JULY WRAP UP: What I Read This Month

Hi everyone! Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today, I’m reviewing the books I read in July. I read 4 books this month. It was a slow month and I apologize for posting my monthly wrap up so late into August, but here goes:

1. NONFICTION AND HISTORY: A Little History of The United States by James West Davidson

This book is a condensed (as the title implies) history of the United States. It is a good (re)introduction for the general reader; that is, for someone who has not read about the topic in a long time or for someone who didn’t grow up in the States, like me. It addresses all of the milestones in the United States’ history, such as the arrival of British settlers and the events leading up to the American Revolution in 1776, the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the Civil War, the Indian and Mexican-American Wars, the Great Depression, and the World Wars. It also addresses the paradox (and incongruity) of being a country founded under a banner of freedom and equality, yet not all of its citizens were free or equal. Slavery was abolished in 1865, when the 13^th Amendment was ratified and the 19^th Amendment, the one establishing a woman’s right to vote, was established over the course of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. When the Founders wrote the Constitution, they meant All white men were free and equal. White women, Blacks, Native Americans, and immigrants were not even considered (or thought of as less than a person). Immigrants, for example, and other native people’s of America, whose territories were taken over by the United States’ expansion to the west, suffered (and continue to suffer) other forms of slavery, forms that were not abolished in 1865.

I recommend this book as an introduction to the topic, and suggest you read it first before picking up other books on the history of the United States such as the widely known A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, A True History of the United States by Daniel A. Sjursen or How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr.

2. CLASSICS AND LATIN-AMERICAN LITERATURE: No One Writes to the Colonel by Gabriel García Márquez

Highly praised as one of the best books written by Gabriel García Márquez, No One Writes to the Coronel is about a retired colonel who spends 15 years waiting for a letter from the government saying that he will be given (or start to receive) the money he is owed for his military service to the country. The letter, however, never arrives and the colonel and his wife live in extreme poverty. The only thing that keeps them going is the memory of his (murdered) son and the fighting cock he once owned.

This book addresses issues such as hope, dignity, silence, and the weariness of waiting for something that is never going to arrive. I picked it up for one of my book clubs, but it is not my favorite García Márquez book and I don’t think I’ll ever read it again. However, I do appreciate why this short novel occupies the place it does today in Latin American literature.

3. HISTORICAL FICTION AND WWII: Peregrinos (Tears of Amber) by Sofía Segovia

This is the first historical fiction book set during WWII that I read in Spanish. It is the story of the Schippers and the Hahlbrocks, two displaced Polish families that find one another at the end of the war; it is about the journey that each one of these families went through to survive WWII and the story about how their youngest members, Arno Schipper and Ilse Hahlbrock met, fell in love, and emigrated to Mexico after the war.

This book, however, is not a romance. Yes, we know that Arno and Ilse will end up together from the very beginning but their love story isn’t what the author is trying to recount. It is the story before they meet, of how the war affected their lives, and caused them unimaginable pain and sorrow, loss, and grief only to find love in one another at the end. Not all war stories have a happy ending, but this one did in a way. Yes, both Arno and Ilse lost a lot during the war but finding each other ultimately brought light and happiness back into their lives.

I enjoyed this book a lot, and it was a pleasant surprise to find out that the author is from Monterrey, Nuevo León, México, a city that I lived in for more than 15 years and that is close to my heart. I am happy to support an author that is from a place I called home for many years.

4. HISTORY AND FASHION: The Golden Thread by Kassia St. Clair

What do linen, silk, wool, lace, cotton, and rayon have in common? They’re all fabrics that have changed and shaped the history of humankind. Linen was used to wrap mummies in Ancient Egypt, silk was only produced in China for thousands of years and it gave its name to various trading routes that linked the East to the West, wool was integral to Viking raids during the Middle Ages as well as to ward off the cold in England and surrounding countries while cotton is intrinsically linked to slavery and forced labor in the United States. Lace, for its part, is linked to royalty as well as to expensive wedding gowns today while rayon’s dark past in factories is the standing stone of today’s fast fashion.

This book made me think twice about what I wear and to start taking a closer look at the label of anything I might buy at the store. Fabrics and fashion isn’t something that you usually think about when reading history, but this little book reminds that you are very much a part of the history of fashion today that has yet to be written.  

That is everything for today. Thank you for stopping by.