July 2026 Reading

It is theoretically possible that I could finish another book today, but given that the ones I have in progress are long and I’ve just started them, I am going to assume I won’t.  That means that my July reading total is 14 books.

 

Nine of those books were audiobooks.  It turns out that when I’m not excited about what’s on TV, I listen to a lot more stories.  I finished out Patricia Wrede’s Enchanted Forest series by listening to Talking to Dragons.  It is as charming as the rest of the books, although I found myself wishing Cimorene had a larger part.  It all wraps up nicely in the end, so that’s good.

 

I listened to three Terry Pratchett books:  The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, and Equal Rites.  As always, I laughed and I thought and I enjoyed.  I am not the only one:  I have had to wait to listen to each book from the library.

 

While I was waiting, I have been listening to whatever Agatha Christie books are available.  That means I am jumping around in her works, reading some late books and some early ones.  It’s interesting.  This month, I listened to Cat Among the Pigeons, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans, Cards on the Table, Sleeping Murder, and Elephants Can Remember.  The plots are… complicated.  I mean, fiction is fiction, and I’m willing to suspend my disbelief a good bit, but there’s nothing plausible about evil twins, drug gangs, and the like.  That said, I have fun listening.

 

I read one kid book, cleaned out from my son’s shelf.  I had read it before, but long enough ago that I remembered nothing about it.  It was The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Andrews Edwards.  It’s charming, if a little dated in its conception of sex roles.

 

Similarly, the one nonfiction book I read came from the same source.  The Ravenmaster by Christopher Skaife is a memoir by a Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London whose job it is to care for the tower ravens.  It’s chatty and fun and informative.  I’m sure we bought it on a visit.  As a book, it’s perfectly good.  As a souvenir, it is well above a tea towel, commemorative spoon, or fridge magnet.

 

I read three books that count as fiction.  The first is disguised as nonfiction:  Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village by Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper.  It is a send-up of all the tropes beloved by people like me who are addicted to Midsommer Murders and Grantchester and the like.  Quick, funny read and it was a welcome birthday gift this year that I finally got around to reading.

 

Nicholson Baker is the kind of writer who makes other writers cry, I think.  He’s that good.  The Anthologist is about a writer who is supposed to be writing an introduction to a poetry anthology.  There’s a lot about poetry in the book, but a lot more about how the writer’s life is falling apart and any number of brilliant digressions.  It’s not the most plot-driven book ever, but it’s a great ride.

 

Finally, I read Theo of Golden by Allen Levi.  It’s my mom’s copy of the book and I need to mail it back to her.  She loved it.  Like really loved it.  I… did not.  It is Levi’s first novel and it reads like it, in my opinion.  The prose does not flow for me.  For the first half of the book, I was willing to deal with that because I wanted to know what happened.  As the book progressed toward its end, I just got madder and madder at it.  Many people seem to adore this book.  It’s a best-seller.  And it is definitely not my cup of tea.  If you love it, you do you and I will leave you alone to do it, but, for once, I am not having a hard time returning a borrowed book.

 

July total:  14

Summer to date:  32

2026 to date:  74 

June 2026 Reading

Another month of reading is done.  I often read less during the summer than other times of year, for reasons that have been unclear.  However, I am between binges on the TV, so I’ve been listening to a lot more audiobooks while I do my crafts.  This is padding my totals.  In June, I read 18 books.

Of those, nine were audiobooks.  I have specific rules for audiobooks for Reasons.  I need to have read the book the regular way before.  It needs to be a book I don’t find stressful in any way.  And it needs to be available from the library.  Because of that last requirement, I often have to wait a good chunk of time for the books I want to listen to to be available.  This explains why I listened to so many of the Agatha Christie b-list books:  they were available right away.  I listened to Death on the Nile, Murder in Mesopotamia, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Murder at the Vicarage, The Murder on the Links, and The Body in the Library.  All were perfectly reasonably done.  Several of the books were narrated by actors who played Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, and Captain Hastings.  The fun in these books is that the plots are so torturously convoluted.  No one in their right mind would commit murder in the complicated ways that these perps do it.  There are disguises, faked deaths, double crosses, spies, and even petty practical jokes.  I will carry on listening until such time as I run out of choices.

 

I finished up the Wee Free Men series by Terry Pratchett with I Shall Wear Midnight.  I can’t say enough how much I adore Pratchett.  I laugh and I think and I feel reassured that at least some people in the world are doing the hard work to make it better.

 

I listened to the next two books in Patricia Wrede’s Enchanted Forest series, Searching for Dragons and Calling on Dragons.  Of the two, I preferred the former to the latter, although I do love the cooperative nature of all the stories, the insistence on powerful women, and the funny bits.

 

I am having so much fun reading fiction, but there is still nonfiction to be read.  One of my book groups at church read The Lost History of Christianity by Philip Jenkins.  Obviously, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, so to speak, but I found it fascinating because it traces the history of Christianity in the East and its interactions with Islam and other eastern religions.  It was a great corrective to the western bias we carry around with us.

 

Some folks may remember that I had a Year of Don Quijote a few years back.  My theme years tend to bleed into other years because who stops enthusiasms by calendar date?  Ilan Stevens has written an interesting book in Quixote:  The Novel and the World.  He traces the influence of the book from its inception.  It’s definitely a book for Quijote nerds, but I enjoyed it.

 

As I mentioned last month, my kid moved out and that meant that a bunch of books migrated over to my shelves.  I read three of the kid books this month.  Great Lies to Tell Small Kids by Andy Riley is pretty fun.  I don’t actually recommend telling kids lies.  (My kids’ dad gave them this book, not me.)  As an adult, I enjoyed it.  I would not give it to a kid.

 

One of my sons was obsessed (is obsessed) with rabbits.  There was some trickle-down to my younger son and so It Came from Beneath the Bed! by James Howe came to me.  Howe is the author of the Bunnicula  books and this is a spin-off series “written” by the family puppy.  Hilarious.  Highly recommend.

 

For Reasons, I will not buy any books by Neil Gaiman ever again.  But he does not get any more money from me reading a hand-me-down book.  Fortunately, the Milk was funny and silly and goofily creative.  I just couldn’t read it without thinking about the real life situation with the nanny.  So I don’t recommend buying it.

 

Then I read some regular adult fiction.  Jasper Fforde is a writer I enjoy.  I was delighted to find a book of his that I had not yet read.  The Constant Rabbit is a little too true to be comfortable reading.  We live in racist times.  This satire doesn’t exactly land.  Although I think we do need to be reminded that we can’t be good people and go along with oppressive systems.  Of course there are funny bits in the book, but mostly the feeling I was left with was of being disturbed and motivated to fight the power.

 

Yann Martel’s book Son of Nobody is just as creative as you’d expect from him.  There are two narratives going on in the book:  a discovered epic about an everyday soldier in the Trojan War and the dissolution of life of the scholar who pieces it together.  More than half of the book exists in footnotes.  I liked it a lot.

 

I read all the Elizabeth George novels about Lynley.  A Slowly Dying Cause is an okay mystery, but advances the story of Lynley in an interesting way.  Again, the telling of the story is interesting, with diary entries from the victim interspersed with more traditional narration.  I enjoy her characters, especially Havers.

 

Finally, Deanna Raybourn is the best.  I think I told everybody I knew that they should go out and buy Killers of a Certain Age.  The sequel, Kills Well with Others, is just as hilarious and fun.

 

 

June total:  18

Summer total to date:  18

2026 to date:  60