June 2026 Book Recaps

 June 2026 Book Recaps

The Wild Robot by Peter  Brown

🤖How can I resist when my granddaughter asks me to read a book that they are reading in her classroom?

I already knew that The Wild Robot by Peter Brown is a very popular mid-kids book and there is even a beautiful commemorative edition available.

 

Now I can see why it’s so loved. The story of Roz, the robot, landing on a remote island, exploring nature, getting to know the animals, and adopting a baby gosling, is adorable. The chapters are short and illustrations are wonderful.

 

🎬 I’ll have to watch the movie with my granddaughter! And if she wants, we can continue to the next two books in the series. 

 

Fallen for France by Elizabeth Letts

This novel is an example of one of the things I love about reading—experiencing and learning things I didn’t know much about, in this case: WWI, Morocco’s involvement as a French colony, and distinguished Arabian horses. It’s so well-written with compelling characters and connections that span from Morocco to France during the Great War.

 

 

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (Book Club)

Project Hail Mary was a book club selection. We all liked The Martian by Andy Weir, so we thought we’d try this popular book that’s flying off the bookstore shelves and is out in the movies now. This book, however, had so much more sci-fi and mathematical calculations than The Martian that it hurt my brain. There was an overload of technical terms like: megajoules, micron light bands, ATP, RNA, Hohman transfer trajectory, hectopascals, and neutrinos, etc. It was hard-core, overwhelming sci-fi. 

 

We all liked the story though, the way it toggled back and forth into what led up to the space exploration and real time in space. The premise was to find a way to save the Earth from aliens who are eating up the sun. And I REALLY enjoyed Ryland’s encounter with a friendly alien whom he named Rocky because he resembles rocks, not because he’s like Rocky the Flying Squirrel zipping around. 

 

All in all, I’m glad I read it, and our book club has decided to watch it together as an outdoor movie night! What a fun night! 

 

June Classic Challenge:

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

This book was dark, dark, dark, which I knew before I started it. It was about a violent and grim dystopian future with little employment opportunities, people living in walled-in compounds, and danger all around as homeless people and drug addict arsonists fight for survival against those within the walls.

 

Another scary aspect was the scarcity of water, which made me think of all the data centers today robbing communities of this precious resource. In the book, water peddlers walk the streets, and there are water stations where you pay more for water than gas.

 

The story is told by Lauren Olamina, an 18 year-old preacher‘s daughter who wants to head North from the Los Angeles area that they live in. She has created her own religion called Earthseed and wants to establish a religious community. The biggest tenet of the religion is that God is Change, and therefore people need to shape their own God. 

 

There is a lot happening in this novel and it would probably make for a good book club discussion, but it is by no means uplifting. It is a thought-provoking downer. Yet despite that, I did like it and I wanted to know what happened to the characters. I had to continue until the last page, but I’m not quite sure if I will read the follow-up to it, The Parable of the Talents.

 

The Parable of the Sower was published in 1993 and Butler’s future takes place in the current days starting in 2024 to 2027.

 

I wonder how this book compares to McCarthy‘s The Road in terms of bleakness and violence?

 

This was my author birthday month book challenge selection. I was leaning more towards rereading George Orwell’s 1984, but I am glad I tried something new.  Octavia Butler was born on June 22, 1947.