Last Month in Review: June 2012

I'm a little later than usual with my last month wrap-up, but I was vacationing at the turn of the month, and when I came back to work yesterday on 5 July, there was a LOT of catching up to do.  While I read more than my usual monthly average, I read much less than usual during my vacation so the numbers look a little wonky to me.  There's also no audio book because I started one in June, but then came BEA and then two weeks of vacation and thus I'm still listening to it in my car.  I will definitely conquer it by the end of July, though.  On the upside, I read more nonfiction this month than usual because I finished off a couple of good ones that I'd started earlier in the year. 

Books read in June, in chronological order:

1. Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo. And since it looks like I haven't reviewed it yet, here's a mini-one: A tremendously moving and thought-provoking piece of narrative nonfiction. It's just nigh on impossible to imagine the world that Boo presents us, a world where lives are held so cheaply and religious conviction so dearly that a Hindu woman can reasonably choose to set herself on fire to frame her Muslim neighbors for her murder. Where corruption is not just a fact of life, but institutionalized, the warp and the woof of the civic fabric. Where children are hit by cars on the side of the road and left for dead because it's not convenient to help them, and where it behooves the police to rule their cases as death-by-tuberculosis in their reports. I honestly don't know what more I can say about it, other than it's appalling for me to sit in my middle class splendor and ponder the impossible conditions to which we abandon our fellow humans.

2.  Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. As a self-identified introvert, I found this book particularly compelling (and self-justifying).

3. & 4.  Anything But Ordinary by Lara Avery and Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. YA novels, reviewed here in a double-header.

5. A Wedding in Haiti by Julia Alvarez.  Probably my favorite non-fiction of the month, reviewed here.

6. The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin.  A really impressive debut novel that hopefully I'll review soon.

7. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce.  Oh, my goodness.  What a terrific reading experience. Reviewed here.

8. The Last Warner Woman by Kei Miller.  Another book of Caribbeana, very interesting narrative structure.  Reviewed here.

9. Mr. Churchill's Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal.  Totally fun bit of historical fiction featuring a smart & feisty heroine (no point in having any other kind, eh?). Review forthcoming.

10. The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood.  Probably the book I liked least from my vacation reading.  Almost gave up reading it several times. 

11. Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell.  Another bit of historical fiction, this time a book that purports to explain the political mess in the Middle East, as a result of political borders laid down by the mighty western empires post-WWI.  Less fluffy than #9, but interestingly enough featuring Winston Churchill as a secondary character.

12. Schroder by Amity Gaige. Her writing just gets better and better.

13. On the Outside, Looking Indian by Rupinder Gill.  My fourth (!) book of nonfiction for the month, this memoir shares one woman's efforts to recapture the "normal" childhood she feels she missed out on, growing up as an Indian in Canada.

14. Repeat After Me by Rachel DeWoskin.  Funny enough novel but mildly disappointing after loving the author's latest book, Big Girl Small.

It's out of order, but I wanted to include this graphic because I think it's so eye-catching: