. This book is about a group of kids who meet at an artsy summer camp in the 1970s. It follows them from the 70s into the 2000s, as they live out their adult lives in New York. It is a great portrait of how friendships change throughout time, as some friends make more money than others, or other friends grow apart through different life circumstances.  

Family Sagas, Most of them Spanning Multiple Decades

Family stories are my favorite genre of book, because it brings out the most emotion in me. I love seeing how a character’s life or a couple’s marriage develops over multiple decades. I also love reading about complicated dynamics between parents and their children, and I prefer when books alternate between multiple points of view, so that you get to hear from all of the different family members. 

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (2020). I read this book the other month and couldn’t put it down. It’s a story about identical twin sisters who grow up in a small town in Louisiana in the 1960s, where everyone is judged by how light their skin is. As the sisters grow up, they go their separate ways, one marrying into extreme wealth and living in Los Angeles, and the other returning to the small town in which they grew up. They don’t talk for several decades, and it is not until their daughters grow up and unexpectedly meet that the sisters' lives come back together again. 

The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller (2021). I’m waiting patiently for this author to write a new book, because I was so obsessed with this one. This book starts off with a mom who is in her 50s, returning to Cape Cod with her kids and husband for the summer, but on the first night there she sleeps with an old childhood friend. The book then goes back in time throughout her life to show the connection she and this friend share, and how they’ve bonded over this one specific tragic event that happened when they were teenagers. 

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano (2023). This is literally a beautiful story that is about four sisters and how their family changes from the 1960s to the 2000s. Mainly, the shift in their family has to do with William, someone who has never been shown love by his own parents, and how he becomes romantically involved with one of the sisters and then eventually plays a bigger role in their family. I don’t want to give anything else away about the plot, but it’s a book about loss and grief, the unique love-hate relationships that happen amongst sisters, and learning how to let love into your life. 

The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo (2019). This book is about a family where the parents are still madly in love after many decades, while their four daughters are each grappling with big life problems of their own, and how they may never find the love that their parents have. When a child that one of the daughters gave up for adoption years ago resurfaces, it opens a can of worms about the family’s history that spans from the 1970s up until the present day. This is my favorite format for a book - I love reading about the parents' first meeting and then how their marriage evolves with each daughter that is born. 

Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo (2024). This author is the same one who wrote the book I just talked about above, and she is a master at writing about complex family histories. This book is about a woman, Julia, who is in her 50s, and her kids are growing up and leaving home and going through big life changes themselves, which has Julia reflecting on her past. It’s a book about the complex relationship mothers have with their children, as it explores Julia’s tricky relationship with her own mother, as well as a stand-in maternal figure that she encounters after the birth of her first child. It also gets into the relationship she has with her husband, her own children, and her future daughter in law. I think I cried every ten pages - this is one of my top books of 2024. 

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead (2021). This is another book about twins, this time a girl named Marian and a boy named Jamie, who are rescued from a transatlantic ship in 1914 and are sent to live with their uncle in rural Montana. While living there, Marian becomes obsessed with becoming a pilot, making it her mission to fly around the globe. The story alternates between Marian and how her career ambitions evolve in the early 20th century, and an actress in present day Hollywood who is set to play Marian in a movie about her life. This book is the best piece of historical fiction I’ve read, and is such a fascinating depiction of America in the first half of the 20th century. 

Mrs. Fletcher by Tom Perrotta (2017). I randomly picked this book up in an airport bookstore in 2017, and I couldn’t stop reading it. It’s about a divorced woman in her mid-40s and her son, who is entering his freshman year of college. The book follows Mrs. Fletcher as she rediscovers herself and her sexuality and adjusts to life without her child living at home. Meanwhile, Brendan, her son, gets a rude awakening at college when he realizes his fuckboy ways are no longer acceptable. 

500+ page books that were so good I read them in less than a week

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (2015). Any summary I give here won’t do this book justice, because there’s so much to cover. Basically though, four friends move to Manhattan after college, and this book follows their lives over several decades. One of the men, Jude, whose story line is the center of the book, has had a very difficult childhood, and there’s one relationship he has as an adult that had me sobbing. Not an emotionally easy book to read, but a book that should be on everyone’s list. 

City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg (2015). This book is over 900 pages, and I read it one August when I was completely alone for a week. I am so fascinated by New York City in the 1970s and 1980s, so if that’s you too, you will enjoy it. It follows several plot lines of people who come from different backgrounds, from teenagers who are into the punk scene, to a cop, to a wealthy family in banking. The book centers around a shooting that takes place in Central Park on New Year’s Eve in 1976, as we try to figure out who was responsible for it, and how all of these characters’ lives are entertwined.

I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe (2004). If you liked the book Prep, this book is pretty similar. It takes place at a fictional ivy league university and follows several different characters: Charlotte Simmons, who is the naive freshman from North Carolina, and her extremely wealthy roommate. Then there’s Jojo, a member of the school’s basketball team, and Hoyt Thorpe, a problematic frat bro. The way this author writes dialogue is so impressive, this is definitely one of my favorite campus books. It captures the feeling of how you may lose your sense of self in college (or at least I did), but then you come back to who you really are, instead of trying to impress other people.

Suspense/Mystery

A lot of the books in this category have been made into movies or television shows. I’m here to tell you that the books are 1000x better. 

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012). You have to have been living under a rock for the last decade if you haven’t heard of this book. Gillian Flynn is one of my favorite thriller writers, because as much as you think you know what’s going to happen in the end, you can never predict it. The ending of her books always comes out of left field. With Gone Girl, she ended up starting a whole new trend for authors who write in this genre, with an unreliable narrator and a huge plot twist in the middle of the book (the next two books below are definitely inspired by this book). Her other books are worth reading too if you have already read and liked Gone Girl. 

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (2015). In a similar vein to Gone Girl, there’s a big plot twist in this one too. This book is about a woman who has a drinking problem, and she thinks she witnesses a murder in someone’s backyard while she’s riding the train one day. Because of the alcohol, she doesn’t trust her memory, but while she’s trying to find out who did it, she uncovers truths about her past marriage along the way. Couldn’t put this one down. 

Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll (2015). This book alternates between a woman who is seemingly living her perfect life in the present day, working as a magazine editor and engaged to the man of her dreams. However, it turns out she is running away from a traumatic experience that happened when she was in high school. The movie version of this book that came out last year wasn’t good, and I highly recommend reading the book instead. 

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin (2018). A group of four siblings go to psychic on the Lower East Side in 1969, and the psychic predicts the date when each of them will die. The book then follows the siblings throughout their lives as each of their predicted death dates approach. I love this book, because it really makes you think about what is fate, versus what is free will.  

Tell Me Lies by Carola Lovering (2018). If you experienced an unhealthy relationship in college or your early 20s that you kept going back to over and over again, you will relate to this book. It is about a relationship between Lucy and a toxic guy named Stephen, and how sometimes you only see what you want to see with the person you’re dating. 

The Shards by Brett Easton Ellis (2023). This book follows the lives of teenagers at a prep school in 1980s Los Angeles. In the fall of their senior year, their friend group gets targeted by an unknown serial killer. I love the way this author writes, I can’t explain it. It’s very matter of fact, and you feel like you’ve been transported back in time to the 80s. If you can’t stomach literal gore or explicit sex scenes though, I would skip this one. 

Amazing Books Set in the Past

Tuesday Nights in 1980 by Molly Prentiss (2016). A book that paints a picture of the New York City downtown art scene in the early 1980s. It alternates between the point of view of an art critic for The New York Times, an artist, and a young girl who has just moved to the city and becomes a muse to the artist. I loved reading about what Soho and the East Village must have been like in 1980, and how all of these character’s lives end up intersecting. This book was also so fast paced and gripping - I think I read it in two days. 

Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (2022). This is a book about platonic love between two friends. Sam and Sadie meet in Cambridge, MA in the 1990s, where they are attending two different universities (MIT and Harvard). Together, they end up creating a successful video game. The book then follows them throughout the next several decades as they move to Los Angeles and build a video game empire. I am not a gamer, and you definitely don’t need to be to enjoy this book. It’s more about the ebbs and flows of friendship and how the characters cope with loss, grief, and disabilities. 

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (2022). Set in the 1960s, this book follows a female chemist, Elizabeth Zott, who is struggling to be taken seriously at her job, because she is a woman. She ends up becoming the host of a cooking show, where she gains popularity for her scientific, no nonsense approach to making meals, which other women find to be empowering. This book alternates between the present day when she’s on tv, and the past with a traumatic experience she has as a student, as well as the relationship she builds with her husband.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (2017). This book starts off with a reporter coming to interview Hollywood movie star, Evelyn Hugo, about her past as a famous actress in the 1950s and 1960s. Despite the title, the story is not really about the husbands, but more about how Evelyn works her way up as a film star in the mid 20th century and the relationships, one of which she has to keep secret, that she develops along the way. I loved how the book goes through multiple decades of her life, and shows how she changes during that time. If you’re traveling anytime soon, this is such a good book to get, because it’s super fast paced and immerses you in a different era. 

Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld (2020). Another book by my favorite author! This one is a fictionalized account of Hilary Clinton, and looks at what her life might have been like if she had chosen not to marry Bill Clinton. Just like American Wife, this is not really a political book. I loved it, because of how well it captures a specific time period (1970s) and the emotions you have when you first start dating someone and are kind of blind to their faults. 

The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante (2011-2015). This is a set of four books that are set in Naples, Italy in the middle of the 20th century. It’s about two girls who are both extremely smart in their own ways, and how they are able to forge lives for themselves amidst a small town and culture that wants to keep them small. It’s also a story about the intensity of female friendship that comes when you’ve known someone pretty much your entire life, and the four books follow them from childhood through university. The first book of these four was the hardest to get through in my opinion, because they’re young children, but the other three were so so good, and I raced through them one after the other. 

Honorable mentions

I couldn’t include these on the list, because they weren’t published in the 21st century, but even though they were written long ago, they still apply to contemporary times and are two of my favorite books.

Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann (1966). This is a book about three women who are young and trying to make it in New York City in the 1960s. It follows them as they work their way up in the entertainment industry, but some of them become too reliant on pills to be successful. Themes like the pressure put on young women to look a certain way, as well as the desire to succeed in an industry that is so cutthroat are still super relevant today. 

The Group by Mary McCarthy (1963). This novel follows the lives of eight recent college graduates, all women, who move to New York City and have to figure their lives out. So it’s actually pretty similar to the premise of Valley of the Dolls and some other books I’ve mentioned on this list. It follows the friends as their lives change throughout the years, and they grow apart and then come back together. Once again, I love reading about what New York was like in past decades, which is why I enjoyed this book so much.