August Recap 2019

I think I’ve had a quintessential New England August, all that’s really missing was the Cape and/or the beach. Knowing how many people would be going that direction as summer winds down we went to the opposite direction to western Massachusetts and north to Maine. I’ll get to all of this at the end of the post, because we also saw “BODY WORLDS & The Cycle of Life” at the Museum of Science – Boston, “Gender Bending Fashion” at the Museum of Fine Arts, and John Williams night at Tanglewood. SO MUCH CULTURE.

The good part is that even with all these trips and cultural excursions, I had plenty of time to read. And by read I mean swoon and squeal over teen rom-com novels—I should probably stop before I get a headache or die of too many adorbs feelings.

Books and Bookish Things
I read nine books in August, and only TWO of them were comics/graphic. Sure, five of them were young adult, but they were adorable and I may or may not be obsessed with/planning to re-read in the near future/want to somehow crawl inside of and live in Red, White & Royal Blue. This wasn’t all my fault, some of this came from all the books coming in at the same time at the library (at least that’s what I’m telling myself).

639. The Music of What Happens – Bill Konigsberg
640. What If It’s Us? – Becky Albertalli & Adam Silvera
641. Unmarriageable – Soniah Kamal
642. Evvie Drake Starts Over – Linda Holmes
643. The Show Must Go On (The Backstagers #2) – James Tynion IV, Rian Sygh and Walter Baiamonte
644. Encore (The Backstagers #3) – James Tynion IV, Rian Sygh and Walter Baiamonte
645. The Porcupine of Truth – Bill Konigsberg
646. How (Not) to Ask a Boy to Prom – S.J. Goslee
647. Red, White & Royal Blue – Casey McQuiston

In addition to reading nine books, I picked up quite a few books thanks to visiting a few bookshops on our adventures.

• The Mysterious Death of Miss Jane Austen – Lindsay Ashford
• The Valkyries – Paulo Coelho
• The Hours – Michael Cunningham
• Summer Hours at the Robbers Library – Sue Halpern
• Victory – Linda Hirshman
• Dept. of Speculation – Jenny Offill
• Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters

The bulk came from Shaker Mill Books and were $1 or $2, I mean what was I supposed to do? Not look at the bargain shelves? Not a chance! The dress above was part of the Shaker Mill Books Shaker Books Mill an old Mill turned into a bookstore/book art project. The other two came from Sherman’s Book store in Bar Harbor, Maine.

AND THEN I got to be inches away from a fifteenth century Medici manuscript and a trade bound book from 1776 at work. They offered a behind the scenes tour of our library and since I didn’t have a meeting I decided to attend it and it was SO COOL. There were other cool parts too, but these were the coolest.

The three social media posts are kind of throw aways after the awesome bookish thing I got to do, but the 99% Invisible podcast was really cool going into the history of Braille and the minimalist paperback book covers (swoon) and Amazon continues to slowly irreparably harm the book industry as we know it.

 

In the early 1900s, a novel bookseller aimed to bring serious softcovers to the masses at affordable prices, but they needed a design strategy to differentiate their offerings. It all started with "an employee who happened to know how to sketch."https://t.co/ngrBHQWVkC

— 99 Percent Invisible (@99piorg) August 4, 2019

https://www.facebook.com/nytimes/posts/10151992678389999?xts[0]=68.ARD4nhzp0BQSxXxus0ufjdzbMljGuzxb1O3insBsxM0OiWPHqgYgUXRuloJrKdtNwA_XTYySi9DM8Qcnax2AcpI49TLUH92mcOBMZtlJdfJ-Y3K4PvWNeFL-WXgniiau5y8xB2KhNKWL2Mk0nNxwx–PcIUjRG-e6rMsDyrnpIU4q9DAT-v7qvJO9ymJeTDg6Pr3TMLE_4oZb79lhZGEFMzqzIrs7EdX23tVAedv0ACvy6FEtPxTPsnsYyq1q_gf6S09NSAklhkmjlN5d_ZHXh-91r6g-snkhGdvNBvpZ9Bn8UKKSfLk7xg0d1jt2lNPToC_SQntVdXx1Sw&tn=-R

This one just made my life. And I am like SO MUCH YES:

I recently saw a tweet advising anyone who is venturing into academia to not lose their sense of humour. I therefore dedicated my masters dissertation to Matthew Macfadyen’s hand flex in Pride and Prejudice 2005. pic.twitter.com/KGgDZLVNmp

— Eleanor 🦇🌹 (@eleanorrfarley) August 14, 2019

Culture Corner
As if I didn’t do enough with the reading and actual blogging, we were busy doing other stuff too. As mentioned, I saw the BODY WORLD exhibit for the first time (bottom left photo – apparently I missed it when everyone else in the world saw it) and an amazing exhibit at the MFA about gender and fashion (top three photos).

We also went to the Norman Rockwell Museum (bottom middle photo) while visiting western Massachusetts for John Williams’ night at Tanglewood (bottom right photo). We went to Tanglewood for one of the roommates’ birthdays and he also wanted to go see Rockwell. I’m glad we did, I know my mom went when she visited my sister and it was nice to see it. John Williams’ night was actually a little disappointing, he didn’t conduct, and they played a mix of music by him and another composer. The last time we went was MUCH cooler.

As amazing as the fashion exhibit was, it was my #1 experience until the last weekend of the month, we then visited Isleford, a 200-year-old lobster fishing village on Little Cranberry Island off the coast of Maine.

It doesn’t sound that exciting and it probably wasn’t, but stepping off the ferry to wander around for an hour was just unreal. It wasn’t like horse and buggy or anything, there were cars and golf carts right there on the dock, but it just felt so different from our day-to-day living in Boston I just loved it. I wish we would’ve had two-to-three hours to really wander around the island.

What’s Next?
I need to make some headway on a few galleys/ARCs I’ve been trailing for a while, buuuuuut I do have a few more teen rom-coms I could read. And let’s be honest, that’s probably what I’m going to end up doing. I really am the worst book blogger when it comes to reading what I “should”, but I did already hit my 60 book Goodreads goal for the year thanks to the comic/graphic novels and young adult books. Whoops.