My Books from June

   Hi everyone. It's time for another of  my monthly book posts.  I know some you  are book  lovers  who enjoy reading book posts, as I do. So here we go. 

  This past month I read several mysteries, a few new to me authors, a few newer books, a few older books, at least one book out of my comfort zone, and there were even a couple of rereads. It was another good reading month on my end.

   If you are of a certain age, you might remember John Jake books from the 1970's and 1980's. His historical novels were quite popular. This book,  North and South, is book 1 of the American Civil War trilogy that was first published in 1982. I'm not sure I read this book or even this trilogy back then, and although I don't remember any actual stories, I do remember reading quite a few of this author's series The Kent Family Chronicles back in my high school and early college days.

    I started this book back in April and then I became distracted by a couple of other books, so I put this one aside. At first I was reading this novel on my Kindle,  and then when I finished the other books that had distracted me,  I decided to switch over and listen to the rest of this story. That wasn't until  May, and since this story is long (30+ hours of listening), I didn't finish it until June. 

   Since North and South was an easy and enjoyable story, I thought it was a perfect listening choice since it's one of those stories that doesn't require a whole lot of deep concentration. It's also an easy read if you are reading it. Either way it's a good story that moves along quickly.  It was perfect to listen to while I worked in the yard too. 👍  

    I'm not sure there is any great literary merit to this book, but there is some history to it.  This  story takes place before the Civil War and is more about the build up to that horrific event in American history. The prequel starts by introducing  two young men who come to the then colonies of Britain in the late 1600's. After that, the main story begins. You meet Orry Main, a young man from South Carolina. His ancestor who arrived in the late 1600's got into rice farming, and now, as this story begins, the family is wealthy and has a plantation in Charleston. 

   You also meet George Hazard of Pennsylvania, whose ancestor worked with iron and was an indentured servant back in the  late 1600's. George's family is now well to do with an industrial iron business. George and Orry meet each other as they wait to get on a steamship to take them up to West Point Military Academy. They become best friends.  It is 1842 when this story really begins. 

   From there you follow the main characters as well as some  characters  from George's and Orry's families through a graduation at West Point, the Mexican-American War (1846-1848),   young  and even middle age adult lives, marriage and children, Orry falling in love with a married woman,  the Hazards buying a summer home in Newport, Rhode Island, and Orry replacing his parents as head of the household. Among many others. There are also  some other highlights from American history like the Missouri Compromise, John Brown and the bloody Kansas-Nebraska Act.

   Jake's style reminds me a lot of Ken Follett's style. There's the characters you like and those you are supposed to really dislike. There's lots of other characters who interact with the 2 main ones. There's the relationships that work out and those that don't.  And I did learn some history too, like why the US and Mexico went to war in 1846 (but I'm sure those of you in Texas probably already knew about that).  I enjoyed this novel and will probably continue this series at some point to see what happens to Orry and George and the other characters once the war begins (which is what book 2 is all about). I just may not be soon because I'm not sure I'm in the mood for another very long novel, and book two is 15 hours longer than this one.

   

  This book, The Golden Spoon,  by Jessa Maxwell, is a straightforward and easy to read mystery. I started it while on jury selection day because there was a lot of downtime, but I didn't want something too complicated because I needed to put the book down frequently. 

  This mystery takes place at an estate in Vermont called Grafton where a week-long baking show is being filmed. Think Great British Bake Off. In this story there are 6 home bakers who are participating in  challenges for a week. The judge and owner of this estate is the celebrated baker Betsy Martin. The 6 bakers are Stella (a former journalist who bakes to control her severe anxiety), Hannah (a young woman from Minnesota who bakes pie in a local diner), Gerald (a math teacher who likes things to work out exactly the way he has them planned), Pradyunma (a highly skilled but bored tech millionaire), Peter (a man who does  architectural refurbishing and renovations) and finally Lottie ( a retired nurse). There's also the crew, and this season there's a new judge, Archie, to work with Betsy Martin, which isn't making Betsy too happy.

    As the book goes through  most of the week, you have the introductory welcome  dinner and then each day of filming as well as the evening after filming. During this time the book's chapters jump around from person to person and you get to know each character. You learn some interesting back stories  about each character too. No one is quite the person they seem to be when the book begins. There's also some interesting "events" that happen along with the baking. 

   Before the week ends someone is killed.

  I enjoyed this book quite a bit, but, the ending felt a little too rushed. There was a gap between the murder and the ending that felt a little unstated, almost like that author was rushing to finish the story and left out 50 pages. There is no murder investigation either. I was disappointed by that, but  not by the actual ending. However, even with this gap, this book was  an enjoyable read and was hard to put down towards the end. I stayed up late because I had to find out who the police would arrest and how the story would wrap up. 

   My next book was this novel by Katherine Howe called A True Account: Hannah Masury's Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates. This story bounced back and forth between  2 time periods. One period was 1723 in Colonial Boston, when teenager Hannah Masury worked at a tavern and decided one day to skip out of work to go see a pirate being hanged. After that event and after a run in with some not so nice people, she ended up escaping the city by pretending she's a boy and joining a pirate crew. The other period is the 1930's, when Hannah's book that she wrote about her pirate adventures was discovered. It's now in the hands of a  Harvard educator named Marion and her undergrad student Kay. Right off the bat I wondered if Hannah really was a pirate or if she  was writing  a fantasy.

 

  It took a while before  Hannah's story mentioned buried treasure. You actually learn about it in Marion and Kay's story. These ladies are going to search for the treasure. In Hannah's pirate story, a lot more happens like a hurricane at sea, discovering a treasure map and even a bit of raiding.

   As the ladies are treasure hunting and as Hannah is pirating, there are some interesting twists in this story. This is especially true of the ending. I really liked how the author took these 2 stories and connected them. I didn't expect the pieces to go together like they did because the book started off,  not predictable,  but not in the direction where it ended. And after reading the author's note at the end, it made those connections even more interesting. It was great to see where her idea for this story came from. One thing I definitely recommend is that you don't jump ahead and read those author's notes until the story is finished because it explains so many things about this book and its ending. It makes much more sense knowing the book's entire story.

   This is a fictional story. If you're looking for true pirate lore you won't find it here. 😉 I like the author's writing style; it's got a bit of a literary vibe going on. It's also a well composed tale.  And if like me, you feel like reading something different, then this might be a book you enjoy. I very much enjoyed it. 

    It was then time for me to read another one of these alphabet mysteries by Sue Grafton. I started this series last month with books A and B, so now I am onto C is for Corpse, first published in 1986.

   This time Kinsey Millhone meets a man in the gym where she is working out. His name is Bobby Callahan, and his car had been rammed in the rear end while driving over a canyon bridge. The car went over into the canyon. Callahan's friend, who was in the car, was killed, but Callahan survived. However, he was very injured, and he believes that someone was trying to kill him. 

   Right off in the beginning of this mystery you are told that Kinsey met Callahan on Monday, and by Thursday he was dead. Before he dies, Bobby asks Kinsey to help him with a problem. Once he passes, Kinsey decides that  she is going to continue with her search to find out what is going on. Bobby could have been murdered. For the sake of his memory she is going to follow through on the case he hired her for and find out what the story is. 

   This book was also a great read and had another very exciting ending. This time it is night, and Kinsey is searching the old hospital morgue for evidence. The only person who should be there is the night custodian, but when Kinsey finds him incapacitated, well, it already was spooky enough and now she knows Bobby's killer is looking for her too. 

   This next book was another recommendation from my daughter. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore  takes place during a couple of time periods, but this time it is more the youth and then middle age of some of the characters. This book jumps around between  the 1950's, early 1960's and  the 1970's. Almost all of the book is set in the Adirondack Mountains of New York.

  The gist of this book revolves around a summer camp  (Camp Emerson) that is owned by a family. That family is creepy in many ways. The wealthy Van Laar family have a huge summer estate on the top of  a big hill in this little blue collar town called Shattuck. The first Peter Van Laar, the one who built the house called Self- Reliance, started this camp when he was an older man and wanted to leave a legacy of his life. 

   Back in the 1960's the third Peter Van Laar's  son, this time named Peter Van Laar the Fourth but called Bear, disappeared.  The book takes  you through the search and the travesty that event caused.  After Bear disappears, the family has a daughter named Barbara. She is a rebellious teenager, and she requests to go to Camp Emerson the summer she is about 13. She is sent to camp, and then, she also disappears.

   You follow these events through the eyes of many people including Barbara's camp friend Tracey, a couple of counselors at camp, locals, Barbara's mother, and also  a young police investigator named Judy. 

   Once I got the names down, I very much enjoyed this book. This book was easy to get into and very hard to put down. I can understand why it received so many accolades. However, if you don't like stories that jump from person to person, then this book would not be for you.  There are several small twists along the way  and a big twist at the end. My daughter calls it a thriller, but I think it is more of a mystery, with lots of clues and even some "ah ha" moments right up to the end. And I didn't even come close to figuring out how it would end.

  After taking several weeks to finish my first listen for the month (North and South), my only other listen for June was the new novel by Ann Patchett. I decided to listen to it (rather than read it) because  the author read the story, and besides being a talented author, Patchett is also a good reader.  Plus I still had a couple of book credits I needed to use before I lost them in mid-June, and what's better than getting a new book by a favorite author?

    When Daphne and her husband are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York one day, Daphne's husband decides a man is following them. When he approaches the man, he finds out it was Daphne's mother's second husband, or another words, one of Daphne's stepfathers. 

  This reunion brings Eddie Triplett back into Daphne’s life. You learn about him (and also Daphne) in 2 different ways.  First, you learn  through the story’s present setting, although you see Eddie through Daphne's eyes. You also learn about Eddie  from Daphne's memories of when she was a child and was in the car with Eddie.  At  one point during her childhood  Daphne and Eddie are stranded, and it's then that you learn about Whistler, the horse on the cover and who the book is named after. This event  is a reoccurring story throughout the novel.

   Eddie's story has some surprises that Daphne never realized. This book is a story of aging and life after 50. It's also about finding people you thought you'd lost in your life and how finding them again can be wonderful. It's also about accepting differences in others. I really liked how I could relate to many points this book made.

  I liked  and enjoyed this book, but not quite as much as I liked her last book, Tom Lake. I'd still rank it quite high because  I enjoy Patchett's kind of rambling style when she tells the story. I also like her variety of characters and how well I feel I know them once the book is over.  I was expecting a sad ending to this story, but not to get too in depth for those of you who may want to read this book, I liked how Patchett ended this novel, and no tears were shed. 😊

  Mysteries are almost always fast reads, so after I finished The God of the Woods I went on to reread book 10 in the Dr. Ruth Galloway mysteries.  (And FYI, these books should be read in order.) Ruth is a forensic archaeologist, and this time she has been asked by an old "friend" to come to Italy to help with a skeleton that was found. Once she's there, she finds out her archaeologist friend is also under the impression someone is trying to kill him because of the work he is doing.

   Ruth also travels with her daughter Kate and with her friend Shona and Shona's young son Louis. It's a working vacation. However, she doesn't tell Nelson she is going, and that fact, even though Nelson is not her family, it bothers him. After an earthquake rattles the area in Italy where Ruth and Kate are, Nelson heads out to check on them, leaving his wife and family behind. He definitely surprises Ruth, and he annoys his wife. Everyone's favorite Druid, Cathbad, comes along with Nelson also. 

    In Italy, a much loved village local  is then murdered, and Ruth is the one to find the body.  Meanwhile at home, a man convicted of killing his wife and children in a house fire, is let out of prison. Nelson was the officer who got him put away, and the man, who says he has found religion, isn't exactly acting like he has. But he always has a reason to appear like he has. 

  But since this is a mystery story, the local's death in Italy causes certain events happen, and the released prisoner back in King's Lynn (where the stories are usually set) causes other events to happen. The first time I read this book, I took the story at face value. This time reading the book, some of the events in Italy seemed a little too far fetched. Saying that, they still made good reading and once again, I enjoyed this book. However, this book ends on a sad note, with a death that affects all the main characters. 

   I was still in a mystery mood, so for my next book I pulled this old Agatha Christie from 1959 off my bookshelf. I've read this book long ago, and it was long enough ago that I didn't remember actually any of the details about it, at least at first.

   Much of this tale takes place at a private and exclusive girls school called Meadowbrook in England. But the story more or less begins with a coup happening in an imaginary Arab country. The crown prince is murdered, but before that he gives his British friend some important jewels to sneak out of the country. His friend is also killed, and since his friend expects that might happen, he hides the jewels so they'll get snuck out of the country. He does this by putting them in some modeling clay found in his niece Jennifer's  luggage (since she and her mother, this man's sister, are also visiting the country). Jennifer does not know the jewels are there, nor does her mother, but someone (who you don't figure out until later in the book) suspects either the  mother or Jennifer has them. And of course, the girl is a student at this Meadowbrook School.

   Then there's a few murders at the school, starting with the gym instructor, and the police get involved. Funny, once the murder inquiries  start, I suddenly remembered where the jewels were, but not who the killer was, nor the main story. It's interesting how our brains work, and how a small detail can come back to you after decades.  

   The is a Hercule Poirot book, but Christie's famous detective does not enter the story until you are getting close to the end.  Julia, a student at the school and one of Jennifer's close friends, goes to see Poirot. She knows him through a close family friend, and he is curious enough about the case to help her.

    I definitely did not remember how Christie ended this novel. I still am amazed at how clever she was to come up with so many plots. This is definitely one of her better books. All the pieces  worked together, and it's quite different  being set at a girl's school. 

   My final book for the month was this art technique book. This book, being more about daily journaling rather than a novel, was something I could read bits of here and there. I already keep a drawing journal, but I thought it would be good to see the tools other people use and to see other drawing journals to garner new ideas for my own journal. I also thought it would be good to see  how other people draw and set up their pages so  I can maybe improve my own drawing skills. 

   This book covers topics such as tools and material, getting into the habit of journaling,  and ideas about what you could put on a page. What I found most helpful was looking at finished pages. In some ways, because I already keep a journal, some of the info in this book wasn't the most useful. But in other ways, there are always new things to learn even when you think you are familiar with something.  I particularly  liked seeing how the author set up her pages. And although I don't want to spend tons of time on my pages (especially when I get a few days behind-which I do), I like looking at other people drawings to see how I can improve or fix my own.

  This book was not a waste of time to read, and if you're new to daily journaling, then I think this book would be really useful in many ways. 

 

  And that's it for this month's book report. I hope you find some great summer reading, and if you do, please share!