Swimming Onward

Hi Bookworms, what say you? It’s a bit hard to believe but August has gone by the wayside and only a few weeks of summer remain, though some say it’s over after next week’s Labor Day. In the news you might have seen the devastating flooding in Nepal and Tibet. Please give to international efforts to help if you can. It looks totally horrific and scary what happened to communities there.

I didn’t post last weekend as I was waiting to finish a couple books, which I did, so you can see the reviews below. We took Willow to the river where she enjoyed a swim and was able to cool off in the hot weather. Next weekend, I’ll likely post a September Preview of what’s coming out, and then my husband and I will be away for a week in Mexico City for my nephew’s wedding, woohoo. We will explore and check out the sights. We have not been before. Have you?

Meanwhile there’s a lot of fall books coming out soon, and Kirkus has put out a fetching list of the 60 Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2026. Of these I’d like to get to: Emma Cline’s novel Switzy (on the Booker Longlist), Bonnie Garmus’s second novel Peck & Peck, Chad Harbach’s novel The Brightness, Barbara Kingsolver’s upcoming novel Partita, and Imbolo Mbue’s Every Story is a Love Story among others.

Also, I plan to go to the book festival Wordfest in October in the city here, where such authors as Tayari Jones, Jenny Jackson, Emily St. John Mandel, Bonnie Garmus, Ruth Ozeki and debut author Larissa Pham will be speaking. It should be good. Do you have any big books of fall or author events that you’re looking forward to?

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately.

John of John by Douglas Stuart / Grove / 400 pages / 2026

4.5 stars. This is sort of a squirm-worthy family tale set in the 1990s about a closeted gay son Cal Macleod, age 22, who returns home after art school in Glasgow to a remote island off of Scotland where his strict Calvinist father John and profanity-loving grandmother Ella live and keep sheep.

His father is a deacon at the church and weaves wool to sell, which Cal is now expected to do in their small community (Falabay) of around 26 people. His father is divorced from his mother who lives a ways off. From the beginning you know that the son hides his gayness because he thinks he will be disowned if it comes out, but there are also things his gruff father and grandmother are not telling him.

Whoa the father is violent at times — he tries to force Cal to cut his long hair and change his weird clothes after his return from school — but he doesn’t want to lose Cal, and the grandmother is close to Cal and tries to ease his way. There are the neighbors: his father’s best friend Innes, who doesn’t speak with his estranged brother Sorley in the same house; the pub and inn keeper Flash Calder who gives Cal’s some work shifts; and Cal’s friend Doll Macdonald who shirks him upon his return.

You soon see this is a rocky, isolated place full of guarded people and little economic prospects and it’s no wonder Cal didn’t want to return. It has an old world feel of Gaelic speakers, church dwellers, sheep herders, and rough sea fisherman. There are some turns the story takes between Cal and his father and some of the others in the community, but it’s best to find out for yourself. It has secrets that unfold … and going into it blind is best.

I hadn’t read Douglas Stuart before, but I was compelled by his storytelling of Cal’s family and their home on the rocky, isolated island, which apparently the author based on his 2019 trip to the remote Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides (Scottish isles). Not perhaps since Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore has an island setting been so vivid in the story. It transports you to their world hook, line, and sinker.

You might recall the author’s debut novel Shuggie Bain won the Booker Prize in 2020, but I haven’t picked it up yet since I heard it’s a pretty brutal story of alcoholism and its effect on a family. Though I want to read it sometime — now that I’ve read John of John, which is up for the Booker as well. Like Shuggie, this novel has some intense moments and gay male sex … so perhaps that’s good to know before picking it up, but it’s not overly brutal.

Oprah picked John of John for her book club in May 2026 … and she has an interesting interview with Douglas Stuart about the book, but I would definitely say read it first as the show gives away some secrets in the book … so watch it after you read it.

Douglas Stuart continues to be a great writer to watch. And since he now lives in New York City, I wonder whether his next novel will be set there? Or will he return to his Glasgow roots? We will have to wait and see.

True Crime: A Memoir by Patricia Cornwell /Grand Central /464 pgs/2026

3.75 stars. Cornwell has had quite the whirlwind life from rags to riches. Half the long book shines the light on her troubled childhood … in which her father left and her mother had a couple mental breakdowns requiring hospitalizations. Patsy (as she was called) and her two brothers wound up in foster care with a harsh foster parent that made life a bit hell.

Then months later they got back with their mother who relocated them to Montreat, N.C., where she took Patsy to the estate of evangelist Billy and Ruth Graham’s. Ruth became a benefactor to young Patsy and a friend for life. Later Cornwell ended up going to Davidson College, which opened up a world to her … with books and meeting influential professors, one of which would later became her husband for some years. Afterwards, Cornwell first worked in journalism and then at the morgue in Richmond, which lead to ideas for her fictional crime books.

It seemed to me this memoir spends a lot of time on her hard childhood … over half the book and then speeds it up in the second half when she becomes a well-known crime author. I was ready to find out more about her writing life earlier. She touches on much adversity including: the early life with her parents; a date assault while with the Charlotte Observer newspaper; the end of her marriage; a hair-raising car crash in 1993; and being outed as bisexual in an affair scandal in 1996-97.

It makes for a pretty dramatic read, which is interesting to hear Cornwell narrate the audio for. She seems fairly candid in various parts. And late in the book she writes about the book and screen projects she took on and drops names of all the celebrities — actors and politicians — she’s known. I thought some name dropping was all right to make it dishy, but it seems overall the memoir could’ve been streamlined and edited shorter. It becomes a lengthy, pretty tiring journey.

In it, she mentions she’s been the highest paid female author (other than JK Rowling) which I guess I didn’t really realize … all her millions. I haven’t read her Scarpetta books since the very early days, but it is nice to hear about how she got her start and how her career came together.

I’m not exactly sure why this memoir was on my Summer List as I haven’t been a big reader of her crime books or seen her new Scarpetta TV series on Prime Video, but I guess she has had quite a rollercoaster life in which she’s experienced a lot. I didn’t realize how much the evangelist Billy and Ruth Graham had been in her life, or that she was married once to her professor Charlie, and is now married to neuroscientist Dr. Staci Gruber. Her life and career have been a bit here, there, and everywhere it seems.

That’s all for now. What about you — do you know these authors and what did you think?