August 2026 Book Recaps
August 2026 Book Recaps
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi (Book Club)
✨✨✨Theo of Golden was my book club selection (along with many other book clubs who have chosen it). It follows an 86-year-old man who moves to the town of
Golden, Georgia and begins purchasing and gifting portraits hanging on a café wall. The recipients are the subjects of the pencil portraits, and as he presents the art to them, he learns their life stories. Theo is not just generous, he’s sincerely interested in the men and women he meets. He exudes a warmth and kindness we’d all want to strive for. Everyone in my book club ended up loving it, although another person and I actually had a difficult time getting into it. There wasn’t much action, and we wondered if we’d have to examine all the lives of the 92 people represented on the café wall, which would have gotten tedious. I would read a few sentences, then set the book down letting myself be lured away by social media. But patience is a virtue and we’re so glad we stuck with it to the end where there were some unexpected revelations and it all came together. I even got tears and goosebumps! So, stick with it; the hype about the book, it turns out, is well earned!
The author is now working on a sequel to the book about one of the most interesting characters, a homeless woman named Ellen. 🚲🦜
The Pirate Queen by Ariel Lawhon
This book is an adrenaline rush! I got completely absorbed in the life of Grace O’Malley, a bold and fearless leader in 16th-century Ireland. At sea and on land, she was a formidable force in the blood-soaked times of clashing clans, betrayals, and power grabs. In Lawhon’s hands Grace went from a pirate legend to a fleshed-out powerful woman that left me in awe!
There are many moments that had me slack-jawed, but I’ll keep reliving two in particular: one involving one of her grown sons and another as she was giving birth. Yowza!!
Pub date: 9/8/26.
The Big Blonde by Dorothy Parker
This is a short story about a woman living in NYC in the 1920s.
It was about full on suppression of women. In those days, women were solely dependent on men. The main character, Hazel, had no job and had to become a kept woman after her husband abandoned her. She couldn’t afford to live by herself.
It reminded me of The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, where the husband leaves the family high and dry. The son has to take on the burden of supporting his mother and sister because women didn’t get equal pay. That didn’t end well.
Same thing in The Big Blonde. While the men are making enough to support two households—their wives' and their lovers'—women are penniless. They have to play the clown for the men, be their good-time gals in order to keep that charity dough flowing their directions. And that’s enough to drive a woman to drink, which is exactly what Hazel did. (During Prohibition where alcohol flowed so easily).
Good story. Riled me up.
August Classic Challenge:
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim
💥🌼🇮🇹 am continuing my author birthday book challenge, where I will read one classic or notable book from an author whose birthday corresponds with that month. For August, I chose Elizabeth Von Arnim’s The Enchanted April, published in 1922.
This was an amusing, and at times, tender book about four women who rent an Italian castle together in the 1920s to escape dreary English weather and their staid, or in one case, overstimulated lives.
In this land of sunshine and flowers, they contemplate their relationships back home or seek peace and quiet while getting to know the strangers they are living with. Filled with natural beauty, introspection, and hope Italy seemed to transform the women.
I enjoyed this getaway, yet I couldn’t decide how to rate it. I wished it had a little more action, but in the end felt satisfied and appreciated it for what it was.
Now I know why my grandfather called it the Flower Coast when he wrote about the trip he and my grandmother took in the 1950s. The descriptions of the beautiful Judas tree with its pink blossoms, along with other flowers bursting in bloom like wisteria, lilies, gladiolus, daisies, and many others, seems like a slice of heaven to me. Sign me up! Or maybe not.
Would I really want to rent a house for a month with three complete strangers, even if it was in dreamy Italy? Could I do it knowing that I couldn’t take shower, only have sponge baths? I’m not so sure.
⁉️How about you? Could you vacation with complete strangers in a foreign country for a month?
🎂Happy birthday to Elizabeth Von Arnim born August 31, 1866!
Happy reading!
Annette
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