Please read below for Mother's July reads and reviews!
The Red Address Book by Sofia Lundberg
The Red Address Book is a sweet-tart Swedish romance novel steeped in memory and regret. The story follows 96-year-old Doris Alm as she turns the pages of her red address book, a gift from her father decades ago, lingering over names crossed through with the word “dead” etched in the margin. The novel begins in 1928 Stockholm, when Doris is only 10 years old, and moves on to her days as a model in Paris in the 1930s, then to New York City, where she hopes to reunite with the love of her life.
This is a tender and heartfelt story, perfect for a summer afternoon read!
Spare Parts by Joshua Davis
In 2004, Lajvardi and Cameron—inspiring science teachers working for an underfunded public high school—convinced four impoverished, undocumented teenage students who had never seen an ocean—that they had the smarts and ingenuity to build an underwater robot. And build a robot they did.
Spare Parts reveals the true story of Oscar, Cristian, Luis, and Lorenzo. All born in Mexico and raised in Arizona, they scraped together less than $1,000 and cobbled together PVC pipes and rummaged parts to build a robot. Their bot “Stinky”competed against some of the best university-level engineering students in the country, and went on to win MATE - the national Marine Advanced Technology Education Robotics Competition at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
This compelling true story is intertwined with the grave issue of illegal immigration. Instead of the rhetoric that usually dominates such an issue, the human impact is well-represented in Spare Parts as reflected in the directions that life takes these students after their win to include first-generation college graduations, deportation, bean-picking in Mexico, and service in Afghanistan.
Code Name Hélène by Ariel Lawhon
“I wear my favorite armor…red lipstick.”
Code Name Hélène is Ariel Lawson’s fourth historical fiction novel. Told in the first person, it is a story of two interwoven strands that reveal the incomprehensible true story of Australian-born Nancy Grace Augusta Wake.
Summary: In 1936, Nancy Wake is an intrepid Australian expat living in Paris and working as a reporter for Hearst newspaper. Nancy changes her last name to Fiocca after marrying French industrialist Henri Fiocca. She soon takes on four more names (code names) to become of the most powerful leaders in the French Resistance.
Organized around these four aliases, Code Name Hélène is a suspenseful, gritty and moving story that does not shy away from graphic descriptions and intense situations. If you are committed to reading everything Ariel Lawhon writes, like me, definitely put this on your TBR list!
The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson
“Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.”
By no means is this a dry, I’ve heard this before, history book. The Splendid and the Vile is a captivating retelling of Winston Churchill’s first year as prime minister during World War II. Unlike so many other books written about this fascinating time in history, this read employs a mildly unique strategy by placing most of the emphasis on Churchill’s intimates; in particular, his cherished wife Clementine, his four children, and numerous friends and officials. Author Erik Larson uses reams of private diary entries to write this almost day-to-day account. It truly is a page-turning epic of political brinksmanship and domestic drama all wrapped up in love and grit during a pivotal moment in our world’s history.
With its marvelous metaphors, elegant sentence rhythms, and driving narrative, it is really a compelling read for our time.
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