{"id":4752,"date":"2025-08-01T20:32:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T00:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=4752"},"modified":"2025-09-13T19:56:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T23:56:36","slug":"july-2025-books-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2025\/08\/july-2025-books-read\/","title":{"rendered":"July 2025 books read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A very busy month so not a lot of books!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>The Voyages of Dr Dolittle<\/em> &#8211; Hugh Lofting, 1922. I only read this one a few times as a kid because I didn&#8217;t own it, but I remembered it as one of the best Dolittles. The great naturalist Long Arrow and the beetle with the message on its leg stuck with me, and I remembered the giant sea snail from the movie &#8211; which I may have seen when it came out, so might have been my gateway to the books. Beginning of a binge, but spaced out because I have so much else to read (Amherst Book Group is reading <em>Ulysses<\/em>!)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man<\/em> &#8211; James Joyce, 2015. Re-read &#8211; for the Amherst College Book Group as a prelude to Ulysses. Quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>We Loved It All<\/em> &#8211; Lydia Millett, 2024. Nature and Enviro, quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Tell Me How Long the Train&#8217;s Been Gone<\/em> &#8211; James Baldwin, 1968 &#8211; Second Monday, quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Here Comes the Fun: A Year of Making Merry<\/em> &#8211; Ben Aitken, 2023. Read for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.massbook.org\/readingchallenge\">Massachusetts Center for the Book Reading Challenge<\/a> &#8211; &#8220;A book you were drawn to by its cover.&#8221; Jonathan saw it on the dollar shelf at <a href=\"https:\/\/broadsidebooks.com\/\">Broadside<\/a> and thought of me, because I am a fun-lover, and the cover did  I wrote &#8220;A light-hearted account of Aitken&#8217;s attempts at dozens of activities from cold water bathing to improv. Not as funny as he wants it to be, but enjoyable.&#8221; Two things-I-learned and three good quotes (not quite enough for a stand-alone post):\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/An_Idiot_Abroad\">An Idiot Abroad<\/a><\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Coasteering\">Coasteering<\/a> &#8211; wow, sounds like my kind of fun except for the jumping<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;We are the sum of what we pay attention to and what we <em>paid<\/em> attention to. The more we look, the more we see, the more we see again. It&#8217;s the again I like. It&#8217;s the chance recurrence. It&#8217;s things reapparing and their being richer for having a precedent.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;[The butterfly&#8217;s] wings are transparent &#8212; as mesh. I can see the green of the leaf through them. The wings&#8217; colour is the colour of what is beyond. The wings&#8217; colour is the colour of what they encounter.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;I love the aimless wandering. I love the clueless ambulation. I love losing myself amid the thick and limitless variety of life.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Sea, the Sea<\/em> &#8211; Iris Murdoch, 1978 &#8211; Re-read for Great Books. I marked quotes so it will be interesting to compare to my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2019\/07\/the-sea-the-sea-iris-murdoch-1970\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"885\">previous post<\/a>, once I get there.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A very busy month so not a lot of books!<\/p>\n","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-4752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monthly-lists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4752","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=4752"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4813,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4752\/revisions\/4813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}