"Williamsburg at War: Virginia's Colonial Capital in the Revolutionary War" by Michael Cecere

I picked this book up while at Colonial Williamsburg last month to celebrate July 4th.  And started to read it while staying in a house that was build in the 1750s on the other side of the James River from Williamsburg.  And then it took me more than a month to finish it, but it still seemed like the perfect time and place to start reading.

Williamsburg at War was particularly interesting to me once we got past the lead-up-to-the-war part.  Having been to Colonial Williamsburg dozens of times, I know a good bit about the Powder Magazine Incident and Lord Dunmore (who the colonists all wished had done less) fleeing Virginia and so on.  But everything past that point was pretty new to me, and I liked getting to learn new and interesting things about a place that is dear to my heart.

I particularly liked the author's point at the very end of the book, that the fact that the capitol of Virginia was moved to Richmond during the war meant that Williamsburg sank into relative obscurity... which made many parts of it remain fairly unchanged over the next hundred and fifty years, allowing for the Rockefellers and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation to create the most amazing living history experience right where history happened, without having to tear down a lot of skyscrapers or something.  I had always felt kind of sad for Williamsburg, getting left in the dust back then, but now I see that it was actually a blessing for us today.

Also, I was greatly amused by this one bit of complaining from a European officer, Captain Ewald, about the misery of summer in Virginia:

"For six weeks the heat has been so unbearable that many men have been lost to sunstroke or their reason has been impaired.  Everything that one has on his body is soaked as with water from the constant perspiration." (p. 187).

I regret to say Virginia summers have not changed.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for discussions of warfare, including things written about war and death by people who experienced it.

This has been my 8th book read and reviewed for my #RevolutionaryWarReads challenge.  I've bought a lot of new books about the Revolution this year, because of it being American's 250th birthday, so I've made an entirely new graphic to display just the books I have read for this challenge, not the ones I might read.  I'm still aiming for thirteen by the end of the year, one for each of the original colonies.

"The Leavenworth Case" by Anna Katherine Green

I probably never would have read this if it hadn't been for Patricia Meredith's book A Deed of Dreadful Note.  That book is a fictional imagining of how Green could have gotten the ideas she needed to write The Leavenworth Case.  It took me a few years to get around to reading the original, but I'm very happy I kept it on my TBR and finally made time to read it, because I very much enjoyed it.

A wealthy merchant is murdered.  His two nieces, whom he has raised, are the prime suspects.  Particularly since one of them has become an heiress thanks to this murder.  We get two detectives in this book, one professional and one amateur.  The professional is a New York police investigator named Ebenezer Gryce, while the amateur is a young lawyer named Everett Raymond, who also narrates the book.  Gryce has the wisdom and experience needed, but Raymond has a personal stake in things that aids his natural cleverness.  He falls in love with one of the dead man's nieces over the course of the book.

From what I have read, The Leavenworth Case was a really popular book when it was released in 1878.  Green has been called the Mother of Detective Fiction because her Detective Gryce books (she wrote quite a few more) made the genre popular almost a decade before the first Sherlock Holmes stories appeared.  She made the detective series popular in particular, and also is credited with inventing the "girl detective" type in a later book.

For me, The Leavenworth Case was remarkable not just for being so seminal to my favorite genre, but also for being a really satisfying mystery.  A lot of very early detective fiction can feel simplistic or even a bit twee, but this book kept me guessing until the big reveal.  I will say it's got a slow and contemplative pacing that some modern readers might not appreciate, and there was also a long letter of confession from the murderer at the end that felt unnecessary, but those weren't big enough detractions to make me dislike the book as a whole.  I hope to find more of the Detective Gryce books to read in the future.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for murder and related subject matter.  No cussing, gory violence (though blood spatter and brains are briefly mentioned) or smut.

This has been my 7th book read for my 5th Classics Club list.

Top Ten Tuesday: Bygone August Books

This month's Top Ten Tuesday prompt from That Artsy Reader Girl is "Books I was reading on this day mid-August over the past ten years."  I keep a monthly record of what books I read and what movies I watched, and it's really fun to go looking back through that for things like this!  But it does mean I don't necessarily know what I was reading on a specific day, so I just aimed for things toward the middle of my list for each August.

I've linked the titles to my own reviews, in case you want to know more about any particular book.

2016 -- Rainbow Valley by L. M. Montgomery (classic, coming-of-age, World War One, Canada)

2017 -- Rules of Murder by Julianna Deering (Christian, mystery, historical fiction, 1930s Britain)

2018 -- Famous Gunfighters of the Western Frontier by W. B. "Bat" Masterson (non-fiction, Old West history, essays)

2019 -- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (classic, Russian, Napoleonic Wars)

2020 -- Rook di Goo by Jenni Sauer (fairy tale retelling, sci-fi + fantasy, strong heroine, found family)

2021 -- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (classic, swashbuckler)

2022 -- Rose Petals and Snowflakes by Kendra E. Ardnek (fairy tale retelling, fantasy, Jane Austen retelling, sisterhood)

2023 -- The Last Atlantean  by Emily Hayse (Christian, historicalesque fantasy)

2024 -- The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle (classic, fantasy)

2025 -- The Case of the Footloose Doll by Erle Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason, mystery, courtroom drama)

Do you keep track of what you read?  If so, how?

"Grits and Glamor" by B. R. Goodwin

Because I enjoy cooking and love to bake, I always like reading books where the main character's job involves the kitchen.  B. R. Goodwin writes quite a few characters who have mad culinary skillz, and Grits and Glamor fully lives up to my expectations in this department.

Chloe Garland is a professional private chef.  As in, went to fancy cooking schools and everything.  She's also awkward, funny, kind, helpful, and a strong Christian woman.

Roman Rivers is a famous movie star who is famous for playing a pirate hottie, but prefers to keep his personal life very cool indeed.  Particularly because that helps keep his young half-sister protected and out of the spotlight.  

Chloe becomes Roman's chef.  Sorta.  Sparks fly.  His best friend doesn't like her.  His half-sister adores her.  Bunnies erupt everywhere.  (Not even joking -- there are a lot of bunnies in this book.)  Grits and ice cream and latte art abound.  It's a jolly time.

Also, this is SPOILAGE, but there is NO third-act break-up.  I repeat: zero breaking up over nonsensical and contrived "problems" occurs.  So refreshing.  I want to hug B. R. Goodwin super tightly for that one.  END OF SPOILERS.

Grits and Glamor kind of ties together Goodwin's two Christian romcom series, Sugartree Romance and Happy in Honey Hill.  I loved that.  I've read a book or two from each series, so it was really fun to see characters from them pop up in this.

I really appreciate how Goodwin doesn't write perfect characters or cliched ones.  Her Christians walk the good walk and fight the good fight, and they know how to talk the good talk, too.  But they aren't perfect.  Nor do they stew in their own sinfulness and say it's just "human nature."  They make mistakes, and they learn from them.  They sin and stumble and stray, repent, forgive and are forgiven, and move forward in redemption.  That's too hard to find in Christian fiction.  That's what makes Goodwin's books must-reads for me, even though romcoms are not a genre I routinely gravitate toward.

Particularly Good Bits:

Being loved fully by the people in your little world who matter most has a way of erasing the background noise of voices suggesting you deserve otherwise (p. 213).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for a lot of kissing and lightly described makeouts, talk of needing to set physical boundaries so they can keep their bodies and minds pure, and discussions of appreciating people of the opposite sex.  It's tasteful, but not something I would hand a tween.