Books Read in July, part 2

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The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Volume 1

By Beth Brower, published 2019

It is March 1883 and Emma has just moved back to her childhood home (Lapis Lazuli House) in London as an orphan who has finished school and a three year companionship to a curmudgeonly older relative, and who is a few months away from inheriting the house and property. She will take over from an older male relative who has been living in the house and benefiting from the income since her father’s death seven years before. Her coming of age will boot him out of his handling of the house and money. I’m sure this will be a smooth transition…. 

The novella’s format is diary entries, and details Emma’s observations, thoughts, and feelings. It is a charming little book, and Emma is a witty and entertaining narrator. 

I like that the book is a novella and in a diary/journal format, so we don’t get too in-the-weeds about the events of the story, and it doesn’t go on for too long before we are at the end. It was a perfect little snack of a book.

Brower has released eight volumes thus far, with each volume covering two months of time, so her proposed timeline will cover ~twenty-ish volumes if she continues her current plan (https://www.bethbrower.com/about-3). That is quite a commitment and I wish her the best! 

Howl’s Moving Castle 

By Diana Wynne Jones, published 1986

I re-read this children’s fantasy novel because we have been watching the films of Hayao Miyazaki with a friend and after watching the animated version I couldn’t remember what aspects were part of the book and what aspects Miyazaki inserted/ adapted. 

The story follows Sophie, a young woman who works at her stepmother’s hat shop and is the dutiful oldest daughter (who seems magical despite assuring us that she is super boring and lame) while her younger two sisters go off to work at a bakery and apprenticeship with a witch. 

Sophie is cursed by the Wicked Witch of the Waste to be an old woman and also not to be able to tell anyone she has been cursed. She leaves her day job and discovers the vain Wizard Howl and his titular castle (which does indeed move, and is also connected magically to multiple locations). 

It’s a story about family, knowing yourself, courage, and also magic, obviously. It is also a very 1980’s book. There were aspects I enjoyed and some things which I had a lot of questions about and wanted to know more about. I enjoyed it, but I probably don’t need to revisit it again. 

The movie is also a delight: beautiful, weird, though it leaves some plot threads dangling at the end, though to be fair, the book also ends rather abruptly. I did love the movie’s depiction of the castle as a Baba Yaga’s Hut style building, and Howl’s vanity and general angst is also a highlight.  What I didn’t love was Billy Crystal as the English dub voice of Calcifer, the fire demon. I just didn’t imagine Billy Crystal when I imagined the fire demon, and it was impossible to hear him as anything but Billy Crystal. Small complaint and it might not bother you!

Books Read in July, part 1

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The Silver Chair

By C.S. Lewis, published 1953

We return to Narnia with Eustace and a schoolmate of his, Jill. They arrive in Aslan’s Country and are sent on a quest to find the lost prince of Narnia, Rilian. 

Jill and Eustace almost immediately behave poorly and don’t follow instructions well, so the quest becomes a bit more complicated right away (unfortunately relatable). To their credit, however, they don’t give up. 

This is the last of the direct sequel Narnia books, and a fun adventure story. This one also feels like it could be well adapted into a movie. I know the early 2000’s Narnia movies got mixed reviews (Dawn Treader was legitimately a mess), but it’s too bad we didn’t get this one because I think it would have been fun and as a more straightforward story lends itself well to the screen. 

Puddleglum the marshwiggle is a delightful addition to Narnia as the Eeyore of the story, who nevertheless proves to be worth his weight in gold. Perseverance and keeping sense of your core identity are important lessons of this book, and ones I still need to hear as an adult!

Most memorable quote: “Many sink down and few return to the sunlit lands.”

Country People

By Daniel Mason, published 2026

“‘I think,’ he said, ‘Vermont is a little different.’

“‘Okay, said Kate. ‘But you know what I am saying. Rural people. Farming people. Country people. It does seem hard to write about the topic when you haven’t lived in the country yourself.’”

The Krzelewski-Petrosian family moves from California to rural Vermont when Kate takes a one-year teaching job at a college, and Miles plans to continue work on a long-protracted dissertation on Russian peasant (country) life.

The family settles in to their new rural life and meets a colorful cast of characters, a completely different landscape, and Miles tries to work on his dissertation. But the writing seems less urgent than exploring their new home. Kate slips easily into academic life, Wesley and Olive make friends at school and seem to be adjusting well, and Miles tries to find his place. 

Having recently read North Woods by the same author, I expected a slightly quirky, offbeat story, and Mason delivered. I preferred this more straightforward story, and there is still room for the occasional diversion via characters telling stories (reminiscent in some ways to The Pickwick Papers). This was a funny, meandering look into a family’s life for a year, and an enjoyable romp through the countryside and a collection of offbeat characters in a small town whose quirkiness is treated with affection rather than scorn.

This feels like it straddles the line of reality and unreality, and that might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I found it fun and an easy read, and funnier than I expected. Miles seems like he would be a fun hang.

Books Read in June 2026, Part 2

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Don’t Call It Art

By Austin Kleon, published 2026

“To waste time in the modern world is considered the greatest of sins, and idleness is looked upon with suspicion. To be thought of as productive, one needs to look busy. But you will not always look busy when you’re being creative. In fact, if you check in on creative people at different moments in the day, it will look like they are doing absolutely nothing, or doing the kinds of things kids get yelled at for in the classroom….” 

Austin Kleon’s little books are encouraging and fun. They are meant to help you continue in creative practices with a combination of advice, humor, quotes, and stories from Kleon’s own creative life. They are also best experienced by reading the books themselves to see the drawings and illustrations. 

This installment has a lot of reflections about art and his children, drawn from being an “art assistant” to them and remembering what it was like to create with the artistic freedom of a child whose inner critic has not yet developed into crippling insecurity. 

“The artist ventures into the unknown, making and doing things that no one has ever seen before.” Love it. Let’s go make some stuff! …But you don’t have to call it art. Just mess around and make something (a good word for a recovering perfectionist like me).

North Woods

By Daniel Mason, published 2023

This is a story about a particular yellow house in the—you guessed it—north woods of Massachusetts. The house is built by a young couple fleeing their town, and each section is a vignette of someone who lives in the house. 

The stories, though separate, start to converge in strange ways, the past affecting the present. The house is the only through line; though whispers of past inhabitants continue, sometimes through their decisions, sometimes as ghosts, and the house itself is unsettling to some. 

This was an interesting and weird book, as a result of the structure (following the house, not the characters). Some of the stories felt a little too much, and I think it would have been a stronger book if it was a little bit shorter. While I enjoyed it, I was ready to be done before the author was ready to be done, though I know not everyone had that reaction. Mason was clearly having a great time writing the vignettes and deciding where to go next though, and that came across to me reading it. I appreciated the ambition of following a place, not a person, even if I did not find it completely successful in paying off its promise. 

DNF (Did Not Finish) Pile

Yesteryear 

By Caro Claire Burke published 2026

This is an extremely polarizing book. While I loved the premise, I found the characters unconvincing and decided I’d rather just have conversations with people about tradwife influencers and Mom-culture than read the rest of this book. I think the execution didn’t line up with my expectations, and that was part of the problem (I expected an unlikeable narrator, but I found her a little…boring).

Since I didn’t finish the book it’s a bit of a cheat to write something about it, but I decided the book wasn’t for me even though I appreciated what Burke was trying to do and I find the discourse around it fascinating. I also wonder about the staying power of this book. It is everywhere this summer, but I’m curious if this is the type of book that is for this specific moment and then will fade, or if it will have a longer shelf-life.

Books Read in June 2026, Part 1

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The Everlasting

by Alix E. Harrow, published 2025

Owen Mallory is an academic who lives in a kingdom called Dominion, eking out an existence after fighting in one of Dominion’s many wars, and is a nobody in a university history department. 

He is obsessed with the legend of Sir Una Everlasting, the mythical(?) female knight who helped the first Queen of Dominion establish the country. One day he receives a book with the oldest version of the legend yet, and is tasked with translating it. 

He then finds himself traveling back through the book in time, to meet Una and write her story. He discovers the person behind the myth, falls in love, watches her die, works on his translation, and travels back again and again and again. 

While this is not exactly an Arthurian legend book, it also is sort of a gender-swapped Arthur (ahem, our protagonist’s name is Mallory, wink). The time travel and repeating history aspect is interesting, and I was rooting for Owen and Una. I enjoyed the way the time travel allowed the book to play with both real people living their lives and also historical record and the way that mythology (and sometimes also history) sands off the rough edges and those writing the history can tweak the story to fit a narrative that serves them. 

I left the book thinking about history and legend and national stories. America is a country that is less of an ethnic identity (no matter what some politicians will tell you), and more of an idea, a creed, a set of beliefs (see the Declaration of Independence and Frederick Douglass’s 4th of July speech for examples). The story we tell about ourselves and our national identity is important, and yet it is easy to only tell part of the truth about anything, to collapse the complicated truth to something simpler. 

Anyway, this is all to say that I enjoyed this book. 

Content: violence (because Sir Una is essentially a medieval knight), sex, language, death

Make Believe 

By Marc Barnett, published 2026

“Maybe more like 94.7% of kids’ books are crud. And that’s because kids’ books, unlike most writing, are made by people (adults) who are not members of their intended audience (kids). And children are in so many ways different from adults, though often not in the ways adults expect.” 

This small book was engaging, funny, and had a very definite point of view on children’s literature. My bookshop colleague led a discussion on it, which was a delight. 

Barnett thinks the best children’s book authors either have a lot of empathy with children, have a direct line back to their own childhood, or both. 

I will be thinking for a while about the ways the many children’s books are trying to Teach A Lesson and how this is often prioritized over just telling good stories that children would enjoy. Someone in the discussion said that many authors (of novels for grown-ups) are so busy working out their own stuff that they do not seem to care about their audience. This led to talking about authors whom we trust to handle material in a way that cares for their audience. Are there authors in whose hands you feel safe? Bad things may happen to the characters in their books, but they still have care for them and for you? 

I want this reading experience for both children and adults, and I agree with Barnett that we ought to take much more care in putting out books for children that try to tell good stories and take children seriously as humans. 

Books Read in May 2026, part 2

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The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

by C. S. Lewis, published 1952

Lucy, Edmund, and their unpleasant cousin Eustace visit Narnia via a painting of a ship and go on a voyage of adventure and growth. Features the best mouse and a great opening line. I enjoy the vignettes of the different islands they visit and my husband speculates that I picked up my horror of sitting with my back to an open door from this book: 

“[Lucy] would have to stand with her back to the door while she read [the magician’s book]. So at once she turned to shut the door. 

“It wouldn’t shut.

“Some people may disagree with Lucy about this, but I think she was quite right. She said she wouldn’t have minded if she could have shut the door, but that it was unpleasant to have to stand in a place like that with an open doorway right behind your back. I should have felt just the same.”

Exactly. The thought of being watched or surprised from behind unsettles me. 

Unlike Prince Caspian, this is in my top tier Narnia books. I enjoy meeting many new characters as the Dawn Treader visits many islands, and Eustace’s transformation is excellent.

Platform Decay

by Martha Wells, published 2026

Murderbot is back! This time, it’s on a mission to extract (rescue) some family members of its favorite human, Dr. Mensah, from a bad situation. 

As usual, Murderbot pairs is grumpy desire to just watch tv with its desire to be useful as an independent security consultant and a grudging member of a community of humans and bots. Murderbot may be grossed out by the inefficiencies and smells of humans, who require sustenance, lots of sleep, restroom “comfort” breaks, and who have emotional breakdowns at inconvenient moments, but Murderbot is also emotional about holding small humans, being respected, and being accepted as part of a team, much to its surprise.

Murderbot is also still dealing with the fact that it endured trauma (emotionally; Murderbot is nearly constantly enduring physical trauma in its security capacity) a couple books ago. So processing its emotions is…tricky. 

This was another fun installment of the series, no complaints. Perfect in novella form.

The Mystery of the Blue Train

By Agatha Christie, published 1928

A wealthy American purchases an enormous ruby necklace for his spoiled daughter, and she takes it with her on a train trip. What could possibly go wrong?

Meanwhile, Hercule Poirot, coincidentally traveling on the same train, meets a young woman who has come into some money and who is going to meet some relatives who hope she will share some of her newfound wealth with them.

When the American woman is discovered murdered and the necklace missing, Poirot must sort through the suspects to discover who killed her and why (the husband she was divorcing? his new mistress/girlfriend? a notorious jewel thief? someone else on the train who held a grudge against her/her father?).

This mystery felt a little more melancholy in tone than some other Christie mysteries, maybe partially because of the brutal murder but also because I felt sorry for the girl who inherited money but feels lonely and out of place. Money does not solve that predicament. I was not quite sure of her place in the story–maybe just to lighten it up a bit? But this was still a solid Poirot mystery.

What Grows in Weary Lands

by Tish Harrison Warren, published 2026

“This is a middle-of-life book, for “what our culture–and what the church–tends to lack are stories of a long, steady continuation of faith…we don’t have categories for the prolonged middle, for the slog.”

So this is a book about the middle. It is for people who are in the midst of life, busy with responsibilities and find themselves weary or restless, unsure about continuing on the same road they have been traveling. Maybe they are not sure they can continue in their spiritual life and it feels easier or better to give up.

Warren looks to the Christian desert fathers and mothers (basically proto-monks) who had much to say about faith in difficult circumstances.

Some of the advice is hard, some of it is necessary for surviving a world with an onslaught of distractions, notifications, inhuman technology and extractive economics, and some of it is encouraging (maybe try softer; be honest; don’t try to “gut it out” alone).

A wise and helpful book. Put one foot in front of the other, but be gentle with yourself and resist the urge to numb or flame out. “To go deep means looking with unflinching honesty at the truth of things–the pain in our lives, the sins and weaknesses in ourselves and those around us.” I found it comforting and encouraging, as I am in the middle of life and finding that I cannot rely on a shallow faith to sustain me. I read this book quickly, but I think it would benefit from slow reading to really take it in. I will probably read it again and much more slowly next time.