August is long gone and September is well on its way to October, but here I am with my August reading recap! I actually did manage to read five books in August, but one of them was a re-read, so I won't feature it here.
Mrs. Sherlock Holmes, by Brad Ricca
★★
This is a nonfiction book about a woman named Mary Grace Humiston, who was a lawyer in New York City in the early 1900s. I read this for the ladies' book club I'm involved in with my church. We read books of all genres, not just Christian books, and we discuss them from a Christian perspective. Book club is one of the highlights of my month, and I really appreciate that it makes me read books I otherwise would never pick up. Including this one. The facts it presented were very interesting, but the writing and organization were, to be blunt, bad.
The Summer I Turned Pretty, by Jenny Han
★★★
I really enjoyed the To All the Boys I've Loved Before trilogy (and movies), so I decided to pick up another Jenny Han book. I liked this one too, but not nearly as much as TATBILB. For one thing, the organization was a little confusing sometimes. It kept going back and forth between the present day and previous summers, and even though it had the main character's age at the top of the flashback chapters, I tended to miss it and be confused. Then the whole love triangle/square/pentagon (I honestly lost track) wasn't really my cup of tea. Belly also seemed really immature to me, not in an unrealistic way (a lot of the feelings she experiences were totally relatable to me), but she annoyed me a little bit. Maybe because she was so relatable.
Funny side note: I read the first sixty pages or so at Barnes and Noble a few hours before my husband and I went to the airport for our honeymoon. I had put it on hold at the library a week before that. Then I went back to Barnes and Noble once more after our honeymoon and read another thirty pages before it finally came into the library.
Orchard House, by Tara Austen Weaver
★★★★
I really enjoyed this book! In essence, it's a love letter to gardens and family, and it was a perfect, atmospheric late-summer read.
This snippet really spoke to me:
"'I think I can come this afternoon.'
"'What time this afternoon?' My mother did not mess around.
"'I'm going to aim for three.' I never knew when I would be able to get away. Three often turned into four or four-thirty, sometimes five. I was always later than I said I would be. By the time I got to the garden, my mother was annoyed."
Beartown, by Fredrik Backman
★★★★
I put off reading this book for a very long time because of the heavier themes it deals with, but I'm very glad I finally took the plunge! This was simultaneously an easy read because of Backman's writing style, and a very difficult one because of the subject matter. If you have experienced sexual abuse or violence, this book could be triggering for you. At heart, though, it's about what unites or divides a community, how people perceive victims, and how families bond or break under pressure. I really enjoyed seeing how Peter and Kira's relationship developed throughout the book, and I thought Benji's story was so sad. I'm not sure if I want to read the next book in the series, as I was left with a lingering heaviness after finishing this one.
That's it for August! I'm on my third book of September, and I'm already storing up lots of thoughts to share in my next recap post!
Comments
Post a Comment