If I only judged August by how many books I read or how much I liked the books I read, this would be my worst month of 2024. Thankfully, life is made up of more than the books I read! Taking everything else into consideration, I feel great about last month. It was so full of adventure and hobbies.
The Things I Did:
In the first week of August, my Dad visited for the week. He replaced the sprinkler heads in our backyard and taught me all about how to adjust, clean, and maintain them. Now everything back there is green and lush. (For the record, I asked him not to do any work and admonished him to rest, but he ignored me flat-out and now my back yard is gorgeous.)
In the second week of August, our family had a week-long "staycation." I put that in quotations because it really wasn't a stay-anything! But we got into the habit of calling it that after canceling our original plans to trek to the Oregon coast and deciding to stay closer to home. We visited the bison and geysers of Yellowstone, kayaked under the Perrine, celebrated Jordan's 20th birthday, and took a family drive in the mountains. The kids rode in the bed of the truck while I blasted their favorite music from years past. It felt like a little blip of what life was like when they were younger: windows down, music blasting, a forested drive, and everyone singing and laughing. Of course they ended up with sunburns. We also met a moose--a first for us. While we oohed and aahed at her majesty, it's fair to say that she wasn't as into us as we were with her.
The grand finale was a trip to Utah for Twenty-One Pilots' Clancy Tour. We saw the most incredible concert and checked off the top item from two of the kids' Bucket Lists. I will never forget the sights and sounds of seeing my kids sing their hearts out to their favorite band.
In the third week of August, my home had been thoroughly neglected for two weeks and was showing signs of revolt. My garden was also erupting with produce, threatening to spoil its offerings if I didn't get to harvesting. We pulled the onions and potatoes and laid them out to cure in the garage, collected an unbelievable amount of tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, and peppers, and then I set about preserving it all. I got my house in order and Jeff strongly encouraged me to rest a little, too. (After going at top speed for two weeks, my body was also starting to show its own signs of revolt.)
In the fourth week of August, Jeff repeatedly remarked about how much it felt like fall. While I think he meant it as a glum pronouncement, a few of us revved with giddiness each time he said it. Fall is almost here! Meg and I made sourdough cinnamon rolls for my book club. We had a wonderful meeting, which reminded me again of how blessed I am to have likeminded friends. Jeff and the kids also made plans to go out of town for a convention next week, which they are all pumped about. The kids started their classes at CSI online. They went to a Bible study with a group of other college kids and I tended to a surprisingly large pile of correspondence, follow-up phone calls, and appointment-making. I'm feeling happy about that because I love the feeling of going into a new month with all of my loose-ends tied up.
And that was my month! Busy, fun, honestly kind of exhausting, but wonderful overall.
The Books I Read:
Now let's talk about the books I read. August held the longest string of DNF's I've had in years--maybe ever! I started quite a few books that came highly recommended from good sources, but DNF'd for content or boredom.
Here's how I rate books:
DNF = Did not finish
1/5 = I hated this book
2/5 = I did not like this book
3/5 = I liked this book
4/5 = I really liked this book
5/5 = I loved this book
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Richardson
Finally, after years on my TBR list, I read this book! I don't know what kept me from getting to it all this time, but regular recommendations from bookish people are what kept it coming to the forefront again and again. I enjoyed this book very much, though it was pretty sad.
This is the story of Cussy, a young librarian for the rural Pack Horse Library. She lives alone with her father, a coal miner fighting for miner's rights and battling the dreaded black lung. In this story, it's 1936 and we follow along as she runs her route, cares for her father, and navigates office politics in the main library in town. All of this is made much more difficult by the fact that Cussy has a genetic trait that caused the blood disorder methemoglobinemia, which causes her skin to appear blue. I knew about this condition before reading the book, but hadn't considered the implications for the actual people who were living with it in Kentucky, a region rich with superstition and prejudice at the time.
Toward the end of the book it started feeling like a Love Comes Softly story, both in content and tone. Thinking back, I don't think the rest of the book was like that at all--only the last 10% or so. At any rate, I really enjoyed reading this book and am looking forward to the sequel, The Book Woman's Daughter.
My rating: 4/5
Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward
This month's Close Reads Podcast schedule included this award winner. This is a book on every major list in recent years and I understand why. Jesmyn Ward did a great job writing this book. It takes you into a world that a lot of people don't know much about, where most will experience shock and have a strong emotional response.
The story is told by a mother named Leoni and her son, Jojo. They live with Leoni's parents when the book starts because Jojo's father is in prison for selling/making meth. We follow them as they travel to retrieve him after his release, and the story goes back-and-forth between the two main characters. The events are chaotic and rang very true to me.
I understand why people say this book is so important. It's a gritty tale of drug addiction, unhealthy relationships, and domestic discord in a low-income community. It explores a lot of hard ideas and attempts to reveal how all of these components feed off of one another, creating a perpetual cycle of dysfunction.
The problem with this book for me is that it's unbearable to watch kids deal with gross things and neglect. And for whatever reason, I'm going through a bit of a sensitive time and need to step back from sad stories to avoid being brought down from them. Also, over the years I've read plenty of books similar to this one, which explore the dark side of sin, poverty, and addiction. I think of stories like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Rabbit, Memphis, and The Hate U Give, among others. Overall I found this book painful to read--I just wanted it to be over.
My rating: 2/5
The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown
This true story was our in-person book club pick for August. Most people have heard of this book and those who haven't probably know about the 2023 movie of the same name. It's the story of the underdog Washington rowing team who made it all the way to the 1936 Olympics.
It was a slow start for me, taking a few hours to get into the story. I was worried that this would be the first book club book that I didn't like, but of course was going to finish it either way. Then, somewhere along the way, I became completely invested in these boys. One day I stood doing dishes, listening to the story, and was surprised to find tears welling up in my eyes! How did it get me without my noticing?!?
I loved learning about rowing and actually did glean a more in-depth understanding of what it was like on the ground in Germany right before Hitler rolled out the first of his war plans. Daniel James Brown is an incredible storyteller. His word choices delight me, and the same can be said for the way he paints pictures. It seems that he uses the opposite strategy as Stephen King, who famously (and successfully) writes the most simple version of a story. But Brown's writing didn't feel self-indulgent or flowery. It felt like an added feature of the story.
My rating: 4/5
This is the September pick in the Barnes & Noble book club. Unfortunately, I had to DNF it for content. I was interested in the premise but sexual content peppered the storyline and seemed like it was going to continue on that way. There's also a fair amount of language. Could have been an interesting story, but the author ruined it. Bummer.
My rating: DNF
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk
My, oh my, this book was not for me.
We have a Polish village with three elderly winter residents. One dies and the other two find him. Our narrator is one of the two, a woman. This woman is remarkably odd: she sleeps in a linen pant suit, is religiously into astrology, and brings home a dead deer head to bury. But the thing that caused me to DNF it was the simple fact that it was boring me into an early grave! I listened at 1.5x speed to hurry things along but ultimately found nothing compelling about this story. Now are you ready for me to drop a bomb on you? This book won the 2018 Nobel Prize for literature.
While others apparently think its the greatest book of 2018, I disliked it so wholeheartedly that I cannot understand the Nobel win. I scanned Goodreads reviews and saw that I'm in good company. While there are a lot of 4 and 5 star reviews, many expressed feelings similar to mine with the sentiment: Who on EARTH is on the board of the committees who award these prizes?!?
My favorite review: "This book is like the author said, “I would love to write a murder mystery, but I want 90% of it to be inane word salad about horoscopes and mustard soup,” and the editor was like “Deal, but only if we also capitalize random words throughout and only the last 20 pages are interesting in any way,” and they shook hands. This book was not my bag, baby."
My rating: DNF
The Half Moon, by Mary Beth Keane
I DNF'd this one after 2 hours of listening. I feel like I've heard this story a few times before: New York bar owner, money troubles, IVF, infidelity, separation...
Similar to We are the Brennans and The Connelly's of County Down, (both great Tracey Lange books), but this one wants for dimension in its characters as well as nuance in the storyline. The Half Moon isn't a bad book, but it is a book that feels like many others I've already read.
My rating: DNF
Normal People, by Sally Rooney
This is the DNF that bothered me the most. It's highly reviewed, widely recommended, and was adapted into a Hulu series in 2020.
It also has so much sexual content. Nitty-gritty and in detail, within the first hour of listening. It was mild the first instance, then ramped up steeply and quickly. The particularly bothersome part is that when the story starts (with the graphic descriptions of sexual situations), the main characters are underage teenagers.
Now, apart from the moral problem I have with sexual content in books and how much I believe it's being used to lull people into accepting sin and hyper-sexuality, I just gotta' say that it's super weird to me that so many people are indulging in reading the graphic details of two children having sex.
My rating: DNF
There Are No Grown-Ups: A Midlife Coming-of-Age Story, by Pamela Druckerman.
I DNF'd this book because it wasn't what I was looking for. I thought it was one thing but it was another. No blame, just not for me. I wonder if it might be a right book, wrong time situation, though.
I will say, I was starting to feel like Ebenezer Scrooge after DNF'ing so many books in a row, so I was reluctant to do the same with this one. I knew that if I chose to quit this book, I might need to go ahead and don a nightcap and striped pajamas, to fully commit to playing the character. But then I remembered that I only have one life and don't want to waste it reading books that aren't for me. I think that means that sometimes I have to be a Scrooge about DNF'ing books.
So does anyone have a candleholder I can borrow?
My rating: DNF
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, by Elizabeth Taylor (No, not that Elizabeth Taylor!)
Following along with the "Close Reads" schedule, I read Mrs. Palfrey at the end of August. This is the story of a woman who goes to live at the Claremont Hotel, where a small group of other elderly people have already settled. These are all people of some means who, for one reason or another, don't have another place to go. Propriety and the need to keep up appearances causes a situation where a switcharoo happens with one of Mrs. Palfrey's relatives. I don't want to include any spoilers here, but at any rate this creates plenty of moments of levity and cheer in the story. I thought this was particularly smart for the author to do because otherwise this is a bit of a sad tale. I think she balanced the elements well.
I thought this was a great book, simple and quiet but worthwhile. I loved that it didn't contain any content warnings, agenda, or sensational material but was still rich and made me think and feel a great deal. And certainly one of the most unique endings I've ever read!
My rating: 4/5
Okay, that's it for summer 2024 reading!
Look, I know that most of September is technically summer but summer is my least favorite season and September is void of any of the things I dislike about summer, so I see no reason to contaminate it with the same label as July and August. Give June to summer if you have to, to keep things even. But September deserves to be a fall month! Is that a controversial opinion? Let me know what you think!
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