July 2024 Wrap Up

It has recently been brought to my attention that I never posted a July Wrap Up. I was so sure I had done it that I went back through my posts to provide a link to it. I did not find it! I guess I never did it? Apparently? There wasn't even a draft where I started it and forgot to post. So I am now going to rectify that mistake.

We will be starting with the books I read after I came out of Covid isolation.

Trust by Hernan Diaz - This book knocked my socks off. It is a series of four "stories" that all tell the same story from a different perspective. After I read the first one, I was confused. I couldn't figure out what was next since the story was wrapped up. The second story is a rebuttal of the first story by the man who was the blueprint for the man in the first story. He was retelling the story his way, but not completely. There were things like "add more here" and "tell story about ..." The third story is told by the secretary that took the dictation of the second story and her experience of working with the man dictating it. The fourth story is the diary of the woman from the first two stories. I was breathless by the end. It was so good.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow - Ok. This was another 5 star read. I had a good reading month in July. January is a young girl who lives with a wealthy man who is also her father's employer. Her father travels over the world discovering archival treasures to send back to add to the rich man's collection. At one point, she finds a book that tells the story of a girl in Nebraska who finds a door to another world and meets a boy from that world. When she grows up, she takes off to find more doorways and the way to the boy. January finds that she has the ability to write things into existence and she uses this to escape from several places she has been detained. The book is amazing. I loved it.

Clementine, Vol. 1 by Tillie Walden - I saw this reviewed on a BookTube video, so I decided to check it out. It was fine, but I won't be continuing it. We are set in a post-apocalyptic America where people are being turned into zombies. Clementine had been bitten, so she cut off her leg to avoid becoming a zombie. At the beginning of this story, she is wandering around and finds an Amish community where a man makes her a better replacement foot. There is a boy heading out for Rumspringa and she takes up with him because she is sure he won't reach his destination without her. He's very naive. The make it to the mountain he was going to to work and she stays with him. It's very action-packed and a bit gory.

Death In the Air: The True Story of Serial Killer, the Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City by Kate Winkler Dawson - This book was really two books that have been smashed together with the slimmest of threads. The year is 1952. The British government is selling good coal out of the country to try to rebuild the economy after WWII, and is selling low quality coal dust to the public to heat their homes and cook their food. This leads to a ton of smoke in the air that mixes with the usual fog and creates a situation where people can't see more than 2 feet in front of them. Also, a serial killer became more active. Not during the fog, mind you. Just, near it. And he had killed several times over the 10 years before this, so it wasn't like he snapped at this point. Although he kind of did, after the fog lifted, he killed his wife of 30 years, which left him free to bring more women to his house to kill. Eventually, the hidey holes in his house were too full of dead bodies, so he moved. Like I said, two interesting books, but they just don't belong in the same volume.

I ended up reading 10 books in July, thanks to that Covid situation. As I was half way through this post, I realized what happened to that post I thought I wrote. I was going to write it, but then I realized I needed to enter the books in my spreadsheet so I could compose my thoughts. I did that, but then never came back to write the post. Oy! I blame Covid brain.