Wrap Up: July 2025

Hi everyone

July was a fantastic reading month for me! We were on holiday for two weeks, which meant fewer chores and more time to relax; especially in the evenings. With two daughters (3 and 7) and plenty of fun activities during the day, finding quiet time to read can be a challenge, but I managed to sneak in some pages whenever the girls were playing together. And, of course, once they were in bed and everything was tidied up, it was my time to dive into a book and my husband's time for gaming or watching a series.

Here's what I read in July:

- Brian McClellan: Promise of Blood

- Yuval Noah Harari: Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

- Ilona Andrews: Magic Burns

- Peter Brown: The Wild Robot Protects

- Christian White: The Nowhere Child

- Terry Pratchett: Carpe Jugulum 

- David Dalglish: A Dance of Mirrors 

- Marie Brennan: The Waking of Angantyr 

- Margaret Atwood: Surfacing 

And there's one book I didn't finish:

- Blake Crouch: Dark Matter 

How was your reading month? Did you find more time to read, or did life get in the way? Do you read more or less when you’re on holiday? I’d love to hear how you balance reading and relaxation!

Happy reading!
Helena 

Margaret Atwood: Surfacing

Hi everyone

It's been I while I read something by Margaret Atwood so I wanted to try something I hadn't read before. Her books have been very hit and miss for me. For example; I loved The Handmaid's Tale but I'm not sure I will read The Testaments, I had to DNF Oryx and Crake and I found Lady Oracle to be just ok. So, I went into Surfacing with cautious curiosity.
I read this book on my e-reader.

"A young woman returns to northern Quebec, to the remote island of her childhood, with her lover and her two friends to investigate the mysterious disappearance of her father. Flooded with memories, she begins to realise that going home means entering not only another place but another time. As the wild island exerts its elemental hold and she is submerged in the language of the wilderness, she sees that what she is really looking for is her own past."

The only reason I finished this book is because it was only 200 pages long. And even then, it was a struggle.
Atwood clearly wanted to write Great Literature; something philosophical, deep, thoughtful and inspirational. But for me, it fell flat. Instead of a profound exploration of memory, identity, and wilderness, I got a boring story that didn’t go anywhere. The characters felt distant and so uninteresting, and I just couldn’t bring myself to care about any of them. Not one bit.
The prose was overly flowery and introspective without any substance to back it up, and the plot (if you can even call it that) felt meandering and pointless. It’s one of those books where you keep waiting for something to happen, but it never really does.

Surfacing was a disappointment. If you’re a die-hard Atwood fan, you might appreciate its themes or style, but for me, it was a miss.
Have you read Surfacing or any other Atwood books? Did you connect with it more than I did? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Happy reading!
Helena 

Margaret Atwood: Stone Matress

Hi again

Stone Matress is a collection of nine short stories written by Margaret Atwood.
I got my copy in Valencia while we were on holiday and it has 311 pages.
You can find all my Margaret Atwood reviews here.

“A collection of highly imaginative short pieces that speak to our times with deadly accuracy.
A recently widowed fantasy writer is guided through a stormy winter evening by the voice of her late husband. An elderly lady with Charles Bonnet syndrome comes to terms with the little people she keeps seeing, while a newly formed populist group gathers to burn down her retirement residence. A woman born with a genetic abnormality is mistaken for a vampire, and a crime committed long ago is revenged in the Arctic via a 1.9 billion-year-old stromatolite.”

I really enjoyed most of these stories.

Atwood writes very captivating and she uses such rich language; it’s a joy to read. I flew through this book.
The stories are unique, very different, dark and interesting. The writing is sharp, to-the-point and imaginative.
I liked how three of the stories were connected. After the first few stories I had hoped that all of them would be connected but they weren’t. It would have been amazing though.
And I loved Atwood’s characters. They seem so real! They are vividly written, flawed, and I enjoyed them enormously.

4 STARS

Happy reading!
Helena

Margaret Atwood: Lady Oracle

Hi

Lady Oracle is my second novel by Atwood; I read The Handmaiden’s Tale about three years ago.
I got it from bol.com and it has 375 pages.

“Joan Foster is the bored wife of a myopic ban-the-bomber.  She takes off overnight as Canada's new superpoet, pens lurid gothics on the sly, attracts a blackmailing reporter, skids cheerfully in and out of menacing plots, hair-raising traps, and passionate trysts, and lands dead and well in Terremoto, Italy.  In this remarkable, poetic, and magical novel, Margaret Atwood proves yet again why she is considered to be one of the most important and accomplished writers of our time.”

To me; this novel is about a woman who is whatever those around her want her to be. She is easily consumed by other people but she doesn’t find happiness in any of those relationships because she’s always pretending to be someone else. She has no idea who she is; Joan needs to figure out her own identity without others around her who she can conform to.
That’s what the maze refers to: the search for her identity.
Aside from that; Atwood shows us how our past can influence our present and our future. This really was nicely done. Everyone has some minor secrets we don’t want to talk about. Or a mistake we don’t want others to find out about.

Lady Oracle is a very intriguing novel. Easy read but still, it made me stop and think at certain points.
It is a bit boring though.

Not much to add to this because it wasn’t anything special. Not fantastic, nor awful. Just a relaxing, easy read.

Happy reading.
Helena