Books Read in August 2026

 

I only read 5 books this month. Don't get me wrong. Five books in a month is fine. But I have a minimum of 15 books I want to read before the end of the year, and if I only read 5 a month I won't even finish those. Woe is me.

However, with the exception of one book, I was very happy with my reading for the month. And the one book I did not enjoy was on my classics list and was a worthwhile read, so I cannot complain too much about that.

Here are the five books I read in August:

Nonfiction

Count Them One by One: Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote (2010) by Gordon A. Martin, Jr.

This book is an impressive account of one trial (United States vs. Theron Lynd) in Forrest County, Mississippi that affected the voting rights of blacks in Mississippi in 1962. The author, Gordon A. Martin, Jr. was a lawyer at the time and worked on the trial, traveling often between Washington, D.C. and various parts of Mississippi to find witnesses for the trial and to prepare them for trial. Twenty seven years after the Lynd trial, he traveled back to Mississippi to interview the witnesses in that trial, and discuss their experiences and the changes in Mississippi since that time. The book is very well written. See my review here.

Fiction / Horror

Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley

I was going to say that almost everyone is familiar with the Frankenstein novel by Mary Shelley, but actually that is not true.  Many people, including myself until I read this book for the first time at 77, are familiar with the Frankenstein story as told through various films, and there is a world of difference between the adaptations and the book itself. I do think this is a worthwhile book and many readers have enjoyed it and praised it. However, it wasn't a good fit for me. I expected to like the book, and it is not long, under 300 pages. But it took me forever to read and there were portions I had to read multiple times to get what was going on.

The edition that I read has an introduction by Elizabeth Kostova, where she admits that she discovered (while reading it to prepare for writing the Introduction) that she had never read it before. I can understand how that could happen. ... with all the movie versions and the pervasiveness of the Frankenstein story in popular culture. The novel first came out in 1818, but the edition I read had the revisions made by Mary Shelley for the 1831 text. The editor of this edition, Maurice Hindle, notes the differences between the original edition and later editions. 

Crime Fiction

Mortmain Hall (2020) by Martin Edwards

This is the 2nd book in the Rachel Savernake mystery series. I enjoyed the book but it is the kind of mystery that you have to pay a lot of attention to, so it was slow going for me. The story is set in 1930. It starts out on London's Necropolis Railway, which was very interesting. I had not heard of that railway, but Glen had told me what he knew. It was a train operated especially to transport coffins and mourners from London to a cemetery in Surrey.

The plot was complex and I was puzzled about what was going on the whole time, as I was in the first book in the Rachel Savernake series. Rachel is an unusual protagonist. In the end it all came together well. It is definitely in the style of a Golden Age mystery, with a list of the clues in the book (called a Cluefinder), added following the end of the book. The author noted that Cluefinders were used by some authors of that time, such as J.J. Connington, Elspeth Huxley, John Dickson Carr, and Edmund Crispin.

The Cyclist (2020) by Tim Sullivan

This is the second book in a series that features an autistic police detective. Detective Sergeant George Cross is quite capable in his job, in fact the cases he investigates have a very high conviction rate, which means that he (and his team) provide enough evidence to convict. However, he is difficult to work with because he is not very good at interacting with anyone. He doesn't know how to "play nice." This adds more interest to the story. 

In this book, George has a new team member, and both of them have to adjust to different ways of working together. The mystery plot was very good, and I learned a bit about competitive cycling. Plus the ending was very unexpected. 

The first book in the series was published in 2020 and the ninth book will be published in 2027. At this point, I plan to read them all.

Death of a Dude (1969) by Rex Stout

I bought this copy of Death of a Dude at last year's Planned Parenthood book sale. I had two copies in mass market paperback editions but I have been trying to find copies of the Nero Wolfe books in editions with more readable type. It is a very old book club edition but any hard cover edition of a Nero Wolfe book that isn't a book club edition is going to be too expensive. It had been a while since I reread this book so I did not remember much of the story. 

There are so many things I liked about this book:

• The setting is very different. Archie is staying at Lily Rowan's ranch in Montana (rustic setting), and Harvey Greve, the manager of the ranch, is charged with murder. Archie tells Wolfe that he won't be home until he can clear Harvey's name, but it seems like an impossible task. So of course Wolfe has to come solve the crime, because he needs Archie back at work.
• I always like it when Lily Rowan has a large role in the mystery novel. She and Archie have had a long term relationship throughout the series.
• This book was published in 1969, very close to the end of the series, and has a more modern feel than the earlier ones.

About the photos:

All of the photos in this post were taken at our local nursery, while we were looking for plants and gardening supplies. The only plant I can identify is the yellow begonia at the bottom. My husband took all of the photos and processed them. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.