Image: Tent, no rainfly, set up near a field of nearly spent yellow late-season flowers and pine trees in the background.
This summer I have enjoyed a mixture of printed books, Kindle reading, and audiobooks in my car. I have mostly been using the Libby library app to borrow both written and audible books this summer. Free! I’ll rate them on a five star system and may or may not say much about the book :). Listed in no particular order.
The Nightingale: A Novel – Kristen Hanah. Two french sisters each fight the Nazi invasion during WW2 in their own way. 4/5
Small Great Things – Jodi Picoult. If you are only going to read one book on race and systemic suppression of black people in the U.S. you should read When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Cullors, but if you’ve already read that, this is a great, though painful, novel about a black labor and delivery nurse and white supremacist. The story is well told, teaching/reminding us of the challenges and indignities suffering by black people in American culture every day. 4/5
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – Robert M. Pirsig. Yes, I know he just died yesterday, but I’m still going to pan his book. The philosophical musings strike a few interesting points, but really it drones on interminably and is a bit sophomoric. Best description I’ve heard of it: it would have been a great essay. Do yourself a favor and read the cliff notes version. 2.5/5
Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness – Amy Irvine. I reviewed it here https://freeyourinnermaude.com/desert-cabal-by-amy-irvine-a-mini-book-review/ 5/5
La Belle Sauvage, Book 1, The Book of Dust – Philip Pullman. Author of the famous and wonderful Golden Compass series. My sister and niece considered it a bit slow, and I can see why, but I found the young protagonist to be endearing. 3.5./5
Unsheltered – Barbara Kingsolver. The fact that I could not for the life of me remember what this was about without looking it up is probably telling. A good enough story, I liked how she showed the parallels between politics over time and she does it with the usual Kingsolver skill and thoroughness. 3.5/5
The House of Spirits – Isabel Allende. If you haven’t read any Allende, it is time. This particular novel is set first in Chili and then in California during the gold rush. Allende always has adventurous and interesting strong female characters. 4.5/5
The Cutout – Caroline Carmichael. Enjoyable, can’t put it down CIA thriller, not five stars because it’s not great literature, but a great page turner. 4/5
Fluke – Christopher Moore. Fun and funny surrealism, humor is a bit fratboyish. 3.5/5
1Q84 – Haruki Murakami. Surreal novel set in Japan and translated from Japanese. This is the second Murakami novel I have read and I highly recommend him! He has an amazing imagination, incredibly well developed characters, and even in translation the quality of the writing really comes across. 4.5/5
Just Kids – Patty Smith. A memoir she wrote because she promised her best friend, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, that she would. If you love music and art this is a great read just to find out all the amazing artists she was hanging out with, but what really got me was the serious starving artist lifestyle she and the others were living in NYC in the late 60s. It vividly paints a time and place I could not otherwise imagine, and a lifestyle lived in dedication to art that I could not ever imagine choosing myself. 4.5/5
Educated – Tara Westover. It is amazing what she survived and the education levels she went on to achieve. This woman has grit like few others. Incredibly painful to read about the physical and mental abuse in her family. 4.5/5
Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman. Fantasy. Enjoyable read, but another one where I seriously could not remotely remember what it was about until I looked it up, and even now only small snippets come back to me. Fluff, enjoyable fluff. 2.5/5
Who is Vera Kelly – Rosalie Knecht. This novel features a lesbian CIA agent in Argentina during a coup. Interesting enough light reading, I swear I don’t have a CIA thing, just a coincidence that there are two on the list. 2.5/5
The Great Believers – Rebecca Makkai. THIS NOVEL. Maybe it’s a bit of a recency effect, but I found it to be incredibly moving, informative, and the characters really stayed with me after I finished the book. It is the story of the AIDS crisis in Chicago during the 1980s as told through several very complex and well-developed characters and it had a great ending. I highly recommend it. 5/5
The Thing About Jelly Fish – Ali Benjamin. This is a young adult novel that I accidently downloaded in a rush to listen to on a drive. It is a nice story of a super geeky (possibly Aspergers) 12 year old girl who can’t adjust to her best friend becoming one of “those girls”; girls that are superficial, worried about looks, and flirt with boys. The protagonist has to process the death of her (previously) best-friend. I think there are great lessons in here for Tween age youth that are trying to find their place in the world. AND there is tons of cool info about jellyfish! From my perspective it was a bit painfully slow, but I’m not 12… 4/5