Book Week: My Summer Reads
This is book week for me! Friday and Saturday bring "Bookstock" to our community with book sales, poetry readings, author signings, etc. I'm also collecting books for vacation. So, today's post is about some books I've read this summer, books I'm hoping to read, and asks for recommendations from you. Later this week--what the girls are reading, read aloud suggestions from you, and who knows what else....
Right now I'm reading My Name is Memory about a young man and woman who keep encountering each other's souls through time. I haven't finished it, but it is beautiful.
This weekend I read A Vintage Affair which is about a woman in London who leaves her job at Sotheby's to open her own vintage fashion shop. The women she meets and the dresses she buys have stories to tell. It was a light weekend read and very fun.
The Kitchen House tells the story of a white indentured servant living on a plantation in Virginia. Lucinda has to negotiate a complicated world of race, class, and gender. A great read.
My Name is Mary Sutter is all about a young midwife who wishes to become a surgeon. Unable to get anybody to train her, she heads off to Washington to work in a Civil War hospital. I enjoyed this book, however, the descriptions of war wounds and 19th century medicine were a bit gruesome!
Soon....we are headed off for a week of rest and relaxation in a little cottage by the sea in Nova Scotia. I'm trying to gather a good pile of books. Here are a couple that are on my list:
I heard about this tragic story on NPR.
I seem to be reading a lot of books about slavery, race, and gender these days. This one takes place in Haiti and New Orleans.
I am looking forward to this story as I was just on Elizabeth Street in NYC last week! About a midwife who comes to NYC.
I really hope these books are available at the library by the time I am ready to go. Do you have any recommendations for a good summer vacation read? I've never read any Wendell Berry novels. Any recommendations out there?
Thank you! My library has (or has ordered) all but 2 of these books!
those look like interesting books, and I'd especially like to read the first one. I shall have to look for it at the library. Is the cottage the same one you went to previously, by the lake? That was beautiful.
Sarah-- this is a new summer spot for us. We found a little cottage owned by some local teachers who are renting it at a reasonable price. It is a compromise for us--a place where we can settle in for some quiet time in the fog, but also a new location where we can do a bit of exploring. We're trying to please our young teens and us old fogey parents :)
I actually haven't read any of these! I will have to look for them the next time I am at the library.
I'm quite interested in the one about dresses. If you enjoy LMA connections, you might like the nonfiction, American Bloomsbury. I'm just now reading it for the second time. A different way of doing a biography - it is about the whole crowd down there in Concord, Massachusetts.