May 2021

Now that I'm vaccinated I probably can stop logging all these little errands and such. So here's the activities list for what I hope is the last time:

5/3  Verizon store for new Smartphone

5/4   Mah Jongg

5/11 Mah Jongg; Mazzicato Bakery (Middletown): Library

5/18 Mah Jongg; brief walk downtown.

5/25 Picnic; Library

Weather has been cold and rainy so I haven't been out and about as much as I'd like but I've had plenty of time to read some really good books this month. (Nice to be able to browse in the library again!)

Fiction:

They Were Counted (The Writing on the Wall: The Transylvania Trilogy #1) by Bánffy, Miklós; translated from the Hungarian by Thursfield, Patrick and Bánffy-Jelen, Kathy; foreward by Fermor, Patrick Leigh 

Abigail by Szabó, Magda; translated from the Hingarian by Rix, Len

Silence Is a Sense by AlAmmar, Layla 

Oraefi: The Wasteland by Sigurðsson, Ófeigur; translated from the Icelandic by Smith, Lytton 

Miss Mole by Young, E. H. (Emily Hilda) 

Send for Me by Fox, Lauren

Gonzalez and Daughter Trucking Co.: A Road Novel with Literary License by Escandón, María Amparo 

Aviary by McNamer, Deirdre

The Sicilian Method   (Commissario Montalbano #26) by Camilleri, Andrea; translated from the Italian by Sartarelli, Stephen 

The Children's Blizzard by Benjamin, Melanie 

The Performance by Thomas, Claire 

Amy and Isabelle by Strout, Elizabeth

Improvement by Silber, Joan

 

Verse:

More About Teddy B. and Teddy G. The Roosevelt Bears by Seymour Eaton (Paul Piper)

 Audio recordings of this and other Roosevelt Bear books can be found at LibriVox

  

Nonfiction:  

American Covenant: National Parks, Their Promise, and Our Nation's Future by Soukup, Michael A Book Arts of Isfahan: Diversity and Identity in Seventeenth-Century Persia by Taylor, Alice 

Cult Writers: 50 Nonconformist Novelists You Need to Know by Smith, Ian Haydn

 Short (one page) bios, very basic 

Life of James Mars, a Slave Born and Sold in Connecticut by James Mars; first published in the 1860s.

Online:

A Glance at the Life and Times of Miklos Banffy some background material on the author and setting of   The Transylvanian Trilogy which I started this month

Highway of Darkness: A Mystery Reader’s Road Trip Up California’s Highway 99 by Jane Rosenthal

Twenty Books of Summer 2021

 

It's been ages since I've signed up for any challenges but I'll give this one from 746 Books a try. 

 

Since the number twenty is not a challenge for me (I've already read over 80 books this year), I decided to do something to make it more challenging. Project Gutenberg is one of my favorite places to explore so I decided to read twenty books from there -- all with the word "summer" in the title. So I did a quick word search. Of course the results did not all have the word in the title; some were in the author or subject field. For some it wasn't obvious why they came up.

After eliminating those, I still had way more then twenty results. I sorted them to get a variety. There were a lot of travel journals and children's books so I just took a sampling of those. Even so, I ended up with more than twenty but I know from past experience that the some stuff on Gutenberg can be too tedious to finish. Therein lies the Challenge! (That and taking time to write brief  reviews.)

Fiction (5):

Summer by Edith Wharton  (read 6/18)

Staccato Notes of a Vanished Summer (from Literature and Life) by Howells

Tamawaca Folks: A Summer Comedy by L. Frank Baum

Indian Summer by William Dean Howells 

Indian Summer by Emily Grant Hutchings (read 7/24)

Short Stories (3): 

Summer Guests by James H. Schmitz (read 7/8)

Rocket Summer by Ray Bradbury (read 8/3)

Summer Snow Storm by Stephen Marlowe (read 7/9)

 

Poetry (4):  

Summer of Love by Joyce Kilmer (read 8/12)

A Summer's Poems by Francis J. Lys (read 7/21)

Mortal Summer by Mark Van Doren (read 6/19)

Queen Summer; Or, The Tourney of the Lily and the Rose by Walter Crane (read 8/3)

  This one for the illustrations:

  

Juvenile (2):

 A Tale of the Summer Holidays by Geraldine Mockler (read 6/23)

The Seashore Book: Bob and Betty's Summer with Captain Hawes by E. Boyd Smith (read 8/30)

 

Nature (3):  

Our Summer Migrants by James Edmund Harting (An Account 0f the Migratory Birds Which Pass The Summer In The British Island) (read 7/25)

My Summer in a Garden by Charles Dudley Warner (read 6/27)

  Because it's in Connecticut

My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir (read 8/8)

 

Travel (4 titles, 5 volumes):

The Crest of the Continent: A Summer's Ramble in the Rocky Mountains and Beyond by Ernest Ingersoll (read 8/23)

After Icebergs with a Painter by Louis Legrand Noble (read 8/11)

Ultima Thule; or, A Summer in Iceland. vol. 1/2 by Sir Richard Francis Burton and 

    Ultima Thule; or, A Summer in Iceland. vol. 2/2 

Summer Days in Shakespeare Land by Charles G. Harper 

 

Other (2):

My Summer with Dr. Singletary by John Greenleaf Whittier 

Handbook of Summer Athletic Sports by Fred Whittaker (read 8/6)

Kinda Campy, I hope   

 

Extras (2): 

 I'm not sure why these two came up on a search for "summer," but they look like fun so I'll read them!

Ham Sandwich by James H. Schmitz  (read 8/8)

Ernesto Garcia Cabral: A Mexican Cartoonist by G. R. G. Conway  (read 8/8)