What I Read June 2021

My June Goals were

• Finish A Fine Romance.
• Read Factfulness and return to my dad. Rollover to July and/or August.
• Read Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth. Rollover to July and/or August.
  Reread Emma.
• Catch Up on The Silent Bells serial by ND Wilson. I’ve decided I need to reread the whole series first so rollover to July and/or August.
• Read the state history I borrowed from Papau and return. Rollover to July and/or August.
• Make inroads into The Idiot (aim for end of July). Rollover to July and/or August.
• Maybe On Writing Well. Rollover to July and/or August.
• Other fiction possibilities:
  • Greenwillow
  • Maybe the other to Corfu books

So basically I only read the light and fluffy books off my list.

Greenwillow by B.J. Chute. I’ve had this on my shelf for a couple years, but I finally picked it up and read it. It is such a lyrical and peaceful book. I didn’t know much about it at all, but I picked it up and thought, this is set in America and immediately assumed New England/Northeast. (How? What were the indicators that this was American?! Something in the tone, the sentence structure?). The author is from Minnesota, but while I haven’t read much of that area, the novel really felt like it had a rural Puritan New England atmosphere (like a softened view, not a Ethan Frome or Nathanial Hawthorne one). I’m curious to know other peoples’ thoughts.

My Family and Other Animals; Birds, Beasts and Relatives; and The Garden of the Gods by Gerald Durrell.
After finishing The Durrells I wanted to reread the first book and then read the next two to see how much was changed. Since I highlighted quite a few funny parts, I’m going to save this group review for another post.

Emma by Jane Austen. I read this as part of a book club, but I didn’t end up participating much, I got quite sucked back in.

The Real James Herriot: A Memoir of My Father by Jim Wight. I finished all the James Herriot books, and so I wrapped it up by reading this biography written by his son. He wrote very true to life, so this merely rounded out a lot, there was not very much surprising or anything except Alf Wight’s bouts of depression. I thought it a sweet, mild, rather melancholic read. I now want to get ahold of James Herriot’s Yorkshire and watch the newer series (I just couldn’t get over the casting of the old, not that all the new ones seem excellent, but the older casting Siegfried!).

A Fine Romance: Falling in Love with the English Countryside by Susan Branch. This was such a sweet and relaxing read. It’s an illustrated travel journal, it is quite fun.