It’s Monday! What are you reading?

I should subtitle this one, “Holy Cow, I actually read a book!” or “Forgive me book bloggers for I have sinned. It has been 1 month since my last finish.”

It isn’t that I haven’t been reading.  I’ve just been slogging my way through gigantic books and not getting drawn into anything I’ve taken out of the library.  I think I am just a form of entertainment for the books.  I check them out and then drive them around in my car for a few weeks to give them a bit of a vacation before taking them back.

While driving around in my car, the books got to listen to:

One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Who cares about the summer of 1927?  If the author was anyone other than Bill Bryson, I would have been skeptical.  He uses the summer of 1927 as a jumping off point for well-researched stream of consciousness discussions about topics as diverse as air travel, boxing, baseball, fear of immigrants, economic policy, crime, and Herbert Hoover.  Herbert Hoover is always around.  It is sort of creepy.

I love all of Bill Bryson’s books and I especially like listening to them on audio.

The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sookie Poole has earned a rest.  She just finished her last daughter’s wedding.  Now she only has to deal with her overbearing mother, Lenore, who gives the impression that Sookie has never measured up to fine Southern family legacy.  Then Sookie finds out that Lenore has been keeping a secret from her.  Investigating it leads Sookie back to Wisconsin in the 1940s and a family of women who run a gas station and fly planes for the Army.

Fannie Flagg is always entertaining.  I found Sookie tedious in her indecisiveness and paralyzing self-effacement but I loved the stories from the 1940s about the women who flew domestically for the Army with no recognition or benefits.