Favorite June 2021 Book

What's your best read of the month?

Best read of the month was The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek. I had never heard of Blue people before and I live not 2 1/2 hours from Kentucky!

High Hearts by Rita Mae Brown. Best for June was just OK.

I'm a Yankee with four ancestors who fought in the Civil War, so I found her Southern sensibilities--esp her attempts African-American characters and black dialect--repellent at times.

However, it's a well researched story--woman disguises herself as a man to fight w her husband--and the romance angle is interesting.

My favorite in June was a good old-fashion British family saga -

Apple Tree Lean Down by Mary Pearce.

Without doubt Laurie Lee's Cider With Rosie a lyrically written memoir of childhood in rural England in the 1920s,warts and all. A beloved English minor classic. Highly recommended.

I’m approaching my old average reading pace, with 15 books read (or listened to) this past month. Enjoyed a couple of exceptional YA books, but my favorite read was Fugitive Telemetry, and I’m repeating the pleasure.

I've been reading a lot of British detective novels recently, and my favourite in June, just finished today, was Telling Tales by Ann Cleeves, the second book about DI Vera Stanhope. Last year I watched all the episodes of the long running TV series, just called Vera, on YouTube, and now I'm gradually working my way through the books. It's set in the north east of England, an area I know well, so many of the locations are familiar to me.

My best for June was The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. Interesting story about race and color and family. May be my best so far in 2021. Also read The Mothers by the same author. Not as good but definitely worthwhile.

For pure fun: The Windsor Knot by S. J. Bennett

For insight: Mamaskatch by Darrel J. McLeod

>3 nohrt4me2: I loved Rita Mae Brown's early books, including High Hearts, mostly because she is a horsewoman and she gets all those details right. Have you read Southern Discomforts? I think that's my favorite, although Bingo and Six of One were laugh out loud funny.

My best read of June was Klara and the Sun. Not as emotionally moving as Never Let me Go, but more thought provoking.

>10 vwinsloe: I read Klara and the Sun, too! I thought it was worthwhile if not great. Ishiguro likes to write about servants a lot, doesn't he.

>11 nohrt4me2:. I hadn't noticed that but yes. I guess that it is his way of using a third party observer as narrator.

Definitely The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore. This fictionalized version of the epic feud between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse over the future of electricity for domestic use is fascinating, and Moore compares the two to the late 20th century tech giants, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs with a series of quotes and epigraphs that are downright eerie in their echo of the Edison/Westinghouse battle. The enigmatic Nikola Tesla is also featured.

I also have a nonfiction Tesla biography on the TBR pile, but hubby got to it first, so I will have to wait for him to finish before I tackle that.

>13 LyndaInOregon:

I hope the Tesla bio you mention is the one by W. Bernard Carlson and not the one by Richard Munson, which I abandoned as incompetent (see my reasons).

>14 librorumamans: - Uh-oh -- I've got the Munson one. We shall see.

I also read Margaret Chesney's Tesla: Man Out of Time about 10 years ago and commented: "Biography of Nikola Tesla, whose late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century experiments and theories gave birth to AC power, wireless transmission, X-ray technology, fluid mechanics, and even VTOL aircraft. There is an amazing story in here somewhere, but Cheney doesn't quite manage to get it out."

Sounds like I may still be looking after the Munson book. Will put the Carlson one on my list.

The Silver Branch by Rosemary Sutcliff. This is the second book in her Roman Britain novels. I enjoyed the first one, The Eagle of the Ninth also, but especially liked The Silver Branch.

Nothing has leapt from the pack yet, but it's early. Only 5 books read so far, with a 6th to be finished tonight (and it may end up being the fave, since I have two more LTER reads scheduled and they tend to be ... let us say generally below average, since I seem to get all the newby authors).

Best read of the month was a little jewel, a short novella: First Love, by Ivan Turgenev. The story of an adolescent boy who falls in love with a woman five years older than himself, only to find out that she in turn is the lover of his father. The agonizing desperation of young male infatuation with an unreachable woman struck a lot of chords. I have read a lot of Turgenev, but only stumbled on this work by chance and am so glad that I did.
Like several others I was underwhelmed by Klara and the Sun, in fact looking back the only Ishiguro works I have really enjoyed are the mandatory Remains of the Day, and the lesser know Buried Giant.
I am brand new to Library Thing, and wonder how one manages to get the titles and authors names to appear as links, in blue?

>18 scunliffe:how one manages to get the titles and authors names to appear as links, in blue?

Welcome to LT. These are called "touchstones" in LT, and they use square brackets. Put single square brackets around a title, double square brackets around an author, and triple square brackets around a series title.

>18 scunliffe:

Welcome !

To John's explanation I'll add that should you need to use brackets in a message [without triggering touchstones] as I did just now, use the html character codes 91 for left and 93 for right — that's &#nn; replacing 'nn' with the number and not omitting the semi-colon.

If you're replying to a prior message in the thread, it's helpful to link to it by typing the right arrow '>' followed immediately by the message number.

It's also possible to link to external web pages. If you haven't done that before, just ask.

>20 librorumamans:

Ah, thank you! I've often wondered how to use square brackets without triggering the touchstone.

>20 librorumamans: [Thanks! Me too!]

>1 Tess_W: The Book that Matters Most, by Ann Hood