June Books

 I did in fact read some books in June! But only five.

1. Death at the Chateau Bremont (2011) was actually the first novel set in Aix-en-Provence by M.L. Longworth. (Instead of the one I read last month!) Childhood friends of Marine--brothers of the Bremont family--are murdered. The first one could have been an accident, maybe, but after the second one? Unlikely. Who was behind it, and why?

2. Leading through: activating the soul, heart, and mind of leadership (2024) by Kim B. Clark and two of his children. We were reading this book in our faculty group for an entire year, and even though we have not finished discussing this book I finally finished reading it. It would be so lovely to work in an organization that really followed the principles in this book!

3. Jennifer A. Nielsen's book Uprising (2024) was a good read about a Polish girl, Lidia, and her WWII experiences in Warsaw. I had to read this book slowly because it was a tad upsetting to me. I read a lot of WWII fiction years ago, but now when I see so much preamble to WWIII happening in the world today, it was hard to read about it. This is a work of historical fiction based on the real life experiences of Lidia Durr (who grew up to become a BYU professor eventually).

4. Who could ask for anything more? (1943) by Kay Swift. Kay Swift and her then husband James Paul (his a pseudonym because he was a banker but secretly a lyricist) wrote the musical Fine & Dandy in 1930, which actually did very well on Broadway. I was otherwise unaware of her, though she was a prolific composer who lived to age 93, so while looking into her, I realized that she had written a book which was then made into a movie. (She wrote 9 songs for it, hoping it would be a musical, but it was only a film with 3 songs used in the end.) The title of the book is from a George Gershwin song, and Kay was a George Gershwin person entirely, and he was a reason behind her divorce from her first husband. She just wanted all the men to be George, and none of them were. So her second husband, Faye Hubbard, was a cowboy from Spokane, Washington (though he was born in Champion, Alberta) who was ten years younger than her. They were an odd match, and this oddity is what the film version of the book dwells on--this New York dame on a ranch! In real life, the ranch was in Oregon, but in the film they put it in Wyoming. Anyways, it was a fun read except that I had already looked into her life and was annoyed with her, because she was only married to Hubbard (Chris, in the book) for 8 years, and that seemed unfair to his daughters! But hey, she had already left behind her own daughters, all in their teens, when she married Faye Hubbard and moved to Oregon. It was interesting to me, all these men getting custody of their daughters. Fun fact: BYU's copy of this book is the copy that belonged to Faye Hubbard himself, donated to the library by May Minn, a Hollywood columnist, with her papers.

5. The secret diary of Hendrik Groen, 83 1/4 years old (2014) an international bestseller (in Dutch originally) was actually written by Peter de Smet. Hendrik, Henk for short, gives insight into each day in the life of a nursing home resident. Amusing in places, tender and sad in others. Henk and his friends form the Old But Not Dead Yet club, and they try to make life better by having adventures together. Evert, who has first toes amputated and then a leg. Greitje, who knows she is descending into dementia. Eefje, who he falls in love with. Plus more. One quote: “Of the five senses, my nose still works best. Which is not always a blessing in here. It smells of old people.”