Reading is not the Challenge: August 2021

Tuesday, August 31, 2021

August 2021 - Second Half

Well I didn't manage to read everything on my "Twenty Books of Summer 2021" list. Actually there were 25 items on that list, I read 19 of them. There are a couple I probably won't read, the others? Maybe...

I also read a bunch of other things, several from my TBR shelves. Also did some weeding and got rid of some TBRs that I know I'll never read.

Here's what I read in the second half of August.

Fiction:

Among the Hedges by Sara Mesa; translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell (my copy)

Teenage girl makes friends with older mentally challenged man.

Villa del Sol by Martha Reynolds (on Kindle, gift from the author)

Rhode Island Politician's widow seek privacy in one of my favorite places -- Lugano.

All You Could Ask For by Mike Greenberg (my copy)

A tale of three women with breast cancer.

The Clerk by Guillermo Saccomanno; translated from the Spanish by Andrea G. Labinger (my copy)
Prayer for the Living by Ben Okri (advance review copy via LibraryThing
Love in Color: Mythical Tales from Around the World, Retold by Bolu Babalola (review copy via Goodreads) meh.
Two Lines 31 edited by CJ Evans (this was part of a subscription, it's been at the bottom of a stack for two years)

Childrens:
The Seashore Book: Bob and Betty's Summer with Captain Hawes story and pictures by E Boyd Smith

One of my "Twenty Books of Summer 2021"

Teachy but mostly pleasant text that tells kids what can be found at the seashore (in 1912). I liked the art work.

Nonfiction:

The Crest of the Continent: A Summer's Ramble in the Rocky Mountains and Beyond by Ernest Ingersoll

One of my "Twenty Books of Summer 2021"

This was a real slog. Ingersoll, his wife, and three companions explore the Rockies in a private train apparently provided by the railroad as a promotional journey. Ingersoll is coy about his companions identifying them as "At least two of the gentlemen you would recognize at once, were I to give you their names." He calls these two "the artist" and "the photographer" throughout the text, the third he calls "the musician." Since the three are along for about half the expedition (the first 15 of 37 chapters) I did a little Web sleuthing. A biography of Thomas Moran (Thomas Moran: Artist of the Mountains by Thurman Wilkins) provided the answer. They were Moran; photographer William Henry Jackson; and John Karst a wood engraver called "the musician because he brought along his violin.

Ingersoll doesn't provide exact dates but the journey seems to go on forever with way too much description of places that all begin to sound alike.

Online:

Thomas Moran and the Spirit of Place gives more info on Moran and links to more.

Four Weeks in the Trenches: The War Story of a Violinist by Fritz Kreisler

"The world’s greatest violinist served as lieutenant in the present war until wounded by a Cossack’s lance in a hand-to-hand fight before Lemberg. This book is the record of what he saw and experienced. It is the first account of the fighting by a man who actually fought, a story of hardship and heroism as graphic as it is thrilling. Illustrated from photographs." from an advertisement by the publisher (Houghton Mifflin) in The Little Review, May 1915.

Note: the photographs are not included in the main text in Project Gutenberg. They may each be viewed separately from the eight JPEG Picture links.

I found a nice series of water color books on Gutenberg

Chester Water-Colours by Edward Harrison Compton

No text, just lovely artwork.