{7QT} My Summer Reading

1.

 This was the first Kate Morton book that I have read.  It was beautifully written and engrossing.  I read it on our trip to Florida and had finished all of it in the 5 days.  There was alot of tragedy in it that kept me wishing for something to turn out right for someone though!  However, I have checked out another of her books because of how absorbing it was -- I love a good page-turning book!

2.

 I loved Lily Bart.  She was a character of such power and poignancy to me, with her great beauty and, ultimately, her strength alongside her real and understandable weaknesses.  The masterful writing of this book really surpassed all the more recently written books I've been reading this summer.  The ability Edith Wharton had to create with impact a social milieu and detail thoughts and feelings is unsurpassed by more recent, less skilled authors.  The final chapters moved me to tears, even though I knew the story from watching the movie before.  The clear social commentary of Wharton's time that this book contains was of secondary interest to me to the power and poignancy of Lily's character.

3.

This book begins the Mary Russell mysteries.  Mary is a teenage girl who meets a semi-retired Sherlock Holmes in the English countryside and strikes up a friendship that leads to mystery-solving together.  I really liked how Holmes was depicted by the author, which struck me as faithful to the original spirit of Conan Doyle's Holmes, or at least the picture I have in my head.  Overall, however, the book was slow reading for me and although I enjoyed the second half of it more than the first, I am not really interested in pursuing the series, especially as I have heard things about the second book that I don't think I would like about Holmes' character.

4. 

I had heard many good things about this free verse autobiography of a young girl growing up in the 1960s and 70s.  The free verse was very evocative of emotion and place and family and was very easily read.  I found the story interesting from an historical perspective of what a black family's life was like in both the South and in a big city at the time.  I failed to see much of a message in the book, other than the rather obvious one of telling one's story and looking back on dreams dreamed and (hopefully?) fulfilled.  I think I had higher expectations of this book.

5.

This book is one that I re-read, as I intend to re-read the whole Lord Peter Wimsey series in the future.  I devoured them as a teen and college-aged girl, but I have heard that they have great and real-life wisdom to impart about relationships and married life as Lord Peter meets and courts and marries Harriet throughout the series.  I think I completely missed anything but the literal storyline when I read them 15 years ago.  Besides, Lord Peter is one of the leading men in a book that I was a little in love with as a girl . . .  

6.

 I picked this up because I read Walls' other book, The Glass Castle,  last summer, which definitely was one of the most memorable life stories that I have ever read.  Half Broke Horses is the story of Jeannette's mother's mom, Lily, who is a spunky, horse-breaking, school-teaching, go-get-'em woman living in the early 1900s.  I am only halfway through and had to return the book to the library, but I am looking forward to finishing soon.  Some people's stories are too crazy not to want to know what happens!

7.

My non-fiction reading life is very sparse.  I greatly prefer fiction when I pick up a book.  However, this one, written in 1988 by a "prenatal pscychologist" came recommended from my mom and probably because I am pregnant now, I was intrigued.  Truly, I found that I am fascinated by the studies and science behind the life of the in-utero and newborn baby detailed in the book.   And the birth stories are amazing too!  I have been inspired to be more attentive to my developing baby and the fully conscious, feeling, knowing and communicating person that he or she already is! For example, those smiles that people say are gas?  They are, says Chamberlain, real smiles from a "gifted communicator."  Also, the book makes me want to be so careful of the words and feelings that I say and have about the baby during pregnancy and especially birth!  

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