August's runaway winner (although it was an all-over interesting and enriching month of reading) is
The Forgotten Garden, a book our bookclub chose to read and that was a delight to dive into. It is compared to
The Secret Garden in reviews and with some reason... they both have gardens.
Forgotten starts a little slow like Francis Hodges Burnett's novel does and Burnett makes a brief appearance in the tale. Otherwise though the main similarities are the great female characters (in this case several generations of women across continents) and the feeling of wonder as you fall into the magic of the tale. It's not perfect, especially in laying out the foundations of the personalities of the characters, but its memorable and satisfying and I'll return to it for a second (or more) reading in the future!
Otherwise, I bopped all around genres - some due to recommendations or a 2nd book club (Fermata and Hollywood), and some due to their classical nature and a desire to keep spreading my tastes or due to it catching my eye at the local bookstore display (The Great Impersonation and Angelology).
With Borders bookstores going out of business (for real this time) and a surprise Amazon giftcard, I've been hard-pressed to refrain from buying sprees so I'm sitting on my hands figuratively through September to balance out my banner month of new books in August! Highlights from purchases are/were
The Forgotten Garden which I first read from the library but loved enough to own and reread, and
I, Claudius which is a bi-annual favorite read and which I lost by enthusiastically loaning it out in years past. My used copy from Amazon.com looks almost exactly the same as my old copy! I have a lot of reading and a lot less acquiring to do this next month!
