June 2026 Reads

Reading No Small Thing, A Novel of the American Revolution by Harold Coyle.

Started reading 4th Man Surf Club by Rick Leland

Reading The Faith of Beasts, the second book in The Captive's War series, by James S. A. Corey.

Also, trying to memorize, in middle English, as much as I can of the prologue to The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer. It's going much slower than it used to!

Almost finished with Sugar A Bittersweet History. It is a good book but you better been prepared to read an unending nightmare of inhumanity and extreme suffering. The book ranks right down there with King Leopold's Ghost and Slavery by Another Name.

Finished No Small Thing, A Novel of the American Revolution by Harold Coyle.

My review:The author writes fiction historical and military books. This is my first read by Harold Coyle.
No Small Thing is fiction but many characters did live and fight in the American Revolution. George Washington, Paul Revere, and David Gray are three.
I did get somewhat confused with the names and who was fighting for which side. Many families chose different sides.
The first chapter begins at Breeds Hill, MA at dawn 17 June 1775 and ends Newtown. PA, evening 26 December 1776. Names of so many cites familiar to us now were involved in the fights; New York City, Long Island, Boston and Cambridge for a few.
I personally think this book is a great read for the 250th birthday of America.
I did like some of the fictional characters but would have liked to see more of their future.
I won a copy from LibraryThing and the author and want to thank them The opinions are my own. A 5 star read.

>5 mnleona: I set aside the French/Indian war novel by Harold Coyle ...A Savage War of Empire because I was itching to read a couple other titles, but I intend to dive back in. A long read, but a good one.

One of the "itchy" titles was Theo of Golden, by Allen Levi which is sweet and sad and made my heart happy on pretty much every page.

Another is The Lady's Mine by Francine Rivers; a clean and fluffy historical romance that would make a fun and fine old-school western.

>6 gmathis: I was watching FOX Business last night and Kelsey Grammer has a series on America's historical events.

Finished The Faith of Beasts, the second book in The Captive's War series, by James S. A. Corey (the writers who brought you The Expanse series of books and TV episodes, well known to sci-fi fans.)

I have to rank The Captive's War series pretty high because it got me thinking about what I'd do in the protagonists' situation. The problem with it is that this is the second book in a series of unknown length. About two chapters before the end of the book I thought of a strategy to solve the "unsolvable" problem the series poses and now I have to wait a long time to see if that's the direction the authors go in! They did leave a clue in the final two pages that makes me think I may have sussed out their plan, but I'll have to wait forever to find out.

I'm reading The Wizard's Cat by Nathan Lowell. Not the sort of book I normally read but it was recommended to me by a friend, was free on Kindle and is quite entertaining. But, as with many writers of modern trashy novels, it is part of a series, and ideally you'd have to have read the previous book, The Wizard's Butler, to really understand what's going on. Luckily, I read that one a while ago.

>7 mnleona: I'm also interested in the "History of the US in 100 Objects." ( https://historiansplaining.com/special-series-history-of-us/)

Moving on now to Circe by Madeline Miller. She's notably the witch that Odysseus spent a long vacation with, but in Greek mythology also had encounters with the flying pair of Daedalus and Icarus, murderous Medea, even the Minotaur. I bought this book a few years ago as a gift for a friend, but then realized that she just wasn't into Greek myths, so it's been sitting in a pile on a table, languishing. Having lately finished Miller's other book, The Song of Achilles, and thoroughly enjoying it, I decided it was time to rescue Circe from the world of piles on my tables and give her a read.

Starting to read a Christian
cozy mystery Old-Fashioned Christmas Murder by Meredith Curtis

When the Storm Passes by Manel Loureiro is an entertaining thriller with a new and unexpected development in almost every chapter.

Alternating between two: Buster Midnight's Cafe by Sandra Dallas and The Feng Shui Detective by Nury Vittachi

I've read nearly all of Sandra Dallas' books---"Buster" was one of her earlier ones and is a little harsher in tone than the ones I particularly like. (Prayers for Sale is on my "reread annually" rotation.)

I couldn't care less about the mystical aspects of the Feng Shui Detective, but the quirky turns of phrase (it's set in Singapore) and the sixty-something protagonist who is completely baffled by the younglings around him are delightful.

Just finished A Cold Wind from Moscow by Rory Clement. It's a decent enough Cold War spy thriller, although I think John LeCarre is the master of that genre and everything else falls short of his standards. Also, this is apparently the second novel in a series, something you don't learn until you're well into the book. It's readable without having read the first one, but it's a bit annoying. That's what you get when things are free on Kindle! On the plus side it is set in England during the severe winter of 1946-47, and its description of immediate post-war Britain is good and indeed brings to mind some of my own childhood memories from the fifties, and of the even more severe winter of 1962-63.

Reading Paris by Edward Rutherfurd