July Book Report

I finished 5 books last month.

A quote from this month's reading:

“Did I have a grievance? Most of us, without looking far, could find something that had harmed us, and oppressed us, and unfairly held us back. I tried not to dwell on it, thought it healthier not to, though I’d lived my short life so far in a chaos of privilege and prejudice." --Alan Hollinghurst, Our Evenings

Here are the books I finished in July 2025: 

1. A Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise, and the Coming of the Civil War by David S. Brown (4-stars)
2. Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst (5-stars)
3. The French Paradox by Ellen Crosby (3-stars)
4. Mastering the Art of French Murder by Laura Stoddart (audiobook, 3-stars)
5. Bait and Swiss by Korina Moss (3-stars)

My spin book for Classics Club was 3 Lives by Gertrude Stein -- I read more than half of it and decided that it was not for me and did not finish it. I understand that the tempo is supposed to be part of the genius of the book, but I found the repetition of phrases very irritating and the characters were not people I wanted to spend any time with.