20BooksofSummer2025 – July Questionnaire

As she did for our June reading, Emma has created another fun questionnaire. Do join in! Get the link here. Now here are my answers this month:

1. Which book surprised you the most this month?
   I started reading Lost in the Garden by Adam Leslie in July, and knew from the beginning that it was going to be different! It turned out to be the most dreamy folk horror story I’ve read – totally hypnotic and very strange in that English folk horror way.
2. If your July reading experience was a weather forecast,
   what would it be and why?
   It’d be warm and sultry, with a wafting breeze! Often I find myself reading unseasonal books in the summer, but this year, several have had summer settings, from Maigret to the permanent summer of the Leslie, via Cape Cod for Sandwich, which I must get on and review.
3. Name a setting from your July books where you’d love (or hate)
   to take a summer vacation.
   July was #ParisinJuly2025 so it has to be France. I read two Maigrets – one set in Paris, but in Maigret’s Holiday he’s in Les Sables d’Olonne – up from La Rochelle – that’d be nice.
4. If you could turn one book into a summer festival, what would the main event be?
   It would be a Shakespearean festival with many merriments and dancing. The highlight would be Sir Patrick Stewart performing the sonnets on the hour (he recorded a daily sonnet during Covid lockdown, which was fab). His memoir Making It So was rightly more Shakespeare than Star Trek: TNG and an excellent read indeed (I do love both though).
5. Choose your own adventure—recap July in the style of your choice:
   Simply no duds! Nuff said.