July Books

Hi everyone. 

Today I want to share my reading from last month. I write this post so I can look back and see what I've read (it's especially handy for when I can't remember the title of a book or something on that line). I know many people love book posts as much as I do, so if you do, then please feel free to read on.

I managed to get through the first half of the month with 4 books going at the same time. The problem with reading so many books  at once is that even though I read quite a lot and I could keep the books straight (because they were so different from  each other), it felt like I never finished any  of those books in a timely fashion.😞

However, July ended up being a good reading month. Not only did I complete some fiction and non-fiction reading books, but I read through a couple of cookbooks and also a coffee table book too . And I apologize, this first book review is a bit on the long side. 

I was still on an Iceland kick in early July, so after I finished reading about Icelandic horses (as written about in my June book post) I went on to read another book by the same author. This time Nancy Marie Brown is writing about women as Vikings. This book starts by mentioning the  Viking warrior grave found in Birka, Sweden. The grave was actually found in the 1800's and assumed to be male. It was filled with warrior weapons, many from the Middle East. There were also 2 horses buried in the same grave, and the actual body was buried sitting up in a position that would be typical of a Viking warrior.

Since there were some bone pieces left and a DNA sample could be taken, they were able  to confirm that it was actually a female in this grave. I had watched a documentary about this fascinating archeological find, and since I like this author's writing, I thought I would give this book a try.

The author starts each chapter with her own fictionalized "story" of a small piece of this warrior woman's life. She does this not to tell you facts about the woman (since no one really knows her story), but more as a lead-in for the chapter's topic. These chapter topics  include various histories, archeological finds and many interpretations of Viking life in the 800-900's.  This information is all documented as this book ends with an index, notes and sources, many which are discussed within the book.

I loved this non-fiction book, although I know it may not be for everyone. It was a brutal time to live, and some of the customs described are hard to relate to in our modern day perspective.  It wasn't uncommon to murder someone, especially a person in power.  As horrible as slavery is, it was also common in Viking communities. And life could be bloody too. Yet the Vikings were also communal people, just as long as you were a part of their community. There were community feasts and even much of child rearing was communal. The authors also touches chapters relating to  weaving, food, architecture, sword forging and many other general topics that are not bloody, based on war, or gorey. 

 I found it fascinating to learn more about that time period and these people in Norway, Sweden and Denmark (with a scattering of other countries) because I didn't know much about that time period, at least  in Scandinavia. I did know that Vikings raided parts of the British Isles; I knew they settled Iceland and had settlements in Greenland and even ended up in Newfoundland. These facts are also discussed in this book, just not to a great extent. 

 Personally I often wonder if I had Viking very distant relatives, which I may well have had since I am very Nordic according to both my family history and to my DNA also. I  know my paternal grandfather's family tree goes back to the 1400's in one area of southern Sweden, so maybe. And maybe that explains why I enjoyed this book. Even though we live in crazy times, I wouldn’t want to be  a Viking either.  Yet I really enjoyed reading so much about them.

My next read was book 4 in the Maggie Hope mystery series.  This is a fictional, World War 2 series (at least so far in my reading) that is based on  real history by author Susan Elia MacNeal.  The main character is Maggie Hope, who is  working with British intelligence. These books should be read in order because the story continues from book to book, along with  the timeline. 

This book starts off in November of 1941. Maggie is now training spies in Scotland after her emotional and heart wrenching spy trip to Berlin (which was the story in book 3). Along with the Maggie  Hope story is the story of Pearl Harbor. Mostly it is the lead up and initial bombing of  Pearl Harbor as Japan has also joined Germany and Italy as countries aligned in the war. Japan is also in negotiations with the US as the US wants Japan to leave China which it invaded a few years earlier. Yet there is a lot of intel that says they might be planning an attack on a Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor.

This is another enjoyable read. The characters are well done, and I like how the story grows with each book. I also very much like the authors notes at the end. She makes no bones that the story is fiction, but she does explain herself in these notes. And she gives a few book titles as well as the basic facts for events in the novel.

I recommend this series, and I will also once again say thanks to Jeanie for mentioning it. 

I hadn't much been in a non-mystery fiction mood for a bit, but I  decided to see if I could change that. My first listen for July was  this book, Magic Lessons, by Alice Hoffman. Years ago I read and really enjoyed  Hoffman's novel Practical Magic.. This  listen  is one of the 2 prequels to that particular book that were published after the original novel.

This story is set in the 1600's and describes the life  of the witch Maria and her daughter Faith. They are the ancestors of the sisters who are main characters in Practical Magic. You don't need to have read Practical Magic to enjoy this book since Maria’s future relatives don’t figure into this story.  Hoffman is a very lyrical writer, and she tells a great story about Maria making her way from childhood to adulthood and also going from England to Curacao and then to what will become the United States. She then intertwined Faith's story along with her mother's.  I did have a few questions about how true to facts the author's descriptions of living in  17th century Salem, Massachusetts were, but parts of the story did include some historical names and events. Even if they weren't totally accurate, the author made  it feel all believable. 

I’m some ways this story reminds me of the novel Hester I read earlier this year. However Hoffman is a much more lyrical storyteller than the author of Hester. They were both good books; however,  I did very much enjoy this story and Hoffman’s writing style. If the month started with me being not  in a fiction reading mood, this novel helped change that. 

Last month I listened to a biography of Julia Child that was a pretty thorough read of her life up until the late 1990's. One of the cookbooks this biography  discussed was this one, From Julia Child's Kitchen.  According to the biography, this  cookbook was truly Julia's book, a work of love of her own favorite recipes and tie-ins to one of her television shows. I was curious what made this her book, at least compared to the other cookbooks of hers I have read or used. I found a practically pristine copy on eBay for under $5 that included free shipping so I decided to check out this cookbook.

Since it is summer and hot, I haven't done  much "experimenting" in the kitchen. The first thing I found in this cookbook is a rye bread recipe which is top on my bread baking list once it cools off. Other recipes that look good are some of the soups and some cold weather meals (like beef pot roast), as well as some desserts. In some ways I can't wait for cool weather to give them a try., although I'm not rushing for summer to end.

Although I didn't read through every recipe in this book, I did read a lot of info about various cooking techniques. An example of one that  was interesting  was hard boiling eggs. It seems like such a simple thing, but in fact there are some techniques to it. Who knew? Next time I make a hard boiled egg I am going to try the Julia Child way and hopefully avoid the grey ring around the yolk or the cracked and leaking egg. Neither of these usually  happens to me, but sometimes they do. And I've never really thought about  what you should do to get perfect hard boiled eggs, other than not cooking them for hours. Can you tell I am not a trained chef? 😉 I could write more about some other cooking techniques, but there are other books to review.

Marie Benedict is a favorite historical fiction author of mine, and Eleanor Roosevelt was a woman who I greatly admire, so this book seemed like a no-brainer to read next.  I'd never read anything by the other author, Victoria Christopher Murray, but she is  also a very good writer and the 2 women wrote their parts seamlessly so the book flowed smoothly.

 The 2 first ladies in this fictionalized biography were Eleanor Roosevelt and a black  educator, business woman and leader of that time  named Mary McLeod Bethune.  These two women became close friends, and this story is about their friendship, as well as a whole lot more.

I had never heard of Mary McLeod Bethune, and I am glad I now know a bit about this inspirational woman. She founded a school, owned many businesses, was involved in FDR's government and was definitely a woman who believed in equality between races and (I'll add) sexes.

This book is written with alternating chapters. Eleanor is the main character  in some and Mary in the others. I loved how you as the reader are able to get such a clear view into parts of each woman's life, at least the parts important to this story. Mary was much more of a go-getter from the start, at least compared to young Eleanor. Eleanor really wanted to spend her time working at the school and furniture “factory” she founded, but with a political husband she had to do a lot of adjusting to play many different roles. However, that did help form her for the woman she continued to evolve into. This book also  shows Mary evolving through her life also. She worked hard  to shape the world as an early civil rights leader. She was very successful also. 

This book was an excellent read and discussed how Eleanor and Mary worked together to bring issues to light within Franklin Delano Roosevelt's White House.  It was not too heavy, but it was also not light and fluffy either. It is fiction, and I always wonder if authors really capture the fictionalized versions of famous characters, or if the person portrayed in the  book is merely someone with the traits the author is trying to show for the story. At the end of this book, the authors describe what events were real and what were fictionalized for the flow of the book. This book did not disappoint and was even a much more rich story than I expected it to be.

I don't usually read a lot of coffee table style books, but this past month I read this one by DK Publishing. I enjoy "things"  to do with ancient Egypt, whether it is  reading a book that is  set there or has something to do with archeology from that time period. I also watch a lot of documentaries about the subject on TV. When I had a chance to spend some time with this book, I decided it would be worth checking out..

This book is published by DK books, and although the DK books I've read or owned may not be scholarly in the adult sense, they have  many photos and interesting bits of information. Here's a couple of page views that I borrowed from the Amazon page about this Egypt book. These will explain what I mean by reading this 400 page coffee table book.

This is  another interesting DK book, and I enjoyed going through it. I learned quite a bit, and think I might put it on my Christmas list as it would be a good reference book and also fun to look through and read on occasion.

I need to thank Mae for mentioning this next book  to me.  The Creak on the Stairs is book 1 of a mystery series that is set in and written by an Icelandic author.  I haven't previously read any books by Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir, but she definitely knows how to write a good story.

Elma is a new police detective in Akranes, Iceland. She has moved back to her hometown after the end of her relationship with her partner (David) in Reykjavik.   When a woman's body is found on the rocks by the water near a lighthouse in Akranes, Elma's on the investigative team. The mystery with this death goes back quite a few years, to when Elisabet, the murdered woman, was a child. 

 Aegisdottir unwinds this story layer by layer. I like a mystery that throws in clues as it moves along and makes it evolve into a much richer story. I didn't guess where this one was going to end up. I also thought it had just the right amount of characters and just the right amount of suspense. There were not too many characters  to be confusing but enough so  you could get to know why each suspect might be the killer.

I enjoyed this story so that when I finished this book, I then went on to read the second book in this series.

Girls Who Lie is the  second book in the Forbidden Iceland series by Eva Borg Aegisdottir.  This time a woman named Marianna has gone missing and then is found dead in a lava field several months later. 

Hekla is the deceased woman’s daughter and the story revolves mostly around her and her friends. Hekla is a teenager, and  with her friends,  is up to the usual teenage activity. Of course, as in the last book, this story unfolds layer by layer with all kinds of suspicion on many of the book's characters. And like the last book, there was a big twist I didn’t see coming.  In fact this twist was even bigger than the one in the first book.

Probably the weakest part of this story is the romance between police detective Elma and her work friend Saevar. Since this book is not a romance but a mystery, it is really just a small secondary part of the bigger story. Aegisdotter does  a great job of developing characters, especially the murderer. Once again, the ending came as a surprise, although the author let us in on it before the end of the book. 

Book 3 in this series is on my list, and I suspect you’ll see it listed on a book post not too far in the future.

And then there was one more mystery before the month wound up. 

I also finished another "shorter" (about 225 pages) adventure mystery in July. The Case of Purloined Pyramid by Sean McLachlan was a  somewhat classic style mystery set in Egypt back in 1919.

This is another new series for me. The first World War has ended. Sir August Wall had come home horribly mutilated, with most of that damage in his face. He has a mask made to cover that mutilation, and then he decides to leave Europe. He goes to Egypt, and after a spell buys a large old home in "real" Cairo, not the places Europeans hang out. He then proceeds to open an antique store.

Wall hires a Sudanese man to be his employee and bodyguard. Moustafa starts off being a little bit stereotypic, but he certainly doesn't stay that way. He's a very smart and likable character. There is also a  somewhat lovable/ somewhat obnoxious  street urchin named Faisal. Together these 3 main characters as well as some supporting players try to discover more about the occultist gang who are after an ancient hieroglyphic message. The message is found in  stolen  engraved blocks of stone and possibly even in  stones that make up Wall's home. 

This story is set against  upheaval in Cairo in 1919. Not only is there the mystery, but Egyptians are starting to rebel against British rule. The scenes of mob protests added another level to this story.  However, this was not a hard read by any means. It was a great glimpse into another time and space, and I enjoyed this reading adventure.

For my next and only other listen in July, I decided to continue the Alice Hoffman Owen's witch series. I went back to the original book that started it all and that I enjoyed years ago when I read it. This book is Practical Magic.

Gillian and Sally Owens are not very much alike, even if they are sisters.  Every man wants Gillian; she is a woman who runs wild and never looks back, at least until the man in her life dies.  Sally is the good and practical older sister, who takes in her sister when Gillian's latest man dies. Of course his death was brought on by Gillian, not necessarily on purpose, but in other ways, definitely on purpose. And when the sisters bury his body in the backyard, his spirit doesn't rest for one minute.  

This book is full of magic and love. At its heart it is a love story, but I wouldn't call it a romance.  All of the characters are lured under a spell, not like the spell that brings Jimmy's (the dead man) ghost back to bring bad luck, but an all consuming passion spell.

It's been a very long time since I read this book. Sometimes when you reread a book you loved  earlier in your life, the story doesn't live up to a second read years later. However, I very much enjoyed this book, and I'm glad I decided to listen to it. I remembered the general story, but not all of the depth nor small details it has.  And it is definitely not exactly like the movie either, in case you are curious. I also need to add, the story of Maria that comes up in this book is a little bit different than in Magic Lessons, which I wrote about earlier in this post.

My final book for July was this new cookbook I bought. I'm fascinated with historic cooking, and I love baking, so this seemed like a cookbook I would enjoy. (And I do!)

Other than the fact that there are too many goofy faced photos of the author throughout this cookbook, this is an interesting collection of vintage baking recipes from (as you can see on the title) 1900-1980's.  Some of these are familiar, either because I have  heard of them or because I actually remember having them.  My grandmother was a fantastic cook and baker, and she loved trying out new things. I don't know if I'd call myself a fantastic baker (but I am pretty good), but I do love trying new things (thanks for passing that on to me Nana), especially recipes that sound a little different. Some of these recipes are even foods I already have in repertoire, like date nut bars. 

B. Dylan Hollis writes that this book is not about "fancy" bakery or restaurant recipes. Instead it focuses on recipes your mom, grandmother or other home baker might make. You probably might recognize many or at least some of these bakes. There's a lot I want to try like blackberry jam cake, peanut butter bread, carrot pie and cold-oven cake, just to name a few.  

That's my book list for July. I'm pleased I found some great summer reading and had some relaxing hammock reading time too. (I wasn't so sure about that with all the rain we had in July.) As always, if you have any good recommendations, please mention them. I do keep a to read list, even if I don't always get to them in a very timely manner. 😦

Thanks for making it this far through this post too.

Have a great weekend.