Last of the Summer Reading

Welcome to September!  That means, among other things, that my summer reading log is finished.  I had hoped to add a couple more to the list, but those in-progress books will have to go on the fall log.  Even so, I have five books left to talk about for summer.

 

I finished out Tamora Pierce’s Lioness books (In the Hand of the Goddess, The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, Lioness Rampant).  I enjoyed them all.  I also particularly enjoyed that each of the books in the editions I bought had some of Pierce’s reflections on the books, which were her first, now that time has gone by and she’s written a lot more.  As a reader, I could see that she had developed over time, since I read some of her later books first, but her honesty in discussing how and why that development occurred was fascinating and encouraging.  Every time I read one of her books, I think I say the same thing, which is that I wish I had met them when I was younger.

 

I did meet Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery when I was younger and I loved her.  I was a little worried that I might not like her again now.  But she remains charming and hilarious and imaginative.  The kind of writing in the book is not something often encountered these days, being much more ornately poetical about the world’s beauty.  There are flaws and things that have changed over time, but on the whole the love that suffuses the book wins.  I have the rest of the series on my to-read shelf.

 

The non-fiction selections I am plowing through continue to be depressing and educational and useful.  City of Inmates by Kelly Lytle Hernandez chronicles the history of incarceration in Los Angeles and discusses it as a tool for settler colonialism.  Jails and prisons controlled poor and/or nonwhite populations from the beginning and continue to do so in the present.  This is not a good thing.

 

Summer reading total:  27 books.  Year-to-date reading total:  69 books.