Yet another month has come and gone and it is time for another monthly review. Last month I managed to finish a total of 23 books which brings my yearly total up to 104. This also means that I once again hit my monthly goal of 20 books and am already halfway to my yearly goal of 200. I think that I am just a little bit ahead of the game there. What this also means is that it is once again time to go over the few books that I have picked out as really standing out from all of the others that I read last month.
The first one I want to go over is Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo because it was such an interesting and weird blend of themes. It was described as being a book about loss with the protagonist, Andrew, trying to come to terms with the seeming suicide of his best friend Eddie. However, once I actually started reading it the book morphed into this absolutely heartbreaking story about Andrew trying to figure out what really happened as he refuses to believe Eddie committed suicide. Andrew also has to come to terms with the idea that the relationship between him and Eddie was more than platonic. And then it threw in the ghosts or revenants and the ability to sense the dead and I was really thrown by where the story was going. The best part was that all of this blended together so well that I never felt like any of it didn’t belong with the rest of story or was out of place in any way shape or form. The book felt smooth and didn’t seem to have any rough edges that needed to be worked on. Honestly, I wasn’t prepared for some of what the book contained but as I was reading it really all seemed to flow together in way that was rather surprising for the themes that were present and blended together. On top of that, the book seemed to come across as respectful and honest about these topics. It had some potentially sensitive topics but it handled them in a way that didn’t come across as being overly disrespectful or negative about any of them. That is something that can be difficult to pull off but this book did a good job. I liked the way this book handled them. There is a reason it stood out to me.
The next book that stood out for me was Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley. Similar to my reasons for the previous book, this one stood out because it also came across as being honest and respectful about its topic. The difference is that this book has a drastically different and potentially more difficult topic. I don’t necessarily like war but I do have a lot of respect for the soldiers who end up fighting in them and that is something this book does a good job of conveying. It covers a particularly difficult fight in an already difficult war and it doesn’t gloss over or try to diminish what the soldiers went through. Instead, it conveys a certain brutal honesty about what it was like and what they faced. The best part is that it did so in an extremely sympathetic and empathetic manner. That is something not a lot of books can do and even fewer do it well but this one definitely seemed to. The best part of it was that it wasn’t fiction but was non-fiction so knowing that really helped drive home just how bad things like war can be. I am not entirely sure how to say this but I think that books like this are needed in our society in order to remind us what war is like, how brutal it can be, but also to occasionally help remind us that at the end of the day the soldiers are still human and they will need help to come back from that brutality. These kinds of books are difficult to read but it is a difficulty that sometimes we really need to face. Sometimes we need to be reminded of how bad things can get and that people can still overcome anything they are faced with. This book helps do that which is a large part of why I decided to read it last month.
The last book I want to go over is the funny and weird book that I read last month. The Watchmaker of Filigree Street is by Natasha Pulley and was a weird book from the get go but it was also rather funny at times. The protagonist, Nathaniel Steepleton, who goes by Thaniel is investigating this Japanese watchmaker named Keita Mori but he ends up befriending him instead. That is not too unusual as I have come across that before in other books. What I found interesting is that Mori is not necessarily a watchmaker but instead someone who works with clockwork mechanisms that just happen to lend themselves to watchmaking. Throughout the book there is this little running gag of a clockwork octopus that Mori has made and that has free reign of his workshop and apartment upstairs. When Thaniel rents his spare room the octopus keeps showing up in the room, hiding in the dresser drawers and stealing his socks of all things. This book is a semi-serious book about a watch saving a guy’s life from a bombing and yet there is this little random clockwork octopus running around stealing socks. I’m sorry but that was just too funny at times. It provided just a little bit of levity to such an unusual story. Something that was definitely needed. That was actually part of why this book seemed to stand out to me. Another part was the interesting blend of ideas and themes present in this book. On one level it was about bombings in Victorian England but on another it was about the rights of women due to the inclusion of Grace Carrow and yet on another it was about clockworks and all of the different things they can do but at the same time it was also about being able to see the different futures and the decisions people can make. There were so many different things going on but it didn’t feel crowded or rushed in any way. It was just a nice little relaxing read that I rather enjoyed. Now that you have seen some of what I read last month feel free to share the best book that you read in the last month.