Sunday, August 01, 2021

July 2021

 

THE CHIFF-CHAFF
             (Phylloscopus rufa)             
From Our Summer Migrants

Very good reading in July (other than the Ken Follett, which was dreadful).

Fiction: 
Vera by Carol Edgarian
 San Francisco, 1906.
The Hidden Palace (The Golem and the Jinni, #2) by Helene Wecker
 A thoroughly satisfying squeal. 
The Dark Library by Cyrille Martinez; translated from the French  by Joseph Patrick Stancil  
Red Island House by Andrea Lee
 Expats in Madagascar
The Paris Library by  Janet Skeslien Charles 
 The American Library in Paris during World War 2
Winter in Sokcho by by Elisa Shua Dusapin; translated from the French by Aneesa Higgins
 Off season in a South Korean seaside town.
A Thousand Moons (Days Without End #2) by Sebastian Barry
 I haven't read the first book but it didn't seem to spoil my enjoyment of this one.
Address Unknown by Katherine Kressmann Taylor
 The beginning made me think that this might turn out to be a DNF bummer, but then I really got into it and enjoyed it. Some background info on Emily Grant Hutchings.
 
The Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett
  Read the first few chapters, then skipped and skimmed thinking it would get better. It didn't. This was very, very bad. Ugh!

Short Stories: 
Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat
Summer Guests by James H. Schmitz  (This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1959)
 One of my "Twenty Books of Summer 2021"
Summer Snow Storm by Stephen Marlowe (This etext was produced from Amazing Stories, October 1956)
 
Nonfiction:
The White Road: Journey into an Obsession by Edmund de Waal
Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World by Amy Stanley  
The Appalachian Trail: A Biography by Philip D'Anieri
The Nine: The True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany by Gwen Strauss
Bicycling with Butterflies by Sara Dykman
 A round trip adventure!  For more see her Beyond a Book
Our Summer Migrants by James Edmund Harting: An Account 0f the Migratory Birds Which Pass The Summer In The British Island; illustrated by Thomas Bewick
 The illustrations are lovely even though they are only in black and white. I found myself Googling for colored pictures. After reading Sara Dykman's Butterfly book where the emphasis is on protecting a species, it was rather disturbing how often these 19th Century ornithologists shot the birds in order to study and identify them. Of course in 1875 they didn't have color photography and fast cameras, but still....
 
Las Mamis: Favorite Latino Authors Remember Their Mothers edited by by Esmeralda Santiago and 
Joie Davidow
Contents:
First born / Esmeralda Santiago
My mother in the nude / Maria Amparo Escandon
"Hello, Dollinks" : letters from Mom / Mandalit del Barco
Persephone's quest at Waterloo : a daughter's tale / Alba Ambert
Mami, a.k.a. Doña Lola / Piri Thomas
Mami's boy / Gustavo Perez Firmat
Travels with Mami / Liz Balmaseda
September 19, 1985 / Ilan Stavans
A mother named Queen Solitude / Jaime Manrique
!Mamita Linda! / Francisco Goldman
Mi Mommy / Dagoberto Gilb
How (in a time of trouble) I discovered my mom and learned to live / Junot Diaz
Just a woman / Gioconda Belli
Frida, Friduca, Mami / Marjorie Agosin.

Fiction, Juvenile:
Two picture books by French Artist  André Hellé (more, in  French, on  Wikipédia). Loved the pictures so much that I read in French (with a lot of help from Google Translate). It was worth the effort.

Poetry:
A Summer's Poems by Francis J. Lys
Written in August and September, 1893, in Halstatt, Austria. I didn't get much feel of place from them as the they seemed labored and overworked. Constrained, perhaps, by the requirements of rhyme and form.
  
Online:
Abandoned Rails about old railroad lines in the USA
 
 Brief essay on the importance of muleteers, newsboys, and spies in the forming of the nation of Mexico.


 Some background information about the neighborhood setting of The Hidden Palace.
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