June 2025 books read

  • Brooklyn – Colm Tóibín, 2009. Second Monday book selection. This is the fourth Tóibín I’ve read with this group, and the first I actually enjoyed. But I only pulled one quote: “They knew so much, each of them, … that they could do everything except say out loud what it was they were thinking.” I’ll try the movie at some point.
  • Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell By Shattered Shell – Sy Montgomery, 2023. Nature Enviro selection, quotes TBD.
  • The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame, 1908. Great Books selection (multiple re-read), quotes TBD.
  • The Head of the House of Coombe (1922) and Robin (1922) – Frances Hodgson Burnett. I’ve read this two-part novel several times, and produced Robin for Project Gutenberg because it was missing. I found a bunch of typos in the first one, which led me to a brief adventure using Github repos to report PG errors, but that’s already rolled back, so I’ll submit the revised files – at least it got me to actually do it, thanks to Jonathan doing the research. I’ve always meant to figure out how to submit corrections, and now I’ll plan on making it a habit. It’s time-consuming but feels very worth it. I marked two things I looked up:
    • Liebig – beef extract
    • Scatterbrained nurse is absorbed in Lady Audley’s Secret. I read that a while back – don’t remember it but it was compelling!
  • The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851. The Massachusetts Center for the Book challenge was “A book that spans multiple generations.” I couldn’t think of one that appealed (and my rule is I must not have read it before), so I turned to their suggestions. My writeup: “I’m so glad I finally read this – it’s charming and not as dark as other Hawthornes, although plenty spooky. Hepzibah, Phoebe, and little Ned Higgins, insatiable devourer of gingerbread, are particularly endearing.” I found a bunch of typos in the Gutenberg edition, but fewer than in the Burnett, so they are already fixed for posterity.
  • Hereward the Wake: Last of the English – Charles Kingsley, 1866. I picked this up last month because the protagonist of T. Tembarom refers to it. Quotes marked, TBD.
  • Talking Turkey – Hilary Caws-Elwitt, unpublished mss (2014). I guess I’ll re-read my own book (it’s middle grade animal fantasy) every few years to make sure I still like it… and I do. I might self-publish at some point, I suppose, not under the illusion that anyone else will read it. (If you want to check it out, let me know!)
  • The Long Walk – Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman, 1978. I saw a trailer for the new movie and was prompted to pick this up again. It’s the most memorable of the Bachmans to me, and of course it led the way for the Hunger Games books and Squid Game show. Not great but readable.