{"id":4787,"date":"2025-08-31T15:38:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T19:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=4787"},"modified":"2025-09-25T20:31:28","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T00:31:28","slug":"august-2025-books-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2025\/08\/august-2025-books-read\/","title":{"rendered":"August 2025 books read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>Sandwich<\/em> &#8211; Catherine Newman, 2024 &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/book_groups\/Second_Monday.htm\">Second Monday<\/a> selection, but I didn&#8217;t mark any quotes. I enjoyed it quite a bit but it&#8217;s not rib-sticking; cute, funny, slight.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Deluge<\/em> &#8211; Stephen Markley, 2023. Nature &amp; Environment selection. The opposite: very dark. Quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Outsiders<\/em> &#8211; S. E. Hinton, 1967. Read for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.massbook.org\/readingchallenge\">Massachusetts Center for the Book<\/a> August challenge:  &#8220;A book with a protagonist who is a teenager or senior citizen.&#8221; I wrote &#8220;I&#8217;ve been meaning to read this classic for decades. Now that I&#8217;m 60 I&#8217;ve finally gotten around to it. Teenage me would have enjoyed it more, but the emotional drama and relatable characters were appealing.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>So You&#8217;ve Been Publicly Shamed<\/em> &#8211; Jon Ronson, 2015. Well-written, interesting.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Scarlet Letter<\/em> &#8211; Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850. Great Books selection (re-read), quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Spent: A Comic Novel<\/em> &#8211; Alison Bechdel, 2025. I enjoyed this because the character explorations felt like a continuation of <em>Dykes to Watch Out For<\/em>, and the art is great (especially the goats!), but I liked <em>The Secret to Superhuman Strength<\/em> more. (Hey, that&#8217;s not in my Goodreads list! Thank goodness for the <a href=\"https:\/\/catalog.cwmars.org\/\">CWMars<\/a> reading history. Oh OK, it&#8217;s in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2022\/08\/august-2022-books-read\/\">August list<\/a> &#8211; would have just been left out of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2022\/12\/december-2022-books-read\/\">year in review<\/a>&#8230;)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I&#8217;d Known Earlier<\/em> &#8211; Kevin Kelly, 2023. Loved it, will read again. On this go-round I just marked one quote that hit me: &#8220;What you do on your bad days matters more than what you do on your good days.&#8221; I have found that to be very true.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Carnival<\/em> (Firefly #6) &#8211; Una McCormack, 2021. Loved it! Firefly is one of my favorite TV shows ever and I so wish there were more episodes. This novel provided an equivalent way more successfully than I could have imagined &#8211; I&#8217;m very impressed. I will read the others in the series, and look for more McCormack.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Short stories<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/512\/512-h\/512-h.htm#chap04\">Young Goodman Brown<\/a>,&#8221; Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1835. Read for <a href=\"https:\/\/georgesaunders.substack.com\/\">Story Club<\/a>, and it was a great companion piece to <em>The Scarlet Letter<\/em>. I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;d read it before, but not given it close attention; what a weird and unsettling piece. Having seen his diamond graffiti at <a href=\"https:\/\/thetrustees.org\/place\/the-old-manse\/\">The Old Manse<\/a>, visited the <a href=\"https:\/\/7gables.org\/\">House of the Seven Gables<\/a>, and hiked <a href=\"https:\/\/thetrustees.org\/place\/monument-mountain\/\">Monument Mountain<\/a>, I feel surrounded by Hawthorne traces!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Short stories<\/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-4787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monthly-lists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4787","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=4787"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4816,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4787\/revisions\/4816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}