{"id":5212,"date":"2026-08-31T19:46:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T23:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=5212"},"modified":"2026-09-30T19:51:32","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T23:51:32","slug":"august-2026-books-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2026\/08\/august-2026-books-read\/","title":{"rendered":"August 2026 books read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>I&#8217;m Glad My Mom Died<\/em> &#8211; Jenette McCurdy, 2022. Massachusetts Center for the Book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.massbook.org\/readingchallenge\">August challenge<\/a>, from their suggested list: &#8220;A book that could be considered taboo.&#8221; This had been on my TBR list for a while. I wrote  &#8220;A sad, gripping, ultimately hopeful memoir; McCurdy&#8217;s growing realization of her family&#8217;s dysfunction is well-done.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Oreo<\/em> &#8211; Fran Ross, 1974. Second Monday selection; quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Playground<\/em> &#8211; Richard Powers, 2024. Nature &amp; Environment selection; quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Frog and Toad are Doing Their Best: Bedtime Stories for Trying Times, A Parody<\/em> &#8211; Jennie Egerdie, 2021. <a href=\"https:\/\/fclir.org\/\">Learning in Retirement<\/a> had a children&#8217;s book bring-and-read and a participant brought this among others. It was cute enough that I borrowed it from the library. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe<\/em> &#8211; Daniel Defoe, 1719. Great Books selection; quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Mouse and His Child<\/em> &#8211; Russell Hoban, 1967. Multiple re-read, this time for my children&#8217;s reading group. Good discussions and I got to show off my signed first edition.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Hattie, the Backstage Bat<\/em> &#8211; Don Freeman, 1970. I brought <em>Norman the Doorman<\/em> (1959) to the Learning in Retirement event mentioned above, and someone mentioned this. Cute &#8211; love Hattie&#8217;s hat &#8211; but doesn&#8217;t hold a mouse trapeze to Norman, in my opinion.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Yesteryear<\/em> &#8211; Claro Claire Burke, 2026. Pretty good, and definitely hard to put down. My favorite thing about it was leading me to the excellent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.diabolicalliespod.com\/\">Diabolical Lies<\/a> podcast.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Number Three Joy Street: A Medley of Prose &amp; Verse for Boys and Girls<\/em> &#8211; 1925. Another <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pgdp.net\/wiki\/DP_Official_Documentation:Smooth_Reading\/Smooth_Reading_FAQ\">smooth reading<\/a> project on Distributed Proofreaders to help upload to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/ebooks\/79337\">Project Gutenberg<\/a>, and again didn&#8217;t live up to my expectations. The Walter de la Mare story (&#8220;Old Joe&#8221;) stands out; his stuff has a haunting quality that I didn&#8217;t like much as a kid but found memorable.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Correspondent<\/em> &#8211; Virginia Evans, 2025. I read the whole thing on Metro-North and it made me cry in public. A slow start, but I really loved this and will read it again. Epistolary novels are an easy sell, but the main character is hard to warm up to; despite her crabbiness, she won me over.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Ports of Call<\/em> &#8211; Jack Vance, 1999. Late\/not great Vance, but enjoyable. The trio of Flook, Pook, and Snook was mildly amusing.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Daddy Long-Legs: A Comedy in Four Acts<\/em>  &#8211; Jean Webster, 1912. Children&#8217;s reading group selection; quotes TBD.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Short stories<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We often reference Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock&#8217;s brother, because Jonathan has his trait of figuring things out at a distance. Mycroft comes up very frequently in adaptations of the canon, so I was interested in revisiting his actual appearances. There are only two Arthur Conan Doyle stories featuring him: &#8220;The Greek Interpreter&#8221; and &#8220;The Bruce-Partington Papers&#8221; (although he&#8217;s mentioned two other times). Some of the nostalgic charm has worn off, but I still mildly enjoyed these.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Short stories We often reference Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock&#8217;s brother, because Jonathan has his trait of figuring things out at a distance. Mycroft comes up very frequently in adaptations of the canon, so I was interested in revisiting his actual appearances. There are only two Arthur Conan Doyle stories featuring him: &#8220;The Greek Interpreter&#8221; and &#8220;The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5212","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=5212"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5280,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5212\/revisions\/5280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}