Books read June 2024

 Wow! I read 12 books this month!! How did I even do that?!! For me, ten books is about the most I finish in a month, but this month, somehow I surpassed that. And since I have a piano now, and I am playing at least a half hour every day, and sometimes have played an hour a day--how did this not use up all my extra time? My house is clean, the laundry is kept up with, the yard is decent, I have been more social than normal for me (Judy's gathering, Bruce's birthday, my book group meeting, our meet-up at the park on Thursday) I have been keeping my tomato plant and radish plants alive...how could I have so much time to read? (Have I been slacking on sleeping? Maybe...)

So these books have enlightened my mind this month of June:

1. Amed Aziz's Epic Year (2021) by Nina Hamza. Amed's family moves from Hawaii to Minnesota to be near a better hospital for his father's cancer treatments, and also near his father's family for support during this hard time. Ahmed is going to school in his father's old school and learning things about his family that he never realized, but especially he is learning things about himself that he never realized. And that is a great--no, epic--thing!

2. Hymns of Silence (2023) by Charles Inouye. This memoir of growing up in rural Utah (Gunnison) was written by the uncle of Melissa Inouye, whose memoir I read last month. This was also good. Here is a quote: Living in that quiet landscape, we enjoyed few distractions. There was only the silence and the voice in our heads asking, “Why are you alive?” Charles explores this in five vignettes.

3. Sure Signs of Crazy (2013) by Karen Harrington. In this tale which tackles a deep topic for a middle-grade book, Sarah is looking for signs of craziness in herself? Why? Her mother is an inmate in a mental institution, where she has been for many years, since murdering her twins. Only Sarah (almost 12) survived her own murder, and is growing up in the aftermath of that tragedy. I felt like the author told a good story about this difficult situation.

4. If looks could kill (2002) by Kate White. Bailey is a true-crime writer for Gloss magazine, and her friend Cat is her boss. Cat calls her, frantic, because of her nanny's nonresponsiveness. Bailey therefore becomes the one to discover the nanny's dead body. Was the nanny the intended victim? Or was it really meant to be Cat? And who did it? Bailey's investigative reporter skills are put to the test.

5. Tender Leaves of Hope (2022) by Meghan Decker. Okay, so I read this because I am acquainted with Meghan. I can't really say I "know" her, but I hoped that by reading her book, I would come to "know" her better. Meghan is a lesbian and likes everyone to know it, and I hoped that I might understand what it is like to be her, and honestly, after reading her book, I was even more confused. 

6. The child (2017) by Fiona Barton. A baby's body is found on a construction site. Kate Waters, an investigative reporter, wonders if this is the missing baby who disappeared from a hospital decades earlier. Dating is unclear--the baby's body is of older vintage than the blanket the body is buried in. DNA testing reveals that the baby is related to Angela, so they think it is Angela's baby, but then Emma comes forward and insists it is her baby. There is only one body, but two missing babies?

7. All my knotted up life: a memoir (2023) by Beth Moore.I had never heard of Beth Moore before, but if I were from the south, I might have. She was a rather prominent evangelist of the Southern Baptist vintage, when she just couldn't do it anymore. Too many things happening that she felt were contrary to the teachings of Jesus. Now she is still a prominent evangelist, but of the Anglican vintage.

8. My plain Jane (2018) brought to you by the Janies, a writing team consisting of Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows. Jane is plain to all the people at the terrible girls' school at which she teaches, constantly accompanied by her best (ghost) friend Helen, who died of the graveyard disease some years hence. But to many ghosts, Jane is beautiful! She is very attractive to them. When the Jane Eyre story is all bound up with ghost catching, this is the story you get. 

9. Lydia Longley: The First American Nun (1958) by Helen A. McCarthy. I read this because in the Hancock Hummer, Nancy told the story of Lydia Longley--not our direct ancestor, but our Lydia Longley's niece Lydia Longley, the daughter of her brother William. Lydia is one of three Longley children kidnapped by natives, taken to New France, and sold there. (This way at least two of them got to live. The rest of the family perished. And do not disparage the natives: this took place as a part of an ongoing war; it was not so random as it appears.) Puritan Lydia becomes Catholic Lydia, and takes her vows in Ville Marie (Montreal) where she remains for her entire life. So an American nun because she was born in America, but she never was a nun in America: her nunning all took place in Ville Marie.

10. A broken people's playlist: stories from songs (2020) by Chimeka Garrick. I really enjoyed this collection of stories. Garrick was going through a stage of writer's block, but found that listening to music would inspire him. Certain songs on his playlist evoked ideas that turned into these stories about interconnected people who live in Port Harcourt, the city in Nigeria where Garrick did much of his growing up.

11. The Exvangelicals: Loving, living, and leaving the Evangelical Church (2024) by Sarah McCammon. I think I found this book because of Beth Moore's book? I can't remember, but I did like this book. Sarah also becomes disillusioned with evangelicalism, mostly because of "differences over COVID vaccines, racial injustice, and partisan politics." (p.223) Like Beth Moore, Sarah finds a new church home as an Episcopalian. And marries a Jewish man, so embraces both faith traditions to some extent.  Let me quote from her: "If God has given us the tools...then I've come to believe that we're responsible to carry out the tasks suited to those tools...We've been given minds that can reason and inquire, but that can only understand so much. We have hearts that can feel compassion and empathy but are always constrained by the limitations of our own experiences and observations...I don't have the answers, but I'm not sure I'm meant to." (p.266-267) Her premise is to learn God's will for you, then follow promptings and live in faith. 

12. Forfeit (1969) by Dick Francis. This is the book club book for next month. Well, this author is what was chosen. We are each to read our chosen book by this author, and then we will all tell about our choice. I chose this book because it was an Edgar award winner, and because much of the story is bound up with the protagonist's wife, Elizabeth, who is a polio survivor, but just barely. The dedication to Elizabeth that James Tyrone has is admirable!! She can only live for 15 minutes without her take-home version of the iron lung. When Elizabeth's life is threatened in a blackmail operation, Ty's efforts on her behalf are nothing short of amazing. Enough to forgive him for his sometimes adultery.