{"id":3985,"date":"2024-05-31T20:41:55","date_gmt":"2024-06-01T00:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=3985"},"modified":"2025-05-04T09:36:41","modified_gmt":"2025-05-04T13:36:41","slug":"may-2024-books-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2024\/05\/may-2024-books-read\/","title":{"rendered":"May 2024 books read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>Trustee from the Toolroom<\/em> &#8211; Nevil Shute, 1960. One of my very very favorites by Shute, which is saying a lot. I went back to it because of reading about my friend John&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/pyrigan.com\/\">amazing puzzles<\/a> &#8211; the engineering reminded me of Keith Stewart, the protagonist.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Time Shelter<\/em> &#8211; Georgi Gospodinov (tr. Angela Rodel), 2020. Second Monday pick; quotes marked, TBD. V. interesting and meta.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis<\/em> &#8211; Annie Proulx, 2022. Nature\/Enviro pick; quotes marked, TBD. Did not love.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit<\/em> &#8211; Sloan Wilson, 1954. Great Books pick; quotes marked, TBD. Extremely readable &#8211; not a great book, but compelling.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Broad Highway<\/em> &#8211; Jeffrey Farnol, 1910. I&#8217;m not sure where I saw this recommended, but it was supposedly the best-selling book in the US in 1911. Confirmed in the excellent <em>Making the List<\/em> (Michael Korda, 1992) but not even rating a mention in the text. I was interested to read that Farnol is credited with <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jeffery_Farnol\">initiating the Regency romance<\/a> along with Georgette Heyer. This was delightful! A will conditional on a marriage, identical cousins, mistaken identities galore, colorful rural characters as far as the eye can see&#8230; nothing surprising, but fun to read.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>March: Book 1<\/em> &#8211; John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell, 2013. The May <a href=\"https:\/\/www.massbook.org\/readingchallenge\">Center for the Book challenge<\/a> was &#8220;a graphic novel.&#8221; I made myself a list of ones that sounded intriguing, but most of them were checked out. This is a series I&#8217;d been meaning to read&#8230; and it&#8217;s OK, but I didn&#8217;t feel inclined to go on. My favorite bit is that Lewis loved chickens as a boy &#8211; there was a delightful amount of detail around that. &#8220;An interesting window into civil rights history&#8221; &#8211; sorry, I&#8217;m kind of phoning it in there!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Number One Is Walking: My Life in the Movies and Other Diversions<\/em> &#8211; Steve Martin and Harry Bliss, 2022. I tried this one as well, but it&#8217;s so slight that it wasn&#8217;t worth reviewing for the challenge. I do enjoy Bliss&#8217; drawings, especially those of his poodle Penny, and I learned that Paul McCartney sang Martin&#8217;s song &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NmhAHOB_-yU\">Best Love<\/a>,&#8221; but that&#8217;s about it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monthly-lists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3985"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4620,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3985\/revisions\/4620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}