2025 July Reading Wrap Up

 

I read 7 books this month of which 4 were new to me authors for a total of 2464 pages.  The stories ran the gamut from 3 stars to 5 stars. 

my grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry by Fredrik Backman -   5 Stars

"Every seven year old deserves a super hero. And whoever disagrees with that need their head examines."  

In Five Years by Rebecca Searle  - 4 Stars

"But all of that is an hour from now. Now, on the other side of midnight, we do not yet know what is coming. So let it be. 

One Last Breath by Laura Griffin - 3 stars 

“She’d been played all along. Once again, the dumb blonde."

The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley - 4 stars

“It’s a beautiful building, but there’s something rotten at its heart. Now he’s discovered it he can smell the stench of it everywhere.”

Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting by Clare Pooley - 5 stars

"We're the whole damn cake." Said Bea.

"The whole damn cake." echoed Iona

The Zero Game by Brad Meltzer - 5 Stars 

"It's the first rule of politics. The only time you get hurt is when you forget it's all a game."

Piranesi by Susanna Clark - 4 Stars 

"In my mind are all the tides, their seasons, their ebbs and their flows. In my mind are all the halls, the endless procession of them, the intricate pathways. When this world becomes too much for me, when I grow tired of the noise and the dirt and the people, I close my eyes and I name a particular vestibule to myself; then I name a hall."

Reading Log as of July 27, 2025 - Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

 

This week I finished Clare Pooley's Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting which was a wonderful story about 6 strangers who ride the London trains every day and start talking and form friendships which changes their lives forever as they work through job losses, bullying, and marriage troubles.  5 Stars

"Every day Iona Iverson, a stylish, opinionated, larger-than-life magazine advice columnist, rides the train to work with her dog, Lulu. Every day she sees the same people, whom she knows only by nickname: Impossibly-Pretty-Bookworm and Mr-Too-Good-to-Be-True. Of course, they never speak. Seasoned commuters never do.

Then one morning, the man she calls Smart-But-Sexist-Manspreader chokes on a grape right in front of her. He’d have died were it not for the timely intervention of Sanjay, a nurse, who gives him the Heimlich maneuver.

This single event starts a chain reaction, and an eclectic group of people discovers that talking to strangers can teach you quite a bit about the world around you—and even more about yourself."   

Also Brad Meltzer’s mystery thriller The Zero Game that starts off as a game and becomes deadly serious when one of the players is killed and someone tries to cover it up.  Full of twists, turns, and action that kept me reading long into the night.  5 Stars 

“Matthew Mercer and Harris Sandler are best friends who have plum jobs as senior staffers to well-respected congressmen. But after a decade in Washington, idealism has faded to disillusionment, and they’re bored. Then one of them finds out about the clandestine Zero Game. It starts out as good fun-a simple wager between friends. But when someone close to them ends up dead, Harris and Matthew realize the game is far more sinister than they ever imagined-and that they’re about to be the game’s next victims. On the run, they turn to the only person they can a 16-year-old Senate page who can move around the Capitol undetected. As a ruthless killer creeps closer, this idealistic page not only holds the key to saving their lives, but is also determined to redeem them in the process. Come play The Zero Game-you can bet your life on it.”

Currently reading the nonfiction story of All the Beauty in the World about a guard who works at the Met in New York which is quite interesting and educational to boot.

Also Piranesi and not sure where it’s going and whether I’ll continue. Need to give it a few more pages to make up my mind.