My June 2022 Reads

I have had no uninterrupted time to write about my trip to Cornwall (I will tease you with one picture) but I did manage to read several books while I was meant to be studying in London. I am paying for it now: my term paper is due on Friday and is only half done!  My favorite book of the month was From a Distance, a library discard I picked up for 20p.

Daphne du Maurier's private beach

Fiction

A Rural Affair by Catherine Alliott (2011). Poppy Shilling may have fantasized about her boring husband slipping on ice on his way to get the paper or contracting malaria from a mosquito bite, but she never imagined Phil would actually have a freak accident and die, leaving her a widow with two children.

My April 2022 Reads

Historical Fiction

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn (2021) – Historical fiction set at Bletchley Park during WWII which follows three unlikely friends during the war and beyond. I had been saving this for months, so was pleased when my book group decided to read it. For once, everyone seemed to enjoy our choice!  I did not review this because many had already done so very eloquently!

The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron #1954Club

Title: The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet
Author: Eleanor Cameron
Publication: Little, Brown & Company, hardcover, 1954
Genre: Juvenile fantasy
Setting: 20th century California

This review is for the #1954Club, hosted by StuckinaBook and Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, in which bloggers are invited to read and review books that were published in a chosen year.

Description: David Topman is reading Dr. Doolittle in the Moon when his father sees a notice in the newspaper:

WANTED: A small space ship about eight feet long, built by a boy or two boys, between the ages of eight and eleven.

Bookshelf Traveling - August 29

Time for another round of Bookshelf Traveling in Insane Times which was created by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness and is currently hosted by Katrina at Pining for the West.   The idea is to share one of your neglected bookshelves or perhaps a new pile of books.  

My guest room has seven bookcases of children’s books, including this shelf which holds the Ellen Confords, three by L.M. Boston, Understood Betsy (which I couldn’t find when I needed it last month for the family read!), the Carol Ryrie Brinks, and my E. Nesbits.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Wolfe Island to The Children of Green Knowe

Australian author Lucy Treloar’s Wolfe Island, a dystopian novel set in Chesapeake Bay, is this month’s starting point for Six Degrees of Separation, which is organized by Kate.  It sounds interesting but due to a busy semester, I was not able to add it to this month’s reading.  It does seem unusual that an Australian author would set a book in Virginia (or Maryland!) and name her narrator Kitty Hawke, which is a play on a famous North Carolina coastal town.   Maybe I will understand her reasoning when I read the book!  I notice all my books this month are by women - unintentional but interesting.

 

My first book is Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry (1947).  Set on the Virginia coast like Wolfe Island, this is a famous children’s book, a runner-up for the Newbery Award, about the wild ponies on the island town of Chincoteague, Virginia.  I was not a big "horse book" reader but all of Henry's books were in my school and city libraries.