A hectic month may sadly disrupt my writing productivity, but reading is one thing that never entirely goes away. In fact, I’m even more inclined to reach for a good book as comfort or refreshment during a rocky day or week. For instance, the day after Bär got hurt, when we’d been up till two in the morning the night before and it was all we could do to make meals and keep our eyes open, my own method of coping with the exhaustion and left-over stress was to devour A Shilling For Candles by Josephine Tey in the course of the afternoon. And yes, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I actually remember what it was about. All the rest of that week, pretty much all I did in my spare time was read. Books are such a blessing.
My summer reading list (as usual) ended up being a starting-point: over the past three months, the number of books I’ve read that weren’t on the list actually exceeds the number that were on it. Here’s my original list, updated with some review links:
Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp
Escape the Night by Mignon G. Eberhart
The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart
Storming by K.M. Weiland
Where There’s a Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart
Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope
Moccasin Trail by Eloise Jarvis McGraw
Greenwillow by B.J. Chute
Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener
Conagher by Louis L’Amour
The Great K&A Train Robbery by Paul Leicester Ford
When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
I finished everything on here except the titles struck out (though I’m still working on When Books Went to War). Greenwillow was an inadvertent casualty: my library system discarded their only copy before I could request it! There always seems to be at least one book on my list each year that I can’t manage to get hold of during the summer. I didn’t finish Tales of the South Pacific, and never started Romeo and Juliet. Shakespearean tragedy was one thing I did not feel up to. But meanwhile, since the beginning of June I’ve also logged this variety of titles (not counting research books, which are a topic for another day), which range from okay to good to very good to great:
Good-Bye, My Lady by James H. Street – good
Picture Miss Seeton by Heron Carvic – very good (hilariously so)
Back Home by Eugene Wood – good
A Branch of Silver, A Branch of Gold by Anne Elisabeth Stengl – very good
Before Lunch by Angela Thirkell – okay
Greyfriars Bobby by Eleanor Atkinson – great!
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen – re-read, naturally great
Information Received by E.R. Punshon – okay
Five Magic Spindles by multiple authors – very good
Cotillion by Georgette Heyer – okay
Rest and Be Thankful by Helen MacInnes – very good (I’ll review it someday, I promise!)
A Shilling For Candles by Josephine Tey – very good
Max Carrados by Ernest Bramah – okay to good
Shirley by Charlotte Brontë – re-read, quite good
The Weight of the Crown by Fred M. White – okay to good
Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers – great!
Traitor’s Masque by Kenley Davidson – great!
