August was a month full of transitions. Sports went from mornings to afternoons. We went from one teenage driver to two. We started school up, adding in college classes and one going to the local vocational high school part-time. I’m liking the new routine and getting to watch the kids do all their things. Fall is right around the corner! Here is what I read last month:
Set in the Appalachian mountain, If the Creeks Don’t Rise tells the story of a small community struggling to survive. A new teacher comes to town who doesn’t share the same spiritual values, but she befriends an orphan teenager who is in an abusive marriage. The story goes back and forth, telling the story through many different points of view. It’s a story about grit and survival, but it also sends a message that children are a burden, which was not something I liked.
Be Transformed is a brief, but deep, book about how the Catholic sacraments can work deeply in our lives. The author goes over each sacrament and how it can be more deeply applied to your life. It has personal stories and thoughtful questions in each chapter. It would make for a good group study.
A friend told me about Friendshipped – a romcom book set in the greater Dayton area. It was a fun book to listen to, especially with references to local places to me. A few places got a bit tedious describing how each of the main characters thought the other only wanted friendship when they both actually loved each other. There are some unexpected twists and turns in how they finally get together. It would be a good beach read.
A friend had read Everything Sad is Untrue and for some reason I thought it was fiction, but it’s a memoir. Daniel is a refugee from Iran living in America with his mom and sister. They fled because his mom became a Christian. His father opted to stay in Iran. He tells stories, weaving the past and the present together. It’s a beautiful book about the trials of a teenage boy who used to live like a prince now living as a poor, disliked child in Oklahoma. It’s a good reminder to find out someone’s story before passing any judgment.
I was given a copy of The Lost Manuscript in exchange for being a part of the launch team for the book. Ellora is dealing with a separation from her husband and her grandmother being missing all at the same time. Her husband has gone over to teach college in England, where her grandmother had been on a search for a lost manuscript from medieval times. She takes a chance by going to teach at the same college as her husband for a summer, hoping both for reconciliation and a way to find her grandmother and the manuscript. The book was interesting, but there was a lot of drama packed into a shorter book. I think it could have been better either just as a mystery or as a chick-lit book, but combining it, along with different points of view, made the storyline confusing at times.
Mr. Malcolm is the most eligible bachelor around. However, when Julia is spurned by him because she doesn’t meet all the expectations on his list for his potential wife. So, she recruits and old friend, Salina, to come visit her and make Mr. Malcolm fall in love with her with the intentions of having her spur him with her own list. However, there are real sparks between Mr. Malcolm and Salina. Mr. Malcolm’s List was a very fun read and nothing was too graphic in it at all – just a fun historical romance.
I stumbled across The Color Code during a podcast and as a fan of all personality profile systems, I had to check it out. It’s a fairly simple system where people are broken out into four colors that show their primary motivation. A secondary color helps shade how unique people are. I tested the opposite two that I had picked, but it made more sense after reading his descriptions. A lot of the book talks about how relationships work between each two-color combination. If you enjoy studying personalities, you would enjoy this book.
In The Devil in the White City, Larson takes the reader through two stories that interwine – Chicago setting up its World’s Fair and serial killer hiding in plain sight as an upstanding citizen. Henry H. Holmes builds a hotel in Chicago in preparation for all the visitors coming to the World’s Fair. However, he builds it with killing in mind. While the book is slow in a few parts describing how the fair came together, following the detectives on the trail of a murderer kept my interest. I also read this after visiting Chicago, so I could see parts of the city in my mind.
Alix St. Pierre moves to Paris to work for Christian Dior, but she brings with her a lot of baggage. During WW2, she worked as an OSS agent, but her cover was blown and she was given bad intel that resulted in several allied men dying. Her work for Dior is now a personal cover as she believes her main job is to track down the man who gave her bad intel and get justice. Throw in an American journalist who was with the men who died that night and you have a spy story with some mystery and romance thrown in. I enjoyed The Three Lives of Alix St. Pierre as it wasn’t just straight historical fiction, but a more complex storyline.
What have you read recently that you’ve enjoyed? Share in the comments!
