I will need three parts this month because of all the children, middle grade, and audiobooks I have been consuming. Wow!

The Secret History of Food: Strange but True Stories About the Origins of Everything We Eat by Matt Siegel

Audiobook narrated by Roger Wayne. This was fine. I finished it in couple days of daily walks and some jigsaw puzzling with my father. It was a mishmash on the history of so,e food. A lot of it that I knew already. I would have skimmed it if I had read the print book. It’s not a bad book if you like or are not familiar with the history of food. It’s a short and less than 6 hours on audio.

I used the Libby app for library audiobooks for the first time and really liked the app. I want to consume more books in many forms. I will mainly listen to nonfiction books especially memoir, essays, and informative ones like this.

3/5 stars. Listened August 15-17, 2023.

Outer Order, Inner Calm by Gretchen Rubin

Narrated by the author. I generally like Gretchen Rubin’s writing and am catching up to a couple of her recent books. I saw that this one was a short audiobook. I like decluttering too and feel good when I do it. I have been doing a major decluttering the last few months and like to see how others go about it. I found most of these ideas covered in her other books and it didn’t add much to my knowledge.

3/5 stars. Listened August 19, 2023.

Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake

I read at least some of of these in high school because I chose William Blake for an assignment on 18th century Romantic poets. I owned this booklet and have been trying to read more poetry overall. I don’t like these poems as much as I use. Some are too dark and too religious for me but I still like “The Tyger” and a couple of others.

3.75/5 stars. Read July 21-Aug 20, 2023.

DNF: Knitlandia by Clara Parkes

Narrated by the author. I added a few random audiobooks on Libby that weren’t on my TBR but would be good for walks. Ironically, I got back pain during this week and won’t be walking much for the remainder of the month. The last couple of audiobooks have been average but they were short at least. As a knitter, I liked Parkes’s nonfiction knitting books about yarn. I found the style of this memoir unengaging. My attention drifted including the chapter about Iceland and lopi which is a favourite wool of mine. There was too much about the knitting events I couldn’t go to and name dropping knitting celebrities. I’ve read a lot of travel memoirs and this one felt more like a reporting of the events rather than some personal engagement. I stopped after the Iceland chapter which was 30% of the book.

DNF August 22, 2023.

Mary: The Adventures of Mary Shelley’s Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Granddaughter by Brea Grant and Yishan Li (illustrator)

The author is a host of one of my favourite podcasts Reading Glasses. This was a darkly cute YA graphic novel. It would make a nice series and I like the protagonist too. Wish it had been longer as I enjoyed all the characters and their dynamic.

3.5/5 stars. August 25, 2023.

Heart of the Sun Warrior by Sue Lynn Tan

See Review here.