I am late with my August reading round-up and I’m also rather unhappy with the reading itself, or rather the quantity of it. I was hoping to read much more during my holiday, but my Estonian vacations tend to be extremely busy and this one was probably the worst I’ve had. And by ‘worst’, I actually of course mean ‘best’, because I saw my family and many friends, had a number of events to attend and also completed three photo shoots. So yeah, excellent in every other way, disastrous for reading. I also had a strange lull just before leaving Brussels, when nothing seemed to hold my attention. And then I managed to lose two books I really wanted to read, frustrating me further.

Anyway, upwards and onwards. What I did read I either liked or loved and it was a nice mix of things, so here we go:

1. The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg. A wonderful collection of essays written in post-war Italy, ranging from how to raise children to the topic of old shoes. It manages to be simultaneously timeless and very modern and I found the voice of the author really compelling. After reading many contemporary essays, it also feels like it’s dealing with real life and real problems. It’s fresh and sobering.

2. Empress of a Thousand Skies by Rhoda Belleza. This is a YA novel in space and it’s a nice one. I would however only recommend it to people who are used to the genre, as it’s a pretty typical example and not a literary masterpiece by any means. But it does make an effort to address issues like racism and privacy, so yay for that.

3. The Armored Saint by Myke Cole. This isn’t really my kind of fantasy – I don’t like village settings, I’m tired of worlds inspired by Medieval Europe, I prefer books with some glamour, I get impatient with protagonists who repeatedly make the same mistake. I’m still glad I read it, as ‘village girl going mecha’ isn’t the most usual of premises and there are other unexpected turns that I applaud. Also, reading this was a reminder never to judge a book by the author photo.

4. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. A reread inspired by the extraordinarily hot summer. I loved this book in my teens and was afraid I no longer would, but all fears were unfounded. It is still a great book and extremely well suited for a scorching August. It’s also rather frightening to see how much my views on ‘romantic’ heroines have been shaped by Brett.

5. Esimene malbe päev sel aastal by Jüri Kolk. A lovely little collection of miniatures that I really enjoyed reading. I am very sensitive to how Estonian sounds on the page, I often feel it’s forced or clumsy. Kolk’s language is effortless and natural, his observations insightful and humorous.

6. Snapshot by Brandon Sanderson. Sanderson is the Queen of fantasy writing, the same way other bands would have gotten 7 songs out of the Bohemian Rhapsody, Sanderson builds a setting for a novella that lesser writers would surely have milked for a seven-book series. It is a scifi detective story that requires some intellectual gymnastics, a quick but not unsubstantial read.

7. Of Dogs and Walls by Yuko Tsushima. Two quiet Japanese short stories, decent but not exceptional. What stayed with me the most was the question of memory, how we remember things differently and how that shapes us.

8. The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder. This is an excellent book that I very much recommend to people who are interested in current affairs, history or both. It’s more Russia-centric than I thought it would be, but that’s because Snyder believes (and I agree) that Russia has had a huge influence on what the world has become. It is also extremely enlightening to see how the Putin regime has changed in the last decade, something that can be difficult to notice when you are in the middle of things. The way Snyder shows history’s impact on today’s events is brilliant.

9. Black Panther: The Nation Under Our Feet Book 2 by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brian Stelfreeze. As with the first book in the series, I enjoyed the themes and the moral ambiguity of this, but I feel it’s still rather all over the place. Coates is certainly a great writer, but maybe his style doesn’t translate well into the comic medium (writing a comic is a special and very underrated skill)? I really do like the concept of Black Panther, however, and still find the stories compelling. So I’ll stick with it to see if the different strands coalesce into a more coherent narrative.

How was your August/holiday reading?