As June came to a close, I felt like I hadn’t really read that much – five or six books maybe. June was a different month because I got literal time off the clock, so to say, and I let loose with reckless abandon, avoiding anything that might call upon the slightest exertion of self-discipline. The first weekend Caroline and I drove out to Halsey for a weekend of Girl Scout camp, a complete disengagement from my regular reading routine. The next week was VBS which meant a week of mornings to myself (Caroline attended while Ben and Joey volunteered lest you think our family didn’t do our part). Then the kids went to the farm for a week so I had my whole life to myself, almost. After that the boys went to summer camp for a week, and while I had activities planned for Caroline and we did fun things together, she, too, likes reading and working on projects so I still had quite a bit of time to myself.
While off the clock, I didn’t read ahead for school. I didn’t pace myself on my fun reads. I didn’t get books finished for book clubs or podcasts I follow. I even gave up reading Les Miserables after getting about 20 hours into it (a mere 40 hours of audio remain). When I confessed to Steve that I was thinking of quitting, his response was that a book with the word miserable as part of its title probably isn’t going to be very fun to read. I had read it on my own while I was in college and remembered enjoying it, but being under a time frame for a reading group seemed to be sucking the joy out of it. So I quit.
In the end, I did in fact read more than just five or six books. Here they are in the order I finished them.
Helen Simonson, The Summer Before the War. I finished reading this while Caroline worked on crafts at Girl Scout camp. I was sitting in a room full of people trying not to cry as I finished the last few chapters. No one seemed to notice, though. The books lives up to its cover. It is lighthearted as they concern themselves with things like who the next Latin master will be in the earlier part of the book. Then the war begins and they turn to more serious things, like whether or not a young lady will continue seeing her suitor if he hasn’t yet signed up to fight for England. A heartwarming tale and a great book to kick off summer reading.
Jonathan Auxier, Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes. The drive to Girl Scout Camp in Halsey was long enough for us to listen to this book in its entirety. Lots of scenic miles coupled with a great story make for memorable summer reading. This book is fantasy along the lines of Alice in Wonderland, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. The author is very well-versed in classics which brings a certain charm to his writing that I loved. Sarah Mackenzie had an author event with Auxier on the Read-Aloud Revival in June and opened the discussing by reading aloud the first two chapters of Auxier’s next book Sweep coming out this fall. Caroline and I are both excited to read it.
Frederic Bastiat, The Law. I read this over three days in the first week of the month when I was still reading ahead for school early each morning. Bastiat talks about how the law can be used as a basis for plunder. The law isn’t to regulate our consciences, Bastiat argues, but rather it should be to prevent the rights of one from interfering with the rights of another. Very interesting read in light of today’s issues.
Laura Vanderkam, Off the Clock. I have followed Laura’s blog for years and read her previous books like 168 Hours and What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast. I’ve even tracked my time like she suggests but quit because I didn’t seem to gain anything from it besides increasing frustration with those times of day that seem to perpetually be a total loss. Rather than focus on how many hours people work, Vanderkam talks about what they do with their down time and how to make the most of it. I loved this book so much that as soon as I finished reading, I immediately started over and am reading it once again, albeit much more slowly so I can absorb more of it. This is not the last time you will hear me speak of this book.
Dorthea Brande, On Becoming a Writer. Janet Burroway in her text Writing Fiction references Brande in her first chapter. I took a fiction-writing class in college and was intrigued by Brande’s ideas but never read her book. This was another book I devoured in a couple of days and started reading all over again the moment I finished it. Brande talks about being a writer vs how to practice the technical aspects of writing (plot, point of view, etc.). A great book if you love writing but have no idea what you want to write about or if you’re even cut out to be writer.
Laura Lippman, Sunburn. I started this at the end of May hoping for a fun summer read but dropped it as I soon tired of all the bedroom scenes. But I picked it up again the second week of June solely because I was curious how the author would wrap up the plot. It’s a psychological thriller where a young woman abruptly abandons her family and quietly takes on a new life in a small town in Delaware. A private eye has been hired to follow her but instead falls in love with her (hence the bedroom scenes). The plot does thicken – it turns out she has a previous life with an abusive marriage and a special needs child who ended up in an institution. Eventually it all comes together and the ending is well worth it if you like a good thriller.
Willa Cather, My Antonia. I should have been listening to Les Miserables on my morning walks, but instead I listened to My Antonia which has been in my reading queue since I read to the first two books in Cather’s prairie trilogy last winter. A man tells the story of a Bohemian neighbor girl he knew during their days growing up on the prairie. If you love family gatherings when people sit around and talk about who they knew, what life was like, and where people ended up, this is a great read.
Kristen Hannah, The Great Alone. This was the MMD book club selection for June with the author joining us at the book discussion. I loved Nightingale so had high hopes for another book by Hannah. It was a tough read, though. The father comes home from Vietnam, greatly changed by the war. He is abusive and struggles to keep a job. They move to Alaska to live on an abandoned claim in hopes of a better life. Life is great during the long sunny days of summer, but winter comes and the darkness bears down on them. Other readers kept talking about how all the great scenery in the book made them want to travel to Alaska; between the abuse and the struggle against the elements, I felt quite the opposite. Things eventually come to a head and she and her mother do find a better life (it is a book after all and that is the plot), but getting to that point makes for quite a story. If you want to understand why people in an abusive relationship might refuse to leave, this book may give insight. A good read, but I didn’t love it like I loved The Nightingale.
Tara Westover, Educated. This book kept popping up on my radar, but quite frankly, it scared me: it’s a tale of homeschooling gone bad, a worst case scenario that people who don’t homeschool want to think is universally true of homeschoolers. But when a Facebook homeschooling group I’m in decided to read and discuss it, I took a deep breath and started reading. This book is about a very dysfunctional family where religion is taken to the extreme. Tara isn’t the only one of her siblings to break away and get an education, but her doing so affected her relationship with her family quite dramatically. So it’s a book that is more of family drama and less of homeschooling. True, her parents taught her to read, albeit just religious books, and they did help her where they could when she studied for college entrance examinations (though they had little to offer), and she did succeed in getting a Ph.D. in spite of the lack of education she got as a child. The homeschooling parents I know are quite the opposite of her parents in the time and effort we all pour into educating our children. Just the same, every homeschooling parent I know also worries that they are not doing enough to educate our children. So in a backwards sort of way, Westover’s success despite her parents lack of effort can also be a sort of inspiration – she faced great odds and yet she succeeded, so therefore our children who have so much more can, too. The discussion I’m waiting for begins in mid-July – I’m looking forward to hearing what other homeschooling parents thought of this book.
Jack London, The Call of the Wild.This was the June selection for the kids book club at our local library, held the last week of the month. I’d read it before but didn’t remember much of it so I quickly re-read it over the weekend. A family dog is captured and taken north to work pulling sleds in Canada. Reminiscent of Black Beauty, he is transferred from owner to owner, receiving differing care, some from those who realize his value and cultivate it and others who abuse it and almost break him. At the discussion, several of the kids hadn’t read all of it, saying it was too brutal and graphic, but after hearing the discussion, they changed their minds and planned to finish it.
David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon. This was a Now Read This selection earlier this year but I never got my hands on it. Then One Book One Lincoln announced it as one of its three finalists Memorial Day weekend which meant a wealth of copies made available at the library. Dozens of Osage Indians were found dead in random incidents back in the early 20th century when oil had been found on their otherwise worthless land and they all of a sudden found themselves some of the richest people in the nation. Agents from what eventually became the F.B.I. head to Oklahoma to try and unravel what was going on. The book was well-researched and made for an engaging read, but I won’t be voting for it as the finalist in the One Book One Lincoln event.
Alexander William Kinglake, Eothen: or Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East. This is a geography selection for Ambleside Year 10 that I began in the first week of the month and finally got back to at the end of the month. Kinglake gives a firsthand account as he tours the Middle East during the 1830s, giving a glimpse into what so many of those countries we hear about today were like then. Englishmen were still quite foreign to these areas and only recently had it become safe to travel there. The book is filled with interesting tidbits. He gets impatient with his camel and starts walking ahead of his group, only to find he has gotten so far ahead that he has completely lost them and is stranded in the desert without food or water. He visits Cairo during an episode of the plague. But comparing those nations as he saw them then to what we hear of them today is what I found most fascinating.
James W. Sire, How to Read Slowly. Another Ambleside Year 10 selection started at the beginning of the month, abandoned, and then quickly finished at the end. After reading Morimer Adler’s How to Read a Book, this book felt quite simplistic. I can see using it as a sub for Adler’s much more in-depth examination of the subject, but I see no need to read both. This book is from a decidedly Christian point of view. I found his thoughts at the end about finding time to read and finding good books particularly interesting as notes from a fellow reader.
Anne Tyler, Dinner at Homesick Restaurant. I love reading about family drama; Tyler does not disappoint. In this book, the father comes home only on the weekends and then quits coming home at all, though the mother makes excuses until his absence becomes a quiet understanding among them. The kids grow up and go their various ways, their lives still intersecting, yet the fallout from their fathers absence looms over them. At the end of the book, the mother dies and one of the kids contacts their father to let him know of her death. He actually shows up at the funeral and they all go to eat at Homesick Restaurant afterwards (owned by one of the three children and a place where they meet often in the book, though they never seem to be able to eat an entire meal together without someone getting mad and leaving early). I loved Tyler’s A Spool of Blue Thread and while this book didn’t quite live up to my feelings about that one, it was still very good.
Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier. This was the Guardian book club selection for June. A soldier goes off to fight in WWI, yet when he is injured, rather than contacting his wife, he contacts an old (albeit brief) flame from 15 years previous. It turns out he has lost his memory and has no recollection of the ten years he has been married to his wife, the home they built together and the children they had. The plot is great, but the book is short (the audiobook is just shy of three hours). I wish it would have been re-worked to be a full length novel, but it is what it is. A pleasurable short read to wrap up the month.