Best Books of July
As I say every month, I’m shamelessly stealing this idea from Jessica Lahey. She has a recurring monthly date where she reviews all the books she reads that month. Book reviews are important for authors, and I want to get better at doing this.
So. I’m going to review them here and also online, but I’m going to do it a little differently. I’m only going to review the stuff I really liked. I don’t see a reason to spend my time writing about something I didn’t love; it’s just using up more of my energy. So only positive reviews.
These are the books I liked (or mostly liked) from July.
My Murder (Katie Williams): Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. I didn’t think a lot could top her other book, Tell the Machine Goodnight, but this managed to top that story. It’s about a woman brought back to life after her murder and how she processes moving through a world where she is both alive and not alive. I could not stop thinking about this book whenever I put it down, and I highlighted so many amazing sentences that half the e-book was yellow by the time I finished.
The Brutal Telling (Louise Penny): I finished this book while in Montreal, which gave me a chance to visit the Emily Carr statue and walk the same streets as the characters. Reading these books is like spending time with old friends.
The Magicians (Lev Grossman): The ChickieNob and I live in a perpetual state of listening or reading this trilogy. As much as we’ve memorized the story, I still notice new things with each re-reading. I love this trilogy so much.
Bury Your Dead (Louise Penny): I started this book the night before we went to Quebec City, the setting for this story. What luck! I got to see so many of the streets referenced in the novel. Each book gets better and better, and this one was moving and interesting and touching and thrilling. It was everything. I think it’s my favourite one so far.
The Hangman (Louise Penny): It was a Three Pines-heavy month. This story was fine. I guessed the ending, which I can’t even remember a few weeks later, which is odd. Maybe Three Pines works better as a novel than a novella.
Zero Days (Ruth Ware): I guessed the killer and motive 25% of the way through the book, which was disappointing because I shouldn’t notice more than the main character, who is a penetration tester. But I gave this five stars because it was a great thriller that felt like a movie in paper form.
What did you read last month?
2 comments
Oh I love love love that you got to be in Quebec City for Bury Your Dead! They really do just keep getting better and better.
You might not know this, but The Hangman was part of a series called Goodreads Canada where famous Canadian authors wrote books that were a grade three reading level – the series is designed for adults who are emerging readers (because they don’t want to read / feel embarrassed to be reading books aimed at little kids). So it’s very intentionally different from the entire rest of the series.
@Turia, I’m Canadian & I didn’t know that about “The Hangman” — interesting!
July was not a great reading month for me — I only got 2 books finished — but then, we were pretty busy (my BIL had a liver transplant; his son/our older nephew was the donor). It took me most of the month to wade through the first book, although I zoomed through the second! They were:
* “The Fair Botanists” by Sara Sheridan (the August choice for my Gateway/Lighthouse Women NoMo Book Club — and by the way, GW/LW will be known as the Childless Collective going forward). It’s set in Edinburgh in 1822, and based on true events and characters. The plot (such as it is) revolves around a rare plant housed in the new Botanical Gardens, which only flowers a couple of times a century — the watch is on, and there are a number of people who are interested in it and the seeds it will produce, for various reasons. It was a pleasant read, stuffed with interesting historical details, but overall, it left me feeling a little flat. I had a really hard time rating it — I settled on 3.5, and rounded it up to 4 on Goodreads, but I’m thinking I should downgrade it to 3.
* “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd (the September choice for the GW/LW/Childless Collective NoMo Book Club). Set in July 1964 in rural South Carolina, about Lily, a 14-year-old girl and her black housekeeper Rosaleen, who flee their home — including Lily’s abusive father and the town’s worst racists who have it in for Rosaleen for daring to try to register to vote. They head to another town a few hours away that has mysterious ties to Lily’s late mother, where they’re taken in by a trio of slightly eccentric beekeeping sisters. There was a lot in the setting and plot elements that was familiar — derivative of other coming-of-age-in-the-American-South tales I’ve read (and perhaps a bit stereotypical). But the writing was wonderful, the characters and their voices and the world they lived in were vividly drawn, and the beekeeping angle was pretty unique (and interesting). The women are strong and independent, and I loved how they loved and supported each other. And, as a childless woman, I appreciated how clearly the story showed that you don’t have to be a biological mother to nurture and care for others. 4 stars.