Here's what Seattle readers are into so far this year

I'm just about to finish reading my 40th book this year, yet nothing makes me freeze quite like being asked: "Have you read [insert popular book here]?"

There's a specific kind of bookish shame when you learn a hit book is on everyone's nightstand — except yours.

As someone with about 400 books already on her TBR list, I sympathize with any reader who feels like they can't keep up with all the mid-year reading checks flooding their social media feeds right now.

"BookTok scares me," said Sofia Brekkan, referring to the corner of TikTok that features popular books and authors. "It's just the speed with which a book can become popular on BookTok."

One minute, "The Song of Achilles" by Madeline Miller, say, is being held up to phone cameras in perfectly manicured hands, and the next, it's among the bestsellers at Charlie's Queer Books here in Seattle. Or maybe your favorite local book club curator can't stop talking about Stephen Graham Jones' "The Buffalo Hunter Hunter" and includes it in her first BookTok-style video, so everyone runs out to get a copy (it's been popular without my help, but you can find my mid-year roundup on Instagram below).

RELATED: Check out KUOW's arts podcast 'Meet Me Here'

The point is that it can be hard to keep up with everything that's in the zeitgeist.

That's why Brekkan stopped by for an episode of "Meet Me Here" — to tell us what Seattle readers are into right now and what you need to pick up to keep up. Brekkan is the events manager at Elliott Bay Book Company, so it's her job to know what's resonating around town.

Hot topics

Fantasy is about as hot as the high temperatures in Seattle right now, as are quintessentially Pacific Northwest titles, like guidebooks and "Street Trees of Seattle" by Taha Ebrahimi.

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And Brekkan said "anything queer" tends to do well.

"Especially during pride month, obviously," she said. "We have a little queer display, and all those books are just flying off the shelf."

Brekkan said she tends to lean toward queer romance in particular.

Dystopian girl summer?

Dystopia always seems to be in fashion in Seattle, and this year is no different.

That may come in the form of nostalgia, with some adult readers turning to young adult books. Brekkan mentioned "Sunrise on the Reaping" by Suzanne Collins, a prequel to the wildly popular "Hunger Games" series that burst onto the scene when millennial readers like me were in high school.

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Other popular picks this year have centered stories of people helping each other in dire times, like "I Who Have Never Known Men" by Jacqueline Harpman, which follows a group of women who break out of an underground bunker and have to work together to survive "in a world that's not made for them."

"[I'm] happily surprised that I see it, consistently, on top of our fiction bestsellers," Brekkan said. "I think people should keep reading it. You should read it right now."

Warning to performative readers...

This isn't a tip on what's hot right now, but it is a tip that Brekkan sees y'all reading performatively.

"I think the books that people read on light rails aren't actually what they're reading," she said, simultaneously calling out a set of readers and a form of public transit in one casual swoop. "Busses take you where you need to go. If you are a bus rider, you're a true public transit person. If you're taking the light rail every day and you have a performative book on there, I don't believe that you're reading it."

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Bus readers come prepared, she said. They're the ones with an e-reader in hand, oblivious to fellow riders like Brekkan and their judgmental eyes. And what are those well-read transit riders reading?

"Smut," Brekkan said without missing a beat. "They do not care. They're on the bus. They're just going down Aurora. They're just going to work."

You can hear more from Brekkan on KUOW's "Meet Me Here," or by playing the interview embedded above.