June's reading was hot and not just because of the weather

[00:00:00]Hi there, BookTube. It's Rose. It's the middle of July and I haven't yet done a June wrap-up. So, I thought I'd better crack on and do that. My excuse is I was away visiting family in in in Canada for um two weeks of June and and and just into the start of July. So, life's been a bit upside down quite apart from it being impossibly hot here as other British BookTubers have probably mentioned.

[00:00:27]You're probably getting bored of hearing that, aren't you? Um I read 11 books in June plus a sort of like a a dime novel, which is a bit more like a a short story, bare barely counts as a novella.

[00:00:40]And now three of the things I read were for the BookTube Prize, so I can't really talk about them. Those were cursed daughters by um Ayanna Lloyd Braithwaite, Wood Working by Emily St. John and The Line of People by Milo Milo Todd. I've read all six of my um my BookTube Prize group and I will do a rating video for them. I think, although it was tough this time. Anyway, um but I'll um that won't come out until the results are out. So, leaving those three to one side, what shall I talk about? Well, June is the the one of the reading events in June is June on the Range um encouraging us to read Westerns and I've always sort of avoided that because Westerns aren't my thing. But, this year I grasped the nettle and I did read a Western. I read Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry along with some other brilliant woman BookTubers.

[00:01:36]And this was certainly an interesting experience. I have to say I did not love it as I expected to and as lots of people had told me I would. I didn't hate it. I think a couple of the other people in in my little reading group um might say actually that they really disliked it.

[00:01:55]>> [gasps] >> But, um as I say, I was expecting to to to be wowed by it, and sadly I wasn't. I will say a little bit about it, but not loads, because I don't like to talk a lot about books I haven't sort of haven't particularly enjoyed.

[00:02:11]I think what I understand is that like what Larry McMurtry is setting out to do in Lonesome Dove is to deromanticize the Western genre. And I was able to do a bit of comparison, I guess, by reading um the dime novel that I mentioned, um which was um uh Dashing Diamond Dick or The Tigers of Tombstone. Um and uh that's sort of classic Western in the sense of, you know, people riding around on horses, shooting each other, lots of sort of drama and adventure, and and no real sense of of people getting hurt, although they are, if if if that makes sense. So, what McMurtry was trying to do, I think, was show that those sort of adventures actually the reality, I suppose, of um the 19th century West in America was often brutal, it was violent, it was difficult, it was particularly difficult perhaps for women, and obviously um the whole, you know, indigenous American people, you know, it was ruinous for uh he he he's uh he was trying to go there, I think, and trying to write um conjure up a gen- a genuine atmosphere of the West. And he he tells us a story of a cattle drive, so from Texas to Montana, and the group of men and it's kind of like this three women characters. Um this group of men that sort of driving the cattle north, and what happens to them and the challenges that they face and and you know he's showing that it's not all sort of oh fun and excitement. It's you know exhausting and potentially running out of water or encountering um uh you know danger, death um violence he he all of that and and trying to build some real sort of complex in-depth characters um as part of that rather than just sort of cyphers you know in cowboy hats.

[00:04:25]>> [gasps] >> He sort of succeeds and um the atmosphere in the book was tremendous and there are some show-stopping scenes there you know incidents episodes that absolutely you know captured me and so I could see a lot of the quality of the writing. But it I I guess I didn't why what was one of my struggles with the book and this was true of the other women in the group uh read it was about how he deals with women and I think that he is trying to show that violence against women was you know an unhappy but significant part of that the the the western story. Um but for me in trying to show that he almost like I ended up I was seeing things through a male gaze that I didn't need describe by him in that way. I'm not explaining that very well. I know there are people out there that absolutely love this book and I don't want to sort of rain on that parade. So I will sort of I will now put it to one side and talk about a book which I did love which strangely enough also has violence against women in it but in a very different way. And that was um Cathedrals by Claudia Piñeiro. Now it is fair to say that in this book a woman does end up being um uh, her body being dismembered and burned. So you know, yes, violence against women, it's not that I I won't read about that as a topic, but it's about how it's presented, how it's used, what it's used for, who's describing it and why.

[00:06:02]Um, I love Claudia Piñeiro, so, um, uh, Argentinian author, all her books, there's a kind of a a >> [laughter] >> a component perhaps of some kind of um, death or crime or incident in them, but then the this one certainly is one of the ones that's definitely it's it's not crime fiction. Um, it's it's a book about family, about organized religion and how that the fanatical sort of religion can be very damaging to people, men, but even more so used as as sort of part of patriarchy, I suppose.

[00:06:40]Um, it it's about the position of women in Argentina, it's about, um, oh, so much.

[00:06:49]And it's really about the quality of of Piñeiro's writing that sort of lifts the book. It's I I love the structure of the book. And we we get the story we get sort of a sequence of different perspectives and from each person you get another you go a layer deeper, I guess, in in in finding out what's happened and you know, why there was this body, what was going on, what was happening, what were people's motivations, what how do people, um, how did they treat each other and and justify how they behaved. It's moving, it's challenging, um, it's political, but in a not in a heavy-handed way. If you haven't read any Piñeiro before, would be a perfect place to start. Um, it's it's came out this year in translation.

[00:07:40]Um, but would you like something a bit more wholesome?

[00:07:44]Okay. Well, let me tell you about um a lovely lovely book by a youngish um uh London author and this is his second book. It's White Spaces and he is Elvin James Mensah.

[00:08:00]I loved his um debut novel Small Joys and this is the follow-up. It's um there's a tiny crossover in characters between the two books, but it's not a sequel. Okay. Uh it's about a group of young black men who are friends and some of them live together. Uh they're in South London and um their lives, their relationships um with each other and with other people.

[00:08:25]There's a kind of quite a tough thread about mental health and mental ill health um and eating disorders um in the book. But it's it's also about kind of sexuality, uh love, uh uh parenthood, um and above all about friendship and the power and significance of the friendship can have in our lives. Um it's some of these the the these the they knew each other as at school as boys and um and have sort of grown up together and separately and it and it's an uplifting, hopeful, warm-hearted book that makes you sort of I don't know, restores your faith in humanity, I I guess compared with um some other things that we might read.

[00:09:12]>> [laughter] >> Um a lovely book.

[00:09:15]Equally wholesome and heartwarming um but a little bit different was um our Reading the Globe choice for this month.

[00:09:23]Um and that was The Murderer's Ape by Jakob uh Wegelius.

[00:09:28]It's um Y A come middle grade sort of you know, I guess it it's probably written aimed at maybe 12-year-olds, say. Um, lovely lovely book. Um, the main character is Sally Jones. Here she is. She's a gorilla. She's also a ship's engineer.

[00:09:45]Um, we follow her wild and picaresque adventure as she goes across Europe and India. Um, mending engines and uh, working on boats and attempting to disprove the accusation of murder against her friend and captain. Um, uh, back in um, Is it Sweden? I think it's Sweden. Um, uh, and uh, it's Oh, no, in Portugal. Yeah, but it's in Portugal, but um, the author is Swedish and um, uh, it's translated by Peter Graves and it's it's just adorable. I really enjoyed it. It it it it's um, yeah. Well, if you want to be carried to a different place in a fun way, it it's a lovely book.

[00:10:39]>> [gasps] >> A reading highlight of the month for me, um, a lot darker though, uh, was this, Angels in America.

[00:10:50]Um, it's two plays a kind of like a pair of plays that that you kind of should read as one, I think, by Tony Kushner.

[00:10:58]Um, they're separately called Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, but together they're called Angels in America.

[00:11:05]It's an absolute stunning bit of drama. Um, honestly, one of the the best plays that I have read for quite a while, I would say. Um, it's set in New York City in 1980s at the height of the um, AIDS crisis. Um, so it's about living and dying with AIDS. Um, it it's >> [snorts] >> it's How to describe it? In some bits, it's kind of brutally real. In others, there are sort of supernatural, metaphorical elements, you know, the angels in question.

[00:11:46]There are scenes that are facetiously funny. There are scenes that will bring you to tears.

[00:11:52]It's It's Yes.

[00:11:55]rich fair and I would love to see a a live production of it, but it was also a really satisfying pair of plays to read. Thank you, Anglian of Read and Reread for suggesting it as part of your endless drama year of plays to read because I'm so glad that I've read that one.

[00:12:20]Another read-along that I'm taking part in that I'm kind of getting close to the end of is the Thomas Hardy in Publication Order kind of group read thing run by Jen the Librarian. And in June, we got to The Well-Beloved, which is either the last or the penultimate novel by Thomas Hardy, depending on, you know, whether you look at when it was published in serialized form and when the book was published as a book, but it essentially came out in 1892 and I now know why this book, The Well-Beloved, is one of the Hardy's least popular novels and least read. It's It's Do you know what I wanted? I wanted to be able to call up the ghost of Thomas Hardy and drag him from his restful grave and say, "Thomas, please, please tell me what it was you were trying to do in this novel because it's as odd as an odd thing." Um It's kind of about a sculptor who and he a series of love interests, love affairs that he has in his life with different women, some of whom are actually grandmother, mother, daughter, but it it doesn't go there in too icky a way if you're worried. Um but it really this kind of ideal vision of of of woman, of of of of love for him sort of moves from woman to woman. Oh, I'm going to stop talking about it. It's really hard How could I There is no way I can explain what on earth this book is about because I don't really know, which is and therefore I'd say that I didn't actually hate it. I actually in an odd way quite enjoyed it, but I could not put my hand on heart and recommend it to anyone else. So, there you go.

[00:14:16]Another odd one that I can't universally recommend, I would say, is um I read Don Hiyala and Alifulhu by Abdulla Sadiq, which is a prose version of a kind of traditional story um usually told in song form um from the Maldives.

[00:14:35]And um unless you are really really bizarrely fascinated in Maldivian folk folklore or like me you're trying to read a book by an author from every country in the world and hadn't yet hadn't yet read something from the Maldives, I can't honestly strongly recommend this as a as as as a book. Um it As folk tales tend to do, it goes back and forth between like brilliant episodes that are great fun to read and just downright odd bits where you you think, "What's going on here?"

[00:15:13]Um yeah, you know.

[00:15:15]Not that that can't happen in literary fiction, too, as we know from the well-beloved, but um uh things don't really add up and characters sort of arrive and kind of don't get fully developed because that's kind of not what happens in folk tales.

[00:15:32]It's not awful. It was actually quite fun to read, but I I'm not suggesting anyone else read it unless desperate.

[00:15:39]Um, [sighs and gasps] And so, I'm going to wind up with the one non-fiction book that I read this month and this is a recommendation, but with a very slight reservation. Okay.

[00:15:52]And this was I'm not sure how to pronounce it Legenda or Legende. Legenda, I think.

[00:15:59]The real women behind the myths that shaped Europe and which came out in 2025 is by one of my favorite historians, Janina Ramirez. And she's kind of like a an art historian but also writes sort of particularly about medieval history and medieval women.

[00:16:13]And it's a bit of a curious egg because a lot of it is absolutely brilliant, wonderful, tremendous, fascinating things that I know I didn't know and I'm glad that I do know know about medieval women in particular.

[00:16:29]Um, but it also had kind of less less successful elements.

[00:16:34]What she sets out to do is do create like pairs of women, pairs of historical figures from different countries in Europe and one of those women is always from the Middle Ages and one is from like the sort of 18th and 19th maybe beginning of the 20th century.

[00:16:53]And she's trying to make sort of links between their lives.

[00:16:58]And that those links don't always make sense, you know.

[00:17:01]So, she connects say Joan of Arc as sort of a symbol of France and Charlotte Corday as a symbol of the French Revolution, say. Um, and sometimes that works, but then in another where she's sort of looking at say Lady Godiva and Queen Victoria, loved the bits about Lady Godiva or I now know her proper name, um Godifu, um but connecting that with Queen Victoria didn't really make any particular sense um other than the fact that she gets given a statue of Lady Godiva by um Alfred Albert Prince Albert for one of her birthdays, but you know, so um a lovely book slightly the structure didn't entirely sort of um work for me, but the content was a joy and um so with with now you're forewarned, you may enjoy it like unreservedly. So, that was my month of reading. As with I I love to hear in the comments if you've read any of these and have your thoughts about them. Um although don't give me a long diatribe about why I'm wrong about London to Dove because you love it because you know, I I I I did my best um on that one and um but also um what did you read in June that you enjoyed that you think I should read at some point in the next year or so if possible um and uh I hope that you are not in a place where you're expiring from impos- from impossible heat and that you will forgive my slight dishevelment as a result and a probably bit of fried brain um as a result of the heat here in the UK.

[00:18:47]Our houses they're just not designed for these sort of temperatures. Okay, bye.