Flying Colors follows the mystical adventures of John Freeman, who’s young, ambitious, and on the verge of achieving everything he wants when he finds himself the student of a mysterious flight instructor whose initial lessons have little to do with flying planes. Over a remarkable summer, as John struggles to unravel the secrets behind the instructor and a mystical airfield stuck in time, he becomes torn between his professional ambitions and the lure of a simpler life. But to earn his wings and soar, John must face the ultimate test of discovering his true self and what matters most.
John meets a mysterious man in an airport who opens his eyes to a different way to live, to new possibilities never dreamt of before. When John arrives back home to a job that is ready to serve up the life he’s always wanted on a silver platter, the memory of the man in the airport has him questioning what it is he really wants.
Mysterious and mystical and a great first novel.
“No one can teach another person. If something’s worth learning we teach ourselves. We become our own teachers by doing, by experimenting. We teach ourselves by making mistakes and experimenting until we get it right. Everyone wants answers, but the answers can’t come from other people because the answers you get are to the wrong questions, answers meant for someone else’s life, not yours.”
Many thanks to the author for sending this uplifting book my way!
I only read 20 books this month, and a weird range of reads too.
I read 9 picture books, 7 fiction, 2 non-fiction. My favorite being
Wombats are Pretty Weird: A (Not So) Serious Guide by Abi Cushman. There are characters (Gage loved the snake) that will appeal to the littles in your life and just enough information to make those littles smarter! The back pages had photos and facts about the different types of wombats and the page on their cube shaped poop is fun for all.
I managed 5 romances, 2 modern, 2 historical, and 1 teen. My favorite being
The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood. Ladies in STEM unite! So much fun! If you have a thing for smart men, are inspired by intelligent women, and love some spice then this is the romance for you! It wasn’t without issues, but reading it felt like I was sitting down to eat a big bowl of M&Ms for dinner. I can’t wait to read more by this author.
I also read 6 non-fiction, 2 photography books, 1 health, 1 inspirational journal, 1 graphic biography, and 1 cartoon collection. Two favorites from this group were
Humans of New York by Brandon Stanton. I’m sure most of you have seen Humans of New York online. Brandon Stanton started taking photos of people in various cities along with a caption or story and his blog gained traction. By the time his camera found the humanity and exuberant essence of NYC, people were paying attention. And still are. This book was originally published in 2013. I loved every bit of it. The people, the quick story, the quote, the photos.
Interspersed amongst the rest is the story of Steve Martin and Harry Bliss, told in comic style, and how they came to put together this book. My favorite is when they were checking each other for ticks. It’s a great 20-30 minute read, sure to make you chuckle.
I’d never heard of Stephanie St. Claire, a Black woman from the Caribbean who ran the Harlem numbers in the 1920s and 30s. This was not a woman’s game and she did it at the same time and in the same city Lucky Luciano was running the mob.
There are flashbacks to her Martinique childhood where you can see what made her the powerhouse she became. This shows the racism of the day and also the way that powerful men thought they could control her through violence and sex.
I loved the two pages about the Harlem Renaissance and the two pages on the famous players in the story. And can we talk about the arresting cover? Gorgeous. A 155 page graphic biography.
Firefighter Cassie had closed herself off emotionally until one weak moment changed her life. From Austin to Boston, hero to ‘the girl’, and never been kissed to cherished forever, Cassie’s story hit all the sweet spots. A fun and thoughtful read. I loved Cassie’s confidence in herself and getting a feel for life at the fire station.
The Lady Risks All by Stephanie Laurens. Stephanie Laurens was a new author for me and I really liked the unconventional characters, unique circumstances,and very real dangerous mystery of this one. At over 450+ pages i really got to know the characters and why in the 1820s a Duke could not just become owner of gambling houses without sacrifices being made.
My Indigo World: A True Story of the Color Blue by Rosa Chang. For the older elementary or even early middle schooler. Chang shares her memory of all things blue and there is so much great information. It’s all over the place, jumping from her first trip to the blue ocean to growing indigo to Korean history, but in the best possible way.
A few months ago I read Anatomy: A Love Story and liked the young adult book. This is the sequel. In the first book Hazel found a way to make me her surgeon dreams come true in 1800s Edinburgh, but saw her love hanged by a mob.
In Immortality, after being imprisoned for helping a woman who had aborted her pregnancy, she is ordered to London to treat Princess Charlotte, the heir to the throne. She’s invited to the elusive Companions to the Death club, where she learns more about the tincture offering everlasting life. This tincture, which she had given to her love Jack, proves to be the real deal.
So, I liked it well enough for the crazy that it was. It’s brings the story that began in Anatomy to a nice end. Although, I’m speaking as an older woman here, I question her big life decision. And some endings are mind boggling, like that of Marie-Anne.
Patchwork by Matt de la Pena and Corinna Luyken. When you were a kid what did you think your life woud look like when you gre up? Sometimes you can see the seeds of who you will be, but sometimes your life will take a different direction.
Wilde Child by Eloisa James. I’ve read and enjoyed Eloisa James and her historical romances before, but this ended up being just okay for me. It’s the 8th in a series that I haven’t read and, to be blunt, I just got tired of hearing about Thaddeus’s cock (a word frequently used). A lady who wanted to be an actress, a big no no back then, and a future Duke who loved her adventurous spirit was a good story. Even the shared parental difficulties were engaging. Once the spicy scenes started they didn’t stop. So, if lots of spicy is your scene then this might be for you.
Faces of Cleveland by Laura Wimbels. This book, unlike HONY, is a collection of portraits of Clevelanders with just their name and occupation. At the beginning she has several locals tell how they know the author and what it is that makes Cleveland special. This is not a comprehensive collection in any way, but it’s always nice to celebrate the good things and people of this fine city. Although I’m a suburbanite, I can be downtown in 20 minutes and love this place I’ve called home for 23 years.
Liza Cole, a once-successful novelist whose career has seen better days, has one month to write the thriller that could land her back on the bestseller list. Meanwhile, she’s struggling to start a family, but her husband is distracted by the disappearance of his best friend, Nick. As stresses weigh her down in her professional and personal lives, Liza escapes into writing the chilling exploits of her latest heroine, Beth.
Beth, a new mother, suspects her husband is cheating on her while she’s home caring for their newborn. Angry and betrayed, she aims to catch him in the act and make him pay for shattering the illusion of their perfect life. But before she realizes what she’s doing, she’s tossing the body of her husband’s mistress into the East River. from Goodreads
There was a lot going on in this thriller about an author struggling to have a baby with her husband. There were two alternating storylines, one the author Liza, the other the main character of her latest book Beth.
I listened but wouldn’t recommend the audio. I found it somewhat difficult to keep track of who I was listening to as I drove. The storylines were interesting, but the whirlwind of the last few chapters left me feeling like there was just too much to take in. I’d give it a solid 3.5 stars.
This was a BOTM selection a few years ago. Did you read it?
I’ve been so out of sync this summer that I’ve neglected talking about books that should have been mentioned. I’m hoping to get back on track in the next few weeks, but Jason just threw a mini-vacation to NYC for the two of us into the mix, so don’t hold me to that 🙂
How fun is it when you know the author of a book before said author writes the book? I’m lucky enough to know Minerva Pendleton, aka someone I know whose name is not really Minerva, and they are fabulous people.
Verity Wheelwright lives a life of luxury but boredom. She is the only daughter to the widowed Lord Wheelwright, and he keeps her in his manor on New Lutetia, where she meets with tutors to learn classical literature and music. Verity craves adventure and often escapes to the pages of livre rouge—cheap, paperback books with crimson covers that contain sordid tales of lust and adventure. When New Lutetia is invaded by the infamous airship pirate Cavalier Eli Callahan, Verity is forced to make a choice. She can run and hide, or surrender herself in exchange for the safety of her city, but at what cost?
Verity is a pampered lady who longs for more excitement in her sheltered life. One day that excitement arrives on her doorstep with the arrival of pirates who whisk her away aboard their airship. Can she trust the captain of the ship, the renowned Eli Callahan, to keep her safe while awaiting the ransom? Does she even want to be kept safe?
I really liked Verity, Eli and his first mate Screw. There were even some spicy bits if you like that sort of thing in your romance (and who doesn’t?).
This was a short read, only 85 pages, and my only complaint was that I wanted more.
This ARC was sent to me months ago and forgotten about and misplaced by no fault of its own. The premise of a daughter who isn’t the norm being shipped off appealed to me. It felt personal.
After nearly two hundred years of housing retardants, as they were once known, the Beechwood Institute is closing the doors on its dark history, and the complicated task of reassigning residents has begun. Ella Jules, having arrived at Beechwood at the tender age of eight, must now rely on the state to decide her future. Ella’s aging parents have requested that she be returned to her childhood home, much to the distress of Ella’s siblings, but more so to Lynetta, her beloved caretaker who has been by her side for decades. The five adult Jules children, haunted by their early memories of their sister, and each dealing with the trauma of her banishment in their own flawed way, are converging on the family home, arriving from the far corners of the country—secrets in tow—to talk some sense into their aging parents and get to the root of this inexplicable change of heart. from Goodreads
Precious Jules is the story of a family. The Jules family is picture perfect, but one of the children has live at Beechwood Institute since she was 8. Now the parents want her back and the girl’s caretaker says no. The rest of the kids, all five of them, come home to convince their parents to leave their sister with the caretaker.
It’s a great examination of what’s good for the family isn’t always the best thing for any one of the individuals. The secret guilt, the alternate realities, the vilifying, and the eventual acceptance make for some thought provoking stuff.
There were a lot of characters. My biggest problem was keeping track of all of the characters and their past and present stories. It was a lot. I think there were 10 characters who each had a chapter from their point of view. I wish there had been less so that I could have been drawn into the story a bit more.
My first week has been slow to Paris, but busy here on the homefront. If you are participating in Paris in July this year and would like to try your hand at this puzzle, I’d love to send it on to you. Leave a comment telling me you want it and I’ll get it sent out next week!
On the 4th of July I finished The Third Girl, the first of the Molly Sutton mystery series set in a small French town. Molly is 38, a recent divorcée, and the new owner of a property near the village. As she settles into her new country and new job renting out the cottage on her property, a local art student goes missing and casts a spell over her new home. I liked it. An American goes to France and falls in love with small village living. I plan on reading the next in the series soon.1,000 piece Hinkler puzzle while drinking tea from Paris and listening to The Little Paris Bookshop. Sammi loved Paris too 😻
The Little Paris Bookshop has such a great premise. Monsieur Perdu has a floating bookstore in Paris where he interviews customers to chose just the right book for what ails them. He’s a book doctor! That’s not the plot, but those parts were my favorites. After chapter 6 or 7 I had to stop and think about my reading habits. He really made me want to elevate my choices, which went along well with Read Dangerously that I read last month. I read to escape, but choosing quality choices for me is also important. The story wasn’t what I thought it would be, but I did really like it and some parts were pure magic.
I’m hoping for more Paris and more posts (reading and writing) this week while Gage is at camp.
It’s been a week of unsettling news and I’m still feeling very sad about Friday’s Supreme Court news. I don’t think the government has a say in ANY health decisions made between a woman and her doctor. And as someone who had a miscarriage at 6 weeks I can say that my experience reinforced my view that conception may mean possible life, but it doesn’t mean baby. I can’t believe we’re at a place that if my miscarriage happened now it would be considered suspect.
On a positive note, Jason and I went out to an actual restaurant without the boy for the first time in over two years last night. We ate outside which is really what I’m comfortable with at this point. We made it to the bottom of the strawberry daquiri 🙂
Gage finished up his third week of camp with his fourth starting tomorrow. This week he’ll be going with two friends and we’re going to carpool! As a stay at home mama I’m usually the one to trek the kids around if necessary, but this week those working moms have insisted on covering 3 days. I am grateful.
Lady Emily has spent her life being perfect so that no touch of scandal could touch her cash strapped family. Lord Julian Belfry needed this pristine reputation to bring respectability to his theatre. It was a marriage of convenience. Will these two, both looking for acceptance from their parents, fall in love along the way? It is a romance after all!
My favorite character was Cecil, the kitten who brought bloodshed to their wedding night 😽. This is book 3 in the Regency Vows series and can be read alone, as I did. But I do wish I’d read the first two so I could have spent more time with Emily’s friends.
Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times by Azar Nafisi is pure delight for lovers of literature and its power of illumination. My book club read her bestseller, Reading Lolita in Tehran, a few years ago and I loved it for all that I learned about Iran. In this book,as an American citizen now, she takes on current America.
What’s missing in our current discourse? Nuance and empathy. These are things that you can find in great literature, especially those books that go against the norm and force you to think about what’s being said. She takes on politics, democracy, freedom, and Trump by analyzing some of the greats like Morrison, Baldwin, Atwood, and Plato.
It’s a book to be loved by anyone who has spent time reading literature. I mostly listened but had my hard copy handy to mark up thoughts I wanted to revisit. She’s got some powerful stuff in here.
There are 5 sections and in section 3 I was so moved that I put one of the books she talked about, Places & Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning by former marine Elliot Ackerman, on hold at the library. He writes fiction now, but this is his memoir.
This was in my latest #gettbr box and it was just what I needed. It’s not an easy read, but one I’m glad someone chose for me.
I talked about Remember Whose Little Girl You Are by Ellen Nichols for a TLC Book Tour here.
We’re in the middle of the mini-series, The Night Manager and are really liking it.
Plans for the weekend
Yesterday was so busy so I promised Gage a quieter day today. We’re going to visit a few houses on the Parade of Homes and he’s got to visit a home to get directions for his next pet sitting/plant watering gig.
Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy is our book club read for this month. I had no interest in it during the first bit of listening, but the slow moving story grew on me as it weaved between past and present. It’s one that I’m sure will benefit from a group discussion.
Franny is desperate to find a boat to help her find the last of the Arctic terns as they make their last migration. We feel her despair even though we don’t understand it until the very end of the book when we learn of her past. Frankie was a complicated character, both heroic and prickly, and always, it seemed, utterly true to herself.
I don’t know if I liked it because I went in with such low expectations or if the underlying environmental theme drew me in, but either way I think this will stick with me for a while. And I look forward to our book club discussion.
My friend Diane (Bibliophile by the Sea) sent this to Gage a few months ago, but I’m the first one reading it! I’m curious to see how it works as a kids book because I loved the heartbreaking insight into the tragedy of loss and the beautiful art.
Artist George Butler made his way across war zones and refugee camps to document the people he found there. Looking for the many reasons people choose or are forced to move from their homes to places where they are often unwelcome. The places he visited were in Europe or the Middle East and I was captivated by how much could be gleaned from 4 pages about each place.
I wanted more detail and more stories, but as a book for older kids it worked. A great book to consider what makes a person a refuge or migrant.
This is a great book for preteens/teens who have any kind of sensory issue. It is a positive book with enough science to explain what is going on in their bodies without being overwhelming. It’s full of easy at home weekly and daily exercises to help them gain more control of their body. Will be so useful for many.
Gage has had too many antibiotics in his few years and finding an alternative is sometimes possible, but always more time consuming.
This book is about the family of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones, (Cipro, Levaquin, and others), but I found it’s usefulness beyond that. Author Jay S. Cohen, MD did a good job in laying out the many supplements that are helpful not only for people injured by these antibiotics, but also for those just trying to heal from other toxicity.
*there are times when antibiotics are the only answer, yes.*
The Duchess Countess. Let’s talk about a rather infamous woman from from the Georgian Era for Women’s History Month. Elizabeth Chudleigh was a woman who learned how to use her considerable assets to gain security and influence. In the mid 1750s women had make an advantageous marriage and Elizabeth managed to do that, twice and at the same time.
She was a strong-willed woman who knew what she wanted and no shortage of men willing to provide it. She made a hasty marriage when she was young and a well-suited one when she was in her middle years. When she becomes a widow she still has a husband left.
This biography was dense and well annotated, so I really got a sense for the customs and politics of the day and all the players involved. Because of that it wasn’t a fast read, but I suppose if you were more familiar with her or her story this might read a little easier.
She was fearless, but with vulnerabilities too. A fascinating woman.
Thanks to Atria Books for sending me a copy of this book.
The Match. Wilde, The Boy In the Woods, is back. It’s a few months after the first book ended and he’s managed to track down his father via an online DNA database. He also finds someone he believes to be his brother. Only neither one is really forthcoming with information for different reasons.
This can be a standalone, but do yourself a favor and read The Boy in the Woods first. You’ll want to know more about Wilde. All of the great characters from that book are back as is an additional guest from another Coben novel, The Stranger.
No one does thrillers quite like Harlan Coben and his latest is the sequel to Wilde’s story that I’d hoped he write.
Wilde survived in the woods on his own as a very young child, so Gage and I took this book on a walk in the woods and discussed how likely that would be. We decided you’d have to be extremely 🍀, but today is a lucky day, so anything is possible!
Loved it and am looking forward to more Wilde in the future.
❤️ The Case for Loving: The Fight for Interracial Marriage. I always like sharing these kinds of stories with Gage so I can see his complete shock that anyone would think it’s okay to tell people who they can and can’t marry. We ARE making progress. ❤️
The Cybils Awards announced their winners this week, so make sure to check out all of the category finalists and winners.
I had the honor of being a finals judge for the Cybils Awards again this year for both board books and picture books. The five of us exchanged a flurry of emails after we’d read these 7 finalist board books and chose a winner…
🎉Big Bear, Little Bear by Marine Schneider was universally loved and a perfect book to read and reread with your wee babes. Simple and sweet with touches of humor, it has a nostalgic feel that’s sure to please. 🎉
The other finalists were also fantastic and I can easily recommend all of them for the 0-3 crowd. ❤️ Comparrotives by Janik Coat (I was so charmed by this parrot!) ❤️ Circle Under Berry by Carter Higgins was Gage’s favorite. ❤️ Animals Go Vroom by Abi Cushman had a fun animal story with peekaboo pages. ❤️This is Still Not a Book by Jean Jullian was full of whimsy with funny pictures and pull up pages. ❤️Turn Seek Find Habitats by Ben Newman is a new take on hidden picture fun with the turn of a wheel changing what you seek every time through. ❤️ Caution! Road Signs Ahead by Toni Buzzeo and Chi Birmingham is an easy choice for your car loving toddlers with big road signs and what they mean.
For the Picture Books category we had 7 fabulous choices and between the 5 of us finalist judges we chose…
🎉 Watercress by Andrea Wang and Jason Chin 🎉 This has won many awards this past year for good reason. A quiet story with heart and an important message. Eat weeds for dinner that your family picked on the side of the road? That’s a tough sell for any kid. This was my and our favorite.
Other finalists ❤️ Someone Builds the Dream by Lisa Wheeler and Loren Long ❤️ I loved this one almost as much but for different reasons. Want to teach your kid to celebrate everyone who contributes to building bridges or rides or parks? This is your book! ❤️ Bodies Are Cool by Tyler Feder❤️. Every child needs to spend some time with this book. Seriously. This book celebrates every body type you can imagine. I can’t recommend this one enough for body diversity awareness. And it’s really fun too! ❤️ The Midnight Fair by Gideon Sterer and Mariachiara Di Giorgio❤️ This story of animals taking over the fair at night has no words and doesn’t need them. Loved it. ❤️ Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem by Amanda Gorman and Loren Long. Beautifully celebrates the difference one child can make in the world. ❤️Itty-Bitty Kitty Corn by Shannon Hale and Leiden Pham. Cat or unicorn lovers will want this one. ❤️ Arlo Draws An Octopus by Lori Mortensen and Rob Sayegh Jr, is perfect for any budding artists out there.
Stacy's Books 