June might turn out to be a month of great change for me. I’m hoping to get my van converted, better than before, into a fully self-contained Class B RV. There may be solar panels and even an air conditioner (that can be used only with shore power). That would mean: time for a vacation! Wherever I go, there will be books.
My June Word of the Month
Striving
My June Haiku of the Month
Forest of burned brown
Gives way to green growing plants
they cover the ground
Bible Verse of the Month
For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.” – Psalm 1:6
My June reading diary is at the bottom of this page, after the book list.
My Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/lindajm
☆ – I own the book and am ready to read.
★ – I’m reading it.
✓ – I finished reading it. Yay!
⇗ – Still reading at the end of the month.
DNF – I did not like it or finish it.
∅ – Stalled – I started but didn’t finish.
↓ – I didn’t even start. Complete fail!
Pastoral June Readathon
I’ll be participating in a Booktube event called the “Pastoral June Readathon.” There’s a group read and three prompts. In this video Angie explains this event she created.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTYph76m4is&t=200s
★ Classic Memoir: Lark Rise to Candleford, by Flora Thompson
This group read is actually three different books put together in one volume. I’ve started reading the first one, Lark Rise, and it seems to be a thorough explanation of everything that went on in a small northern England hamlet around the turn of the century, 1900, or slightly before. I’m finding it very interesting as I suspect some of my Celtic ancestors came from these types of circumstances.
1. Read a book with a pastoral image on the cover.
The book I’m reading isn’t on Amazon! It is a local memoir (or is it fiction?) Well, I’ll find out and take a picture of it to share here. It is called The Valley of Little Rivers by Wally Coleman. It is set in Southern Oregon, just north of where I live. Thank you to Judy Bushy for giving me this book!
2. Read a book with a rural setting.
✓ Juvenile Fiction: Incident at Hawk’s Hill, by Allan W. Eckert
This is a 1972 Newbery Honor Book. Doesn’t this look interesting? It is one of those books about a boy’s relationship with a wild animal, in this case, a badger! Reminds me of Rascal (a raccoon) and The Yearling (a deer)!
3. Read a children’s book set in the country.
★ Juvenile Fantasy: The Moorchild, by Eloise McGraw
I hope this is set in the country! Well, I’ll soon find out. This is a Newbery Honor Book from 1997.
For the May/June Reading Challenge
This is one of the challenges at the Coffee and Books reading group on Goodreads. There are nine prompts and I have just two more books to read to finish the challenge.
★ Memoir: The Endless Steppe, by Esther Hautzig
This will be a reread for me. I rarely reread a book, but this one was at one time a favorite memoir, and I’d like to read it again. This copy was sent to me by a Booktube friend. Thanks, Erion! It is about a Jewish girl who was sent to live in Siberia during World War II. I’m reading this for a Goodreads group challenge prompt, to read a book about someone in a country that is foreign to me.
✓ Novella: The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
I’m also reading this for the Goodreads group May/June challenge. This is for a prompt to read a book that is less than 200 pages. This is very short so I’m calling it a novella.
Big Book Summer Reading Challenge
★ Christian Romance: Redeeming Love, by Francine Rivers
I’ve never read a book by Francine Rivers before, so I want to remedy that. This book is set in historic California so that intrigues me further. Christian fiction – maybe a “final frontier” for me. Maybe not. This book has been praised by many, so I’m giving it a try.
Reading this novel qualifies me for participation in the Big Book Summer Reading Challenge at Booktube! Here’s Sue’s video explaining the challenge she created.
Another book I plan to read for the Big Book Summer Reading Challenge is The Stammering Century.
★ Nonfiction: The Stammering Century, by Gilbert Seldes
This is novel research. It is about cults, cranks, manias, and religious fanaticism of the 1800’s in the USA. I love that folk art was used for the cover!
✓ Christian Romance: The Masterpiece, by Francine Rivers
Another Francine Rivers book – I read this one with a Booktube readalong this month. 512 pages – so it qualified as a “Big Book.”
More Fiction I Want to Read
✓ Christian Fiction: A Common Life, by Jan Karon
I’m still participating in the “A Year in Mitford Readalong” and this is the sixth book in the series.
✓ Juvenile Fiction: Ramona Forever, by Beverly Cleary
Seventh book in the eight-book series. I’m almost done . . .
★ Juvenile Fiction: Ramona’s World, by Beverly Cleary
Last book in the eight-book series! Yay! I’ve enjoyed reading the Ramona books!
✓ Recent Fiction: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs
This is sure to be weird. Not sure I’ll even like it, but I’m reading it for 2021 PopSugar Reading Challenge prompt #15 – A book with a black-and-white cover. The cover fits the prompt.
✓ Classic: The Wayward Bus, by John Steinbeck
My next audiobook. I always need to have an audiobook in progress. This is about a bus traveling the back roads of California, my home state. What’s not to love?
✓ Classic: The Spectator Bird, by Wallace Stegner
Added midmonth as I needed a new audiobook to listen to. Great novel, set in California and Denmark. A National Book Award winner c. 1977.
✓ Juvenile Fiction: The White Stag, by Kate Seredy
This is the 1938 Newbery Medal Winner. I chose this because of the Booktube Spin, in which we choose and number 20 books. Then there’s a spin. This is the book that won, on my list. I intended to read this last month but … we have 2 months to read it, so I’m not really behind. I hope to read it this month.
Poetry
★ Classic Epic Poem: The Divine Comedy (The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso), by Dante Alighieri
I’ve been wanting to read this for a long time. I’m still in part one, The Inferno. Not a good place to be.
More Nonfiction I Want to Read
★ Nonfiction: The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area, by Malcolm Margolin
This is novel research for me. I love reading about California, and I consider it a matter of responsibility to know something about the Native American tribes that once occupied the land where I was born and raised. It is such a tragedy that they were completely displaced and disappeared. So sad, so sad. I want to know who they were, what they did, and how they lived.
★ Christian: Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis
I’m still reading this book but fell behind on the readalong.
★ Christian: Mistaken Identity: Two Families, One Survivor, Unwavering Hope, by Don & Susie Van Ryn, Newell Colleen & Whitney Cerak, Mark Tabb
This is a monthly reading choice on a Christian Goodreads group I recently joined.
★ Christian: The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a’Kempis
I’ve been reading this for a while now. Great wisdom and small sections make this a very readable classic Christian devotional.
★ History: The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience, by J.S. Holliday
This nonfiction history based on gold rush journals has taken me multiple months to get through. I’m reading this because I love learning about California history and because it is the thickest book I have right now… it is for 2021 PopSugar Reading Challenge prompt #41 – The longest book (by pages) on your TBR list. My plan is to read at least 4 pages daily. As of the beginning of June, I’m in chapter ten. After much terrible suffering on the overland route, William Swain, a diarist and gold seeker, has finally arrived at the diggings in California.
Gardening!
I’m reading gardening books because I have a desire to renovate my 1/2 acre with God’s help starting with developing the landscaping as suggested in Proverbs: “Prepare your outside work, make it fit for yourself in the field; and afterward build your house.” – Proverbs 24:27
★ Gardening: The Earth User’s Guide to Permaculture, by Rosemary Morrow
I’m learning to create sustainable environments through closed systems designed for permanent agriculture development. What a lot of fun I’m having trimming away the old vines clinging to my front fence while dreaming of the day my home will be rebuilt and I’ll have a food forest surrounding it. One must have a goal, you know. That is mine. I’m reading this book very slowly. A lot of the information doesn’t even apply to my parcel of land, but overall it is all good to learn.
My June 2021 Reading Diary
June 1 – This was my youngest son’s 31st birthday! Yay, Aaron! This was also the day of Linda’s Great Downfall . . . I fell down a steep incline… coming off a pile of dirt, not a real hill, but something like that. It is explained in this video.
June 2 – Still recovering. I started listening to an audio version of The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck. I also read the first chapter of Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson.
June 3 – Today I discovered that the other ladies in the Booktube “Pastoral June Readathon” are already several chapters ahead of me on reading Lark Rise to Candleford… so I got the audio version to supplement my Kindle version, and am hurrying to catch up.
June 4 – I read two chapters in each of the following books: Lark Rise to Candleford, Ramona Forever, and Miss Perigrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Variety is the spice of life.
June 5 – I had a good and peaceful reading day. I narrowed my selection of books down to seven that I want to finish before taking on any other books right now, and read something from each of the seven. This “grazing” approach to reading suits my need for change. Maybe I’m a bit ADD but I get bored reading just one book and like to have a collection to read simultaneously. And no, I don’t get confused with the plot lines. That never happens. Today I read from Miss Perigrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Ramona Forever, A Common Life, The Wayward Bus, Think Thin Be Thin, The World Rushed In, and Lark Rise to Candleford.
June 6 – I finished chapter two of A Common Life, my current book in the A Year in Mitford readalong. It is about Tim’s marriage to Cynthia, and I can only say – I’m glad this book is half as long as the other Mitford books. It is about marriage – one of my least favorite topics since I’m a failure at marriage – and it is a step backwards in the series as this is book six, and they actually got married back in book two. This one goes back to fill in more detail. ::sigh:: … maybe I’ll love it, but I’ve definitely got a bad attitude about it right now.
June 12 – I’ve been trying to finish a few of the books I have in progress, since I have too many on my list right now. I finished Ramona Forever yesterday and started Ramona’s World, and today I finished Lark Rise (first of three books in the trilogy) and Mrs. Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. I finished The Wayward Bus, by John Steinbeck, a few days back. As it was an audiobook, I needed to start another and chose The Spectator Bird, by Wallace Stegner, the 1977 National Book Award winner.
June 13 – This evening I started reading more books, starting with The Moorchild and The Endless Steppe. I read two chapters in each and hope I can keep up that pace and finish them before the end of the month. Then I decided to start reading Redeeming Love and got 17 pages into it. That’s a three-month read so no hurry. Next I looked at my copy of The White Stag and read the introduction. I think I can finish that in four days.
June 14 – I just finished audio-reading Wallace Stegner’s The Spectator Bird. Here’s my review at Goodreads. Great novel! I plan to read more by Wallace Stegner.
June 21 – Today I read The Yellow Wallpaper – a rather scary short story! I also posted this video.
June 24 – Time to make a sprint to finish up some books before the end of the month. I’m trying! Today I published my video listing the twenty books (I’d like to read) for the third Booktube Spin.
July 3 – Sorry I didn’t keep up with this reading diary this month. I’ve been distracted by my need to get my van registered, and planning a van conversion. So much to do! However I did a lot of reading. This video explains it.
Oh no—I hope you’re feeling better after your fall! I’m so glad you’re participating in the Big Book Summer Challenge—I am too, and I’m looking forward to getting my books read. It sounds like you’ve had a chance to read some great books recently! Thanks so much for the great post!
I hope you enjoy your big books! I hope I can get through two of them.