Some great new reads and some great older reads to take you to the end of summer. There's plenty of good reading to look forward to this fall, as well.
We Made a Garden - Margery Fish
First published in 1956, this best-selling book on how to create a garden was written by the foremost British gardener of the 20th century, Margery Fish, who, along with her husband, turned a one-acre wilderness into a spectacular cottage garden that is still recognized as the penultimate cottage garden and is still open to the public today. Full of advice on how to start from scratch, what tools to use, how to prepare soil, how to successfully plan a garden from landscaping to hard scapes, what can go wrong and what can go right, and much much more, "We Made A Garden" is a good common-sense garden bible for greenthumbs and wanna-be green thumbs alike. "A good garden is the garden you enjoy looking at even in the depths of winter . . . To achieve this means a lot of thought and a lot of work, but it can be done." — Margery Fish
Spirit Crossing - William Kent Krueger
Book #20 in the Cork O’Connor Mystery series brings back Corcoran “Cork” O’Connor, a part Irish, part Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) Indian and former Chicago cop and sheriff of Aurora, Minnesota. A manhunt for a local politician's missing daughter is the background story in which O'Connor's search for her killer forces him to have to protect his family who are caught up in the drama: while picking blueberries on an abandoned piece of land next to a derelict cabin, Cork's 7-year old grandson finds a shallow grave, discovering the body of another local teenage girl and tribe member, possibly with a connection to the politician's missing daughter. Born with the gift to sense otherworldly messages, the sweet young grandson leads Cork and the Lake Ojibwe Tribal Police on a wild, and life-threatening, goose chase as the mystery killer tries to track down the grandson . . . and make him his next victim. Add this one to your bookshelf of Kreuger's sensitive and masterful storytelling.
Flowers For Things I Don't Know How to Say - Tucket Nichols
this is not a book of poetry,
but it is (mostly) poetic.
this is not a book of art,
but it is lovely watercolor paintings of flowers in vases.
this is a book that connects
-or-
in no way connects the painting of flowers in vases to a
(poetic) thought to it's right or left.
quite clever and quite sweet.
a book to gift to anyone and everyone.
it caught me by surprise
-and then-
I saw that I must bring it home with me.
so I did.
The Briar Club - Kate Quinn
Historical fiction author Kate Quinn moves her storytelling from wartime Europe to Washington, DC and the 1950s McCarthy era. The women who live in the Briar House boardinghouse keep their personal histories to themselves, especially at their weekly dinner parties hosted by Grace March, the mysterious yet flamboyantly outgoing central character in Quinn's departure from the WWI and II female spy networks. The Red Scare is also central to the story, as the all-women residents of Briar House become forced to reckon with their own roles living and working in a city full of secrets.
In My Time of Dying - Sebastian Junger
During his career, author of "The Perfect Storm" and award-winning war reporter Sebastian Junger put himself in many situations in which his life was at risk. In 2020, while enjoying a lovely summer day at home with his family, he suddenly doubled-over from extreme stomach pain. That pain nearly killed him. In fact, he experienced near-death several times while being examined and operated on in the hospital for what eventually was discovered to be a ruptured aneurysm that was as difficult to repair as it was to diagnose. As he began to slip away, Junger recounts in the book, he was visited by his dead father who was calling to him to join him in death. An atheist raised by his physicist father, Junger found himself obsessively curious about death and after-death experiences, questioning whether or not he truly did have an after-life meeting with his father, or hallucinations . . . or what? This book is the result of that obsession, with references to many reported occurrences of people having near-death experiences similar to his. He looks at death on the deepest personal level in the way a reporter tells a story, putting his journalist skills to the task.
It Was Vulgar & It Was Beautiful - Jack Lowery
In the NYC 1980s, a small group formed an ad-hoc collective to open people's eyes to an alarming number of deaths occurring in the gay community, contributed to an illness that had similar untreatable symptoms. The illness became known as AIDS. To open people's eyes to this disease that was killing their friends and lovers, the collective started creating public acts, their first being the silence=death poster campaign they postered throughout the city. That small group gained attention, new members joined, and the grassroots group became a real thing: ACT UP. They continued plastering the city, one graphics campaign after another, while also speaking publicly, in attempts to get the U.S. government and the CDC to recognize this illness that was infecting and killing New York's gay community. Early on, a group of like-minded graphic artists and advertising industry creatives joined forces with ACT UP, forming the art collective Gran Fury, who became the designers of ACT UP's visual campaigns. Writer Jack Lowery interviewed members of these two groups, revealing their stories and dedication, after too many years and too many deaths, to forcing the CDC and the U.S. government to recognize and deal with AIDS. The book is an expose of how ACT UP and Gran Fury succeeded in gaining attention through their graphics campaigns and grassroots demonstrations to get medical, pharmaceutical, and governmental help for AIDS victicms. This is a must read.
The Tree Collectors - Amy Stewart
This beautifully illustrated book from nature writter/illustrator Amy Stewart is stories from 50 tree lovers world-wide about the trees they love and their connections to, especially, rare trees. It is a lovely tribute to a part of the natural world that so many take for granted and is an introduction to the trees that one can find when getting off the beaten path. Amy Stewart's watercolors stand out in this treasure of a book.
The Booklover's Library - Madeline Martin
A story that takes place in England before and during WWII about Emma Taylor who lost her father and their beloved bookstore to fire and later, Emma as a young widowed mother who is separated from her daughter when children were being evacuated to the countryside during the war. At a time when finding hope is nearly hopeless, Emma sets her mind to not losing her daughter and to finding a way to remain employed at a library with way too many rules and way too many complications. As the Blitz increases, Emma chooses to bring her cherished daughter home, which puts her employment at risk because of archaic rules prohibiting widows with children from working. Despite the trials and tribulations Emma (and her daughter) are faced with, this turns into a heartwarming story with a happy ending.
The Woman With No Name - Audrey Blake
This historical novel is the true story about a fearless and determined female resistance fighter in occupied WWII France: Yvonne Rudellat. As Britain's first female espionage agent, she had an uncanny ability to set explosives . . . and at times in incredibly daring and dangerous places . . . while being undermined by her superiors who didn't trust a woman could do a better job than themselves. Yvonne's story is a huge testament to the power of mind over matter when the lives of everyone around you . . . and an entire population of people . . . are doomed to die if somebody doesn't step up to fight the enemy. I had a hard time imagining myself, if I had to, choosing to risk my life as Yvonne so bravely did to fight the Nazi regime. Kudos to Audrey Blake for bringing Yvonne's story to light.
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