My High Summer reading has me feeling blue in a good way

It may not be December but the weather outside is frightful as in frightfully hot enough to stay indoors with a cool drink and a good book at hand. Fortunately, the Seasons of Reading High Summer readathon is set to start this August and the sign ups have begun(I’m lucky number seven on that list!).

As per my usual, three books are on my TBR here and the one thing they have in common (other than being novels, that is) is that each cover has a strong element of blue as background color, artwork, etc. Coincidence? Perhaps but with these ever increasingly heated days ahead of us, any cooling touch is welcome indeed:

First up is Jennifer Weiner’s The Summer Place, set at a Cape Cod summer house where a big family wedding is planned with the standard amount of hectic arrangements, last minute guests and long held secrets and lies just waiting to be revealed.

Some of the drama here comes from Sarah, whose stepdaughter Ruby is marrying Gabe who Sarah thinks is rushing into this marriage a little too soon. Also, her husband Eli has become rather emotionally distant since Ruby’s announcement and her stepson Sam is newly widowed with conflicting feelings about his romantic future.

Meanwhile, Sarah’s mother Veronica is just happy to have one last family gathering at the house she’s planning to sell but is worried that a certain something from her own past might pop up during this farewell party of sorts.

Weiner is at her best when chronicling the ins and outs of familial relationships and this book sounds picture perfect for her writing wheelhouse there. Definitely an end of summer read if I ever saw one to be sure:

Next up is A Rogue of One’s Own by Evie Dunmore, the second entry in her League of Extraordinary Women series.

The subtitle refers to a group of women fighting for the suffragette cause in Victorian England who find themselves having to deal with high society men to achieve their goals.

Lady Lucie Tedbury would much rather prefer to fully own all of the shares of the London based magazine she has recently acquired to publish her  political views on the controversial Married Women’s Property Act.

However, the remaining shares belong to Lord Tristan Ballentine, a known ladies man who needs the magazine to be successful in order to free himself and his mother from being under the vicious thumb of his father.

As Lucie and Tristan attempt to reach a reasonable compromise that doesn’t compromise Lucie’s reputation, an attraction does arise between them that appears to be mutual. Can these two work together in more ways than one to the benefit of each or is true love the ultimate price to pay here?

I did greatly enjoy the first book in this series, Bringing Down the Duke, and hope for more of the same lively energy in this next outing. Publishing both then and now is a heartfelt venture that can make or break someone but in this case, I wish for the former most passionately:

For the finale, my choice is the third book in Alison Weir’s Six Tudor Queens series, Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen.

As the third bride-to-be of Henry VIII, Jane is understandably reluctant to enter marriage, particularly as she’s seen up close what happens when a woman defies this particular king.

Pressured by her ambitious family , Jane gives in and winds up falling in love with Henry, who seems to really care for her. Nonetheless, the shadows of the wives before her are impossible to ignore completely.

I have read the other books in this series and like how Weir blends historical facts so seamlessly into her fictional takes on these real life characters. 

Plus, I did promise myself to read at least one more of Weir’s novels on my TBR shelf before looking into her more recent work so this is a good opportunity to do that. Jane Seymour may look like the least exciting of the six wives yet she could contain multitudes of depth within her romantic soul:

The High Summer readathon runs for the entire month of August and if you want to sign up and/or learn more about it, please check out the link in the first paragraph of this post. Thanks in advance to Michelle Miller at Seasons of Reading for setting this literary romp up for us all in smartly steadfast fashion.

And it looks like we’ll be getting more time to read beyond this season as there are now two strikes in Hollywood that will delay many a movie and TV production schedule.

With the Writers Guild of America (WGA) along with Screen Actors Guild (SAG) both sharing equal concerns about their payments being severely undercut and having AI being used to minimize their creative contributions to the corporations that have grown obscenely wealthy off of their labor, the wait for new content will be more than worth it.

This isn’t about giving movie stars big bucks; it’s about getting regular working actors enough money to live on and be able to afford health insurance from residuals that have gone down to literal pennies in some cases.

Also writers need to be included when comes out to getting a proper slice of the payout pie, not to mention the insult of having AI gobbledegook replace their hard work in the not too distant future.

With Hollywood executives acting like mustache twirling villains by boasting of “starving the writers out” and insisting that SAG’s issues are “not realistic “, it’s going to be awhile here on the picket line, folks.

So let us support those on strike in any way we can and use this extra time to catch up on some good books or movies and shows that we haven’t seen yet (got a few Marvel series to watch myself!). 

It is extremely important that Hollywood be made aware that the creative people they hire have talents that are independently owned and deserved to be treated with respect as well as equally compensated :