It was another hot month in Ontario, so I mostly read after going for a swim in the pool. We have committed to swimming as much as possible now that we’ve solved the mystery of the disappearing water! After spending the last few years topping up our pool almost weekly (120 bucks a fill), we finally got a satisfying diagnosis: a leak in our skimmer. We repaired the leak, which involved draining the pool so that the skimmer could be cut out of the pool deck, and so we threw in a new liner at the same time. This summer, the pool was magical and not once did we need to add water! Thus, the commitment to use the pool meant almost daily swimming and reading. It’s a lazy, lazy life! And with that, here are my August summer reads.
The Keeper, by Tana French. This is Tana French’s third and final book set in the tiny Irish village of Ardnakelty and featuring ex-Chicago cop Cal Hooper and his teenaged pseudo-surrogate daughter Trey Reddy. As always, I love a Tana French novel, although I will admit that this one has an excess of personal pet peeves: a) characters who but for the sake of a single honest conversation could save themselves a world of grief, b) an elder who holds all the answers to very important questions but refuses to reveal them unless you pass a series of mysterious tests, much like the riddles of the sphinx (if the elder was an actual sphinx I’d have no problem with this), c) moody teenagers. French’s writing manages to save the day, but I hope her next novel dials back on this a bit. 8/10
Wild Dark Shore, by Charlotte McConaghy. A book with a solid premise, and I liked a lot of it. There were some flaws, however, that were too big and distracting to overlook. Like how an underground secret room doesn’t fill with water when all the areas above it are flooded. No need to explain this if I happened to miss an important aspect of the construction, this was just one of several complaints. And to be clear, I am happy to suspend disbelief for the sake of a good story (like the sand storm at the beginning of The Martian). It just didn’t work for me in this case. 4/10
Game Changer, by Rachel Reid. If you’ve watched the surprisingly popular TV adaptation Heated Rivalry, then it’s enough to say that this book is the full story of the relationship between hottie hockey star Scott Hunter and cutie pie smoothie shop employee Kip Grady. If you like a good romance novel, why not expand into gay romance and give this a go. In fact, I’m not really a big romance fan at all, but I still loved it. A great winter fireside read, even though I read it in the heat of summer by the pool. 7/10
Start With Why, by Simon Sinek. Ugh. Business books. I thought I was done with this genre when I retired! But Start With Why was recommended to me as a pre-read before my charity board retreat in Sept. It’s not a terrible message – start with “why” you exist and then work on “what” you need to do and “how” you are going to do it. But as with ALL business books, it’s heavily padded with out-dated anecdotes (often featuring companies that have since fallen from grace) and repetitive commentary in order to reach the requisite 220-ish pages. 3/10
A Psalm for the Wild-Built / A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, by Becky Chambers, also known as the Monk & Robot series. Imagine a world where the robots that perform society’s most menial labour have become sentient, rebelled, and ultimately been awarded half the land as their home on the planet (or moon) on which the robots and the humans live. Now imagine that every sentient being on this planet (or moon) has the utmost respect for their resources, the land, the animals, and each other. They respect habits, beliefs, customs, and pronouns, although pronouns are so inherent in their society that they are not an issue that’s debated or discussed, it just is the way it is – some people are “he”, some are “she”, some are “they”, and some are “it”. Wouldn’t you love to live in this world? Reading these books makes you feel like you do, at least for a little bit. 9/10