Hi Bookworms. I hope you all had a good holiday week. Though now it’s very sad to hear about the flood victims in Texas. I’ve been thinking of those caught in the disaster. I will keep posting some happy animal photos to help try to deal in hard times. This deer was right by me on the golf course this week. It was sitting in the shade near the cart path and didn’t seem bothered as our group of four golfers went by. Some of the deer on the course seem pretty tame, and this one just wanted a shady rest break.
This past week we had Stella’s 13th birthday, which I think for a big dog in human years is equivalent to around 91. She’s an amazing girl — still swimming on hot days — and likes to boss us around. We give her lots of love and she’s doing okay though her legs are a bit wobbly. She’s a big eater and would’ve eaten the whole pie we got for her, but we gave her just a sliver of a piece. It was banana cream pie from the Country Store here. She was happy about that.
Meanwhile, I will be away this coming week reffing the provincial tennis tournament up north of us. It’ll be long, hot days on the tennis court watching teenagers compete and viewing whether the ball was in or out of the lines. You might have seen a bit of Wimbledon going on, so it’s a bit similar but not exactly that level, lol. Speaking of sports, my husband and I plan to watch the Tour de France race via streaming this month (July 5-27). So it’ll be my July in Paris contribution. It’s amazing to see the cyclists ride over mountains and all the countryside they pass by. They’re phenomenal athletes.
And now here is a photo recap (above) of the books I finished in May (the bottom row) and the ones I finished in June (top row). They were all pretty good books and three of them were on my summer list: The Last Secret Agent, Broken Country, and Nesting. It’s a bit hard to pick my favorite out of these, various ones were strong, but I’m able to pick three that I think I liked less than the rest: Something to Look Forward to (short stories), First Lie Wins, and Stone Yard Devotional. The others were solid and held me throughout. And I was pleased to make it through the long, modern classic Ferrante’s Book 2. I’m pretty sure Ferrante must have kept a detailed notebook of everything she did and remembered in life from a young age, lol. It seems pretty autobiographical, but that’s just a guess since she wrote the books under a pseudonym.
*Also I got an email note back from author Flynn Berry that said her last two novels (Northern Spy and Trust Her) are a duology, so not a trilogy series. I had asked her whether her sister characters of Tessa and Miriam would continue, but sadly no. Still those novels were great.
And now here are a couple reviews of what I finished lately.
So Far Gone by Jess Walter / Harper / 272 pages / 2025
4 stars+. This was my first Jess Walter novel and it was a bit of a hoot … about an old codger named Rhys Kinnick, a retired environmental journalist, who’s been living off the grid for about seven years in a cabin in the woods north of Spokane … trying to fend off some hungry raccoons from taking his food. He’s been a bit estranged from his family ever since he sort of accidentally punched his son-in-law Shane during an argument over one of Shane’s ridiculous conspiracy theories.
But then Rhys’s grandkids Leah, 13, and Asher 8, come to his door saying their mom has taken off with a note to go to his house. But before he can get to know them too much, two goons arrive from Shane’s Army of the Lord militia, knocking out Rhys and taking the kids to a church compound in Idaho. Uh-oh.
Not to be out-done, Rhys stages a mission to get the kids back engaging the help of an old flame from the newspaper (Lucy); a manic retired police detective (Chuck); and a Native American friend named Brian. Rhys also later gets back in touch with his daughter Bethany about the kids and after spending time together they eventually resolve various issues they’ve had from long ago.
The plot is a ruckus, endearing funny thing, mainly because of luddite Rhys, the dialogue in it, and the offbeat partners he teams up with. He’s a good guy that comes to see the error of his ways of cutting off his family and tries to make amends to them. The novel speaks a bit to the divisions and political shenanigans happening in the U.S. And there was one passage in particular I noted:
As a journalist. As an American, as a rationalist, Kinnick had come to terms with the fact that 20 percent of his countrymen were greedy assholes. But then in 2016, the greedy assholes joined with the idiot assholes and the paranoid assholes in what turned out to be an unbeatable constituency. Kinnick realizing that the asshole ceiling was much higher than he’d thought, perhaps half the country. Whatever the number, it was more than he could bear. Especially when they were in his own family.
At some point, you look around, and think, I don’t belong here anymore. I don’t want to have anything to do with any of this.
It has some true aspects to it and I got some laughs out of the novel. Thanks to Jess Walter for making this lovable old-school character in Rhys Kinnick.
The Last Secret Agent: My Life as a Spy Behind Nazi Lines by Pippa LaTour with Jude Dobson / St. Martin’s / 304 pages / 2025
4+ stars. You got to love nonfiction books like this … authors who tell of their remarkable secret lives when they’re 102 years old … right before they pass away. Pippa LaTour did this. She was living in New Zealand ready to go quietly into the dark night, but then her kids found out on the internet that she (Phyllis then) might have been someone back in WWII. Oh yeah she was. So Pippa finally decided to come clean and tell her story.
She was born in South Africa in 1921. Her parents died early on, and she was left with her father’s cousin in the Belgian Congo. Then she was sent to boarding school in Kenya, later France, and then onto England in 1939 at age 18, where she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). Since she was fluent in various languages she was recruited to be a British agent in the (SOE), who came to work as a radio operator in France giving secret info about German troops to her British superiors.
All this is laid out in her book. And Pippa tells it like it is. I was most curious how she trained to be a paratrooper and secretly parachuted into Orne, Normandy in May 1944. Once there, she assumed the role of a Paris schoolgirl selling soap, a disguise that allowed her to move between various hidden radio sets. She was questioned by the Nazis several times — and even apparently was raped before the perpetrator was shot by another German soldier — but she was never found out in relaying 135 coded messages to SOE headquarters in London.
During that year of war, she witnessed various executions and saw many dead bodies and was traumatized and exhausted by the end. After the war, she never visited France again and moved to Africa and later Auckland, New Zealand to live, where she never told her husband of her WWII service, and her kids only found out late in life.
Her book is quite a candid, courageous account. It’s jumps around a bit and moves quickly, not going into too much depth. Still the danger behind enemy lines felt imminent and I was on my toes with Pippa’s story. I listened to the audiobook narrated superbly by Jilly Bond.
That’s all for now. What about you — have you read any of these pictured and if so, what did you think?
I also was NOT a fan of Stoneyard Devotional. I just didn’t get it.
I’ve read several of Jess Walter’s books and liked them all. I added this, his most recent, to my TBR but haven’t gotten to it yet. I always seem to be reading books I don’t want to read, and sit around wishing I was reading something else. Sigh.
Happy summer!
Thanks Anne, and good to hear you’ve read some of the other Jess Walter books. I’m a bit curious now about those. He had some good humor in this novel I thought and also some real life too.
I had hoped for big things with Stone Yard so I perhaps expected too much and was sort of disappointed. My mind wandered.
Enjoy your summer too.
Interesting book list. So many good ones. I enjoyed your reviews.
Thanks Mae. They were good reads. Wishing you a great week.
Happy Birthday to Stella and many more! Very nicely eviewed and I am glad you liked So Far Gone and that scene with the raccoons when Rhys first moves into his cabin. LOL. I also liked Chuck and Brian. In fact a separate novel about Brian’s life would be interesting
Hi Kathy, thanks, Stella had a good bday. She’s our golden girl. 🙂
I thought the novel was a bit of a hoot. And I enjoyed Rhys’s friends. Chuck was zany … and almost got himself killed. I’ll be curious what the author puts out next. The characters in this one were quite good. Glad you read & liked it too. Have a great week.
You had a great month of reading in both June and in May. I have the Jess Walter book on my list.
Happy birthday to Stella! She is getting up there in dog years.
Thanks Deb. Jess Walter has some colorful characters in this one. It seemed spoof-like.
Stella will be pleased with the attention. She’d like to have her bday pie again.
Enjoy your week.
What a beautiful picture of a deer! Lucky you that he stayed cool like that! I saw one two weeks ago crossing the street early in the morning, with the apparent intent of crossing a busy highway. I said “don’t do that, that’s not a good idea!” I read Broken Country the week before last and was impressed (5*). It’s a powerful story that sneaks up on you. Nesting will have to wait. I got discouraged by your review and others’ comments on this blog about Stone Yard Devotional; I had put it on hold at the library and let it go…those mice! I put a hold on So Far Gone but it’s a popular title right now; it’s going to take weeks to make it to me— I’m third in line and there are three more people after me. I also want to get to The Frozen River (thanks to your review), but that one can wait. The Booker longlist will be announced on the 26th of this month, and that will throw my tidy book list into disarray (!) Have a fun time at the tournament, and a great reading week as well!
Hi Carmen, This deer seemed so calm. There are a lot of deer around … but I worry about them. And I’ll be curious about the Booker longlist too! Though I’m up to my neck in summer books. This week is too busy at this tennis event to read anything. Sigh. Just long hours and survival.
I’m not sure what you’d think of Stone Yard … so many mice! I had high expectations that didn’t align with it perhaps. My mind wandered a bit.
So glad you liked & thought Broken Country powerful. I too was caught up in it. I finished Broken Country and Nesting back to back and was like Whoa … these are pretty strong … and both pack a bit of a wallop. I thought BC pretty well told. Frozen River took me a long while to read, oh my. But it’s easy reading it’s just sort of long. Some bad villains in it.
So Far Gone seems spoof-ish … sort of funny crazy characters. Good luck with your reading. I have enjoyed Atmosphere. Cheers.
Happy birthday to Stella and I hope she is able to celebrate several more with you. We recently marked our two cats’ (brother and sister) fourteenth birthday. Lots of great books on your list. I was just looking at a list of books coming out this summer and I can see that my reading list is going to get much, much longer.
Hi Dorothy, I’m glad for your cats …. I’m sure they’re living their best lives. Stella is our crown jewel, living large. She’s happy …
Yes there’s lot of great summer reads out … I need to read faster! Enjoy.
The Last Secret Agent sounds fascinating. Going to add that to my TBR list!
I will be watching what I can of the Tour de France but it does go very late into the night for us!
Have a great week!
Thanks Marg. Yeah I’ve had Wimbledon and the Tour de France on … but I’ve been missing a bit of both. Hope you get to see some of the Tour.
The Last Secret Agent is worth checking out. Quite a life. So glad she shared her life story before it was too late. Have a great week.
Stella is SO cute! And good luck reffing that tennis tournament this week. I hope all goes well. 😀
Thanks Lark. Stella is a luv. But she’s also bossy and runs the house lol. The tennis event this week is very long days and no reading. Uh oh. I’ll have to rest up when I get home this weekend. Enjoy your week.
That’s very cool the deer watch you all golf from the comfort of a shady resting place. Great photo. I especially like the one of Stella for her birthday celeration. She looks great for her age. More pie please, mom…bet she thinks that.
That’s great Flynn Berry got back with you and I was hoping for more about the sisters in a future book. That said, she left it where we as readers can imagine the lives they went on to live with the ending in Trust Her. I like all of her books.
The Last Secret Agent and Nesting are at my library in suspension mode while I concentrate of the Paris in July event. It’s been fun so far but I do look forward to reading those two titles. As it is so very hot here now I am getting more reading time in,
The news from Texas is so very sad. So hard to imagine that many people being caught up in the floods, such a tragedy.
Hi Tina, thanks. Stella is so happy with pie. Or any food actually. I’m missing her this week … here at this event. I’ll be home late Saturday. Not getting any reading done here this week, alas. I’m sort of exhausted. But 3 more days.
Flynn Berry said someday she might like to revisit the sisters … but it seems she’s moving on right now. It was nice to hear back from her.
I look forward to your thoughts on Moveable Feast. I need to reread that.
The Texas flood is horrific and stunning. I’m so sad for the girls’ camp. So scary. I had no idea it be so major … when I first heard about it. Ugh. it devastating.
Stay in the A/C! Sounds sweltering. Enjoy your books.
The news out of the Hill Country in Texas is so heartbreaking. I feel for those parents & families who lost children or loved ones in the flooding. I see that North Carolina is also getting their share of heavy rains again. Ugh.
Isn’t it interesting how tame deer have become? I saw several when we were in Port Townsend and could walk up fairly close without causing them to run away. There were even a couple in town at the back entrance to a restaurant. The waitress said they were waiting for scraps!
Happy Birthday to Stella! She’s living her best life, isn’t she?
Thanks for the reminder to get back to Flynn Berry. I read one of her books several years ago and enjoyed it, but she’s not on my regular radar. I have The Frozen River in my stacks for my summer reading challenge, and plan to get to it soon. Haven’t seen or read anything by Fannie Flagg in quite some time. Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man is one that I read many years ago and keep meaning to read again. I’ve also read Welcome to the World Baby Girl (pre-blogging days) and as I remember, it was a winner.
I have an ARC (on audio) of So Far Gone and may give that one a try after I finish The Poppy Fields.
Hope you can stay cool! It’s cool here again, but we had gorgeous, sunny weather for the holiday weekend. I even got a little sunburned!
Thanks Lesley, the news out of Texas is truly heartbreaking. I didn’t realize when I first wrote this — it’d be as major as it is … but it is truly devastating.
This event I’m at is full on so I haven’t had any free time this week …
Stella will be pleased with the bday salutations. She is happy and we spoil her, ha!
I liked Flynn Berry’s second one Trust Her a bit more than Northern Spy; good ones. And The Frozen River has a couple bad villains in it, but the main character (Martha) is quite well done. See what you think. Fannie Flagg’s novels are likely better than reading these short stories. But I haven’t read her much.
I’ll be interested to hear what you think if you get to So Far Gone audio. The tale is a bit of a spoof …. the characters are wacky. But I laughed a bit.
The weather here has a been up & down. But some hot days. You got unburned at the Cove?! Wow. Enjoy your summer reads.
Happy 13th Birthday, Stella! That is a great picture of her, she looks gorgeous!
I’ve only read The Frozen River from the books you posted, and I really liked it. I hope that you did too. First Lie Wins was on my radar but I wasn’t sure if it was worth reading. Sounds like you didn’t like it as much as the others so I’m not rushing to read it either
Thanks for dropping by my blog. I’m still trying to catch up to everything and getting back to normal, and I really appreciate your kind words. Hope you’re doing well. ❤️
Thanks Haze. Always good to visit your blog. I hope things get back to normal for you. The summer is busy, right? I’m sure you will do well with your classes. It starts in the fall right?
First Lie Wins was a bit too crazy for me … but others really liked it. The Frozen River was a good one. I’m still thinking of Martha Ballard and her life there. I can’t believe she was a real person.
Enjoy your summer. There’s nice days ahead of us now!
Yes, classes are starting in the fall! I don’t have many plans this summer but I’ve been busy with paperwork and logistical stuff for school. My study is a mess so I need to clean up and organize before school starts too, otherwise it’s going to get overwhelming by then. I hope you are well and enjoying your summer. Hopefully we can catch up in person again soon!
The news of so many deaths from the flooding in Texas is very saddening. So sudden and so unexpected.
How lucky Stella is to get pie for her birthday. I love that picture of her; thanks for including it. Have fun while you are reffing tennis. We just saw part of a tennis game on TV while we were out at a restaurant and the court appeared to be grass. How do players train for different types of courts? (You can see we know nothing about tennis.)
I had not even heard of Something to Look Forward To by Fannie Flagg. I like interconnected stories and I might like her writing in short format, so I will have to try it… eventually.
I think I should try both of the books you reviewed. I only read the first few sentences of your review of So Far Gone, because it is the kind of book I want to come to with little info. But it sounds great. And a good length. I haven’t read a lot of nonfiction about spies, but The Last Secret Agent sounds good too.
Hi Tracy, thanks, Stella is a happy dog and I too love this picture of her.
This tennis event I’m at is very busy … and I’ll need to rest up when I get home this weekend. Very tiring.
I have not read anything else by Fannie Flagg …. but I might enjoy her novels more. I’d be interested to see what you think of her stories if you get to them.
Both of these books reviewed were pretty good. Sometimes I put a bit too much info so I apologize. I think I do that so I can remember them when I read the reviews later. But it’s okay to only read very little of the reviews if you intend to read them. I understand that. So Far Gone …. is a bit of a spoof I think.
Have a great week.
I think I need to read Pippa’s book. I’m fascinated by the courage of these young women who worked behind enemy lines during WWII and that’s quite the story. The other sounds really interesting too. Three cheers for Stella’s 13th. That’s terrific. Thanks for coming by my post too! Here’s hoping you have a terrific week.
Thanks Jeanie. The Pippa book is pretty short and seemed a quick read. I was pretty keen to learn her insights to her interesting life story.
And thanks Stella is still doing fairly well at 13.
I will continue to stop by your blog. Though I’m on the road right now … so might be next week. Cheers! Happy summer.
The news from Texas is devastating and continues to get worse. I know our blogging friend Kay spends time in Kerr County and has posted lovely photos from their sidewalk chalk art festivals. Glad the happy animal photos continue and wishing Stella a very happy birthday. Such a sweet pup!
Great list of reads from June. I may still give Stone Yard Devotional a try at some point, but it will definitely be a library!
Enjo your time at the tennis tournament. Hope you can stay cool!
Thanks JoAnn. It’s been a busy week at this tennis event, omg.
Poor Kay … I’m sad for her Kerrville … and wonder how many she knows of those affected. I had no idea it would be such a big disaster …. but now it seems horrific. So scary to think of … that water coming so fast.
I think it’s okay to give Stone Yard Devotional a try …. it does have some eloquent passages … and parts of it I liked the sensibility …. See what you think. I listened to the audiobook.
I can’t wait to get home to see Stella. Without our dogs, I seem to fall apart, lol. Enjoy your weekend.
Love the animal pictures–the deer does look like she’s just interested in staying cool, and happy bday to your pup–13 is a ripe old age, but not too old to enjoy pie!
I am to read The Last Secret Agent–I wish my library had the audio version, though.
I’m on the fence about Too Far Gone–I love the premise, and I like that there is humor in it, but I might need something a tad more escapist right now.
Hi Jane, see what you think of Last Secret Agent …. I liked the audio but it does seem to jump around a bit and it moves swiftly. Maybe the print will be a bit better. I also had a library copy of the print book which has some interesting photos. She seems she was a feisty lady — Pippa LaTour … judging by the intro and her telling.
And I will see if I can keep on with the animal photos …. as the news is so grim and I need something with heart.
Also thx for Stella’s bday wishes … she’s doing all right and a happy bossy girl.
Enjoy your weekend.
Happy birthday to beautiful Stella! I’m glad she enjoyed some banana cream pie!
Thanks Jinjer! Stella is our sassy golden girl … and we are so glad she’s doing all right. She loved the cream pie! And of course she wants more.
The tragedy in Texas is awful! My daughter and son-in-law live in Travis County, about and hour and a half away! They spend the summers in Montana, though so they weren’t there but we all saw the news over the weekend and were heartbroken!
Happy birthday to Stella! What a sweetie. So Far Gone sounds like a story I’d enjoy. Have a wonderful week!
Hi Rachel, so sorry for your daughter living near the flooded county … I can imagine so many in Texas and elsewhere are heartbroken ….. it’s scary that much devastation with so much loss of life. It’s terribly shocking.
It’s been a busy week away from home … so I’m ready to get back and see the dogs and Stella. Thanks for the bday salutation to her. Have a great weekend ahead. (ps. I didn’t realize they spend summers in Montana too, nice!)
I am way behind on visiting blogs, somehow this week got away from me. Have a great time reffing the tennis tournament!
You did some great reading in the past two months, I hope it continues through July and August!
Hi Helen, it was a long week reffing last week but it went well. Thanks. And I’m glad to be home now.
I just reviewed TJR’s Atmosphere so I linked up with your review too. I liked it like you did. We’ll see how many books I can get to on my summer list.
Good luck with yours!