1776 (& More July Reads)
I finished reading a total of 10 books in the month of July, beginning with David McCullough’s 1776. Wasn’t that a fitting way to mark our country’s 250th birthday? Read on for my impressions of several other books on this month’s done and dusted list….
10 Books I read in July
1776 by David McCullough
My family listened to David McCullough’s 1776 during a 3-day drive up to Washington, DC to celebrate the Fourth. It was a great refresher on the American Revolution.
The book focuses primarily on the role George Washington played in the war as the leader of the Continental Army.
Although it is written with scholarly attention to detail, the narrative is engaging, giving the reader an appreciation of both American and British points of view.
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain
A colleague of my husband’s highly recommended Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc to us as a book he likes so much, he reads it annually. My father always treated Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer that same way, so we were eager to check this one out for ourselves.
Recollections is a work of historical fiction and is quite lengthy — the audiobook we listened to was more than 20 hours long! — but it was fascinating, start to finish.
It recounts Joan’s daring, determination, and devotion to the remarkable call God placed upon her life to free France from English tyranny — and the despicable lengths to which some of her own countrymen went to thwart her.
The Odyssey by Homer
I’ve read several different versions of The Odyssey over the course of my lifetime, but none have I enjoyed more than this translation by Emily Wilson. She wrote the entire thing in iambic pentameter using modern day English, and did a superb job of it.
Included with the translation, which we listened to on Audible, was 3.5 hours of introductory material which supplied pertinent information on the work and offered an fresh perspective on this epic poem.
Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kelon
We listened to all three of Austin Kleon’s books on our way home from DC last month. It was admittedly not as much fun as reading the paperback versions, since Kleon’s work is so visual. But we enjoyed the opportunity to review the concepts presented and discuss them with family.
The first installment, Steal Like an Artist, is the most foundational. In it, Kleon explains how to draw inspiration from the work of others in a way that makes the results entirely your own.
Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
Of Austin Kelon’s hree books, I find Show Your Work most personally compelling. Maybe it’s the mathematician in me. After all, showing your work is a concept math teachers have been drilling into their students since grade school.
Or perhaps it’s the fact I often forget to do it myself when it comes to anything other than math. I’ve always loved watching other people work (artisan craftsmen, factory workers, YouTube tutorials, etc.), and I want to get better about sharing the process by which I do all the stuff I enjoy doing, as well.
Keep Going by Austin Kleon
The third book in Austin Kleons trilogy on creativity, Keep Going, is like a motivational speech on persistence. Stick with your craft long enough, and you will not only improve dramatically but will gain traction in your field.
In this book, Kleon covers 10 ways to stay creative over a lifetime of making things — through good times and bad, and everything in between.
Praying for Your Future Husband by Gunn and Goyer
My husband and I will be celebrating 39 years of marriage later this month, so — obviously — Praying for Your Future Husband is not a book I read for my own benefit (although I did pray for many of these things before ever meeting my husband four decades ago).
Instead, I read it to see if it might be a book worth recommending to the many single girls who’ve written to me over the years asking what they should be doing while waiting for Mr. Right to appear.
And the answer is, yes, praying for a future spouse is definitely something I’d recommend, and this book presents a very balanced and biblically-informed perspective on what form such prayers should take.
Happy Little Family by Rebecca Caudill
Happy Little Family follows the adventures of the youngest member of the Fairchild house, little four-year-old Bonnie.
With four girls and one boy in this simple, loving family, the storytelling is reminiscent of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books.
This is the first Happy Little Family volume I’ve read, and I was delighted to see there are other titles in the series.
Let Me Be a Woman by Elisabeth Elliot
Let Me Be a Woman is a collection of letters Elisabeth Elliot wrote to her daughter as she was preparing to marry. It has been decades since I last read it, but I enjoyed it just as thoroughly the second time around.
The first time I filtered it through the perspective of a young woman preparing for marriage myself. This time, I read it as a mother of daughters who are themselves of marriageable age — one of whom tied the knot less than a year ago.
It would be a wonderful book for moms and daughters to read and discuss together, although that is not something I’ve done (yet). Mrs. Elliot does touch on many topics I’ve discussed with my own girls over the years.
Glad Tidings by Jennifer Flanders
I re-read my own Glad Tidings last month while recording the text for a new audiobook. For years my husband has re-read all our family’s old Christmas updates every December, as a way of preserving those memories and of letting the younger kids glimpse what life was like in our family when older brothers and sisters were little.
Of course, most of our children have grown up and moved away from home now, so we no longer get to gather them all together in the living room every evening to continue this tradition during the holidays. I thought recording the stories this way would allow them to share some of those same sweet memories with their own children. Look for it to be released by November.
For My Fellow Bookworms
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