There’s something very gratifying about reading Oscar Wilde’s children’s stories with your grandchild. I agreed heartily when Cameron, 10, pronounced one of the characters (the Miller) to be a “schnook”!

Although I didn’t take a photo of him with the book, here he is a few months ago during a visit to a wonderful Vincent van Gogh exhibit in Indianapolis:

This month’s books included several novels with strong female protagonists from over the centuries. From Mother Courage to Miss Pym to mild-mannered Mildred in Excellent Women, they all pressed on in difficult times.

July started and ended, though, with two memoirs.

Book 1: Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story

Come to think of it, Cameron probably isn’t the only one around here to call someone a schnook. I can’t imagine it wasn’t used on classic radio’s The Jack Benny Show. The variety of characters Jack and his writers concocted was tremendous.

Sunday Nights at Seven is a wonderful memoir. The Bennys’ daughter, Joan, found her dad’s autobiography in the back of a closet after he passed away. She held onto it until after her mom was gone, too, then put together this book with stories from Jack, some of his dearest friends, and her own memories.

I’m sorry not to have “found” this book until after Dad‘s passing. He would have loved it, too.

Book 2: Mother Courage by Johann Von Grimmelshausen

What a woman! This book was published in 1670 and, although it presents an amazing feminist protagonist, she faces so many modern-day struggles that it makes me wonder what hope there might be for the future.

I won’t spoil the story by explaining how our lead character came by her name. Suffice to say, though, when – as a young teen – she dressed as a male during Europe’s Thirty Year War, it was because she’d rather fight to the death than be molested.

Courage, though, manages to outfox the soldiers again and again.

This book may not be easy to find, but it’s well worth the effort.

Book 3: The Selfish Giant & Other Stories by Oscar Wilde

Grandson Cameron wrote up this summary after we’d read three of the stories together:

These books are happy and sad in a weird way! Read this book to learn about The Selfish Giant, and more!

The Devoted Friend

The water-rat learns about a story from the Linnet about a little boy named Hans and the Miller, a devoted friend to Hans. The problem with the Miller is, he get flowers from Hans and never gives! He even stayed in his own house during winter and never went to Hans’s house during that time! When the spring came, he made Hans do more work like he was his boss! He worked hard to try to get a wheelbarrow that the Miller “promised.” But when the Miller’s son fell from a ladder, the Miller needed Hans to do it himself. But that was a BAD mistake, for he ended up drowned. The funeral for Hans that the Miller was in charge of, he was going to take attention from him. What a schnook the Miller is!

Oscar Wilde wrote these stories for his two young sons. They were published in 1888.

Book 4: Sparkling Cyanide by Agatha Christie

Another fine mystery.

And yes, the old girl stumped me again!

Book 5: Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey

There’s an old proverb that states “Man proposes, but God disposes.”

In this book, however, it’s Miss Pym who “disposes” in this curious mystery that doesn’t even come to light until about two-thirds of the way into the story.

Book 6: Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

How odd to see Pym as the surname of this book’s author as well as the lead character in the previous mystery.

The setting for Excellent Women, too, is similar to Miss Pym Disposes: shortly after the end of the Second World War, in England. It seems to have been a time filled with much inner turmoil as the population headed toward the 1960s.

Once again, we have a smart woman who questions herself far too often. Mildred grew up a minister’s daughter and is now alone in life. She fills her days with helping the poor, assisting in church projects, and getting caught in other people’s drama. I hate to call her a schnook, but she really struggles with standing up for herself.

Maybe I empathized with this “excellent woman” too much, as I didn’t find many examples of “high comedy,” as promised in multiple reviews and summaries. The book is charming, though, and is my favorite read for this month.

Book 7: The Double Helix by James. D. Watson

The story of the discovery of the double-helix structure is pretty well known, so I’ll skip ahead to the very end.

A woman was involved in that Nobel-worthy discovery. Her name was Rosalind Franklin. It was her job to set up and improve the X-ray crystallography unit at King’s College. Although she at first butted heads with Watson and Crick (and, certainly, others) it was her high-resolution photos that took the hunch to proof. By then, though, she’d moved on to another lab.

Watson softens at the end of his book, stating Franklin should have received a Nobel prize, too. Sadly, she died of cancer at the age of 37.

The Double Helix is eye-opening. Even if the scientific descriptions may be more than you’d bargained for, the story of the competition between labs and scientists all over the world is fascinating.

That’s it for July’s books. On to August!

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