August wasn't as great as July book- and weatherwise. I read quite a few 4-star-books but only one five-star-book.

Nyctophobia was definitely my highlight this month. Very creepy and so exciting!

Among the other books I would like to mention three - all quite different in their genres and topics:

Cider with Rosie is a lovely childhood memoir set shortly after WWI.

At Swim-Two-Birds is difficult to describe: it is a weird mix of genres and the characters of teh story within the story come to live, walk into another story and then come back changed into the first story. It's kind of weird but written very well.

The Elective Affinities is a lovestory set in the late 18th/early 19th century. A couple in their middle-ages take into their house two single friends and all the relationships get mixed up. This might have been a five-star-read if the middle-part hadn't been a bit long and boring.

Even though August wasn't really bad I'm having high hopes for September (also weatherwise - it couldn't possibly get any worse!)

I CRIED THROUGH THE WHOLE BOOK

Cathy Glass is a bestselling British author, freelance writer and foster carer.
Her work is strongly identified with both the True Life Stories and Inspirational Memoirs genres, and she has also written a parenting guide to bringing up children, Happy Kids, and a novel, The Girl in the Mirror, based on a true story.
Glass has worked as a foster career for more than 20 years, during which time she has fostered more than 50 children. Her fostering memoirs tell the stories of some of the children who came in to her care, many of whom had suffered abuse.

Although Jodie is only eight years old, she is violent, aggressive, and has already been through numerous foster families. Her last hope is Cathy Glass. At the Social Services office, Cathy (an experienced foster carer) is pressured into taking Jodie as a new placement. Jodie's challenging behaviour has seen off five carers in four months. Despite her reservations, Cathy decides to accept Jodie to protect her from being placed in an institution. Jodie arrives, and her first act is to soil herself, and then wipe it on her face, grinning wickedly. Jodie meets Cathy's teenage children, and greets them with a sharp kick to the shins. That night, Cathy finds Jodie covered in blood, having cut her own wrist, and smeared the blood over her face. As Jodie begins to trust Cathy her behaviour improves. Over time, with childish honesty, she reveals details of her abuse at the hands of her parents and others. It becomes clear that Jodie's parents were involved in a sickening paedophile ring, with neighbours and Social Services not seeing what should have been obvious signs. Unfortunately Jodie becomes increasingly withdrawn, and it's clear she needs psychiatric therapy. Cathy urges the Social Services to provide funding, but instead they decide to take Jodie away from her, and place her in a residential unit. Although the paedophile ring is investigated and brought to justice, Jodie's future is still up in the air. Cathy promises that she will stand by her no matter what -- her love for the abandoned Jodie is unbreakable

Victoria Lynn Hayden, known as Torey L. Hayden (born May 21, 1951 in Livingston, Montana) is a child psychologist, special education teacher, university lecturer and writer of non-fiction books based on her real-life experiences with teaching and counselling children with special needs.
Subjects covered in her books include autism, Tourette syndrome, sexual abuse, fetal alcohol syndrome, and elective mutism (now called selective mutism), her specialty

Torey Hayden's book "Just Another Kid" is not just another book.  Though each page turns on the mysteries of emotional disturbance, sex, alcoholism, violence and crime of all dimensions, the reader emerges from the experience convinced the world can be loving, caring, warm and orderly. The diagnostic labels on the six children in this story - elective mutism, schizophrenia, autism, mental retardation - hardly suggest the repugnance of these little people, who will not speak, who move their bowels at random, who hoot and masturbate on chair legs. Yet, we become intensely involved in how and when they will be transformed. 

And if the six small boys and girls are not enough, a disordered parent arrives on the scene. She is Ladbrooke, mother of autistic Leslie, formidably elegant, seductive, bristling with beauty, but also alcoholic, promiscuous and speechlessly hostile.

The core of this story is Ladbrooke's and Torey's developing friendship, reminding us that love takes many forms.  Ladbrooke wants to be "just another kid" in the class.  The colloquial title signals the moral of this book: life is most fully realized while relating to and engaging others.  And this remarkable teacher's memoir convinces the reader that one of the most demanding jobs in education, a task not long ago dismissed as hopeless, may be richly and creatively rewarding.

Torey didn't set out to write about Ladbrooke in JUST ANOTHER KID.  She only intended to write about the children and include Ladbrooke only in her capacity as aide in the classroom. But as the book progressed, Torey was surprised to find it had become Ladbrooke's story. 

Alarmed that her publishers might not like this deviation from the synopsis they'd purchased, she mailed the 250-page uncompleted manuscript in a panic to her editor over Christmas that year to find out if she should proceed. Fortunately, everyone liked the "story that wrote itself".

Victoria Lynn Hayden, known as Torey L. Hayden (born May 21, 1951 in Livingston, Montana) is a child psychologist, special education teacher, university lecturer and writer of non-fiction books based on her real-life experiences with teaching and counselling children with special needs.
Subjects covered in her books include autism, Tourette syndrome, sexual abuse, fetal alcohol syndrome, and elective mutism (now called selective mutism), her specialty

His name was Kevin but his keepers called him Zoo Boy.  He didn’t talk. He hid under tables and surrounded himself with a cage of chairs. He hadn’t been out of the building in the four years since he’d come in. He was afraid of water and wouldn’t take a shower.  He was afraid to be naked, to change his clothes.  He was nearly 16.

Desperate to see change in the boy, the staff of Kevin’s adolescent treatment center hired Hayden. As Hayden read to him and encouraged him to read, crawling down into his cage of chairs with him, Kevin talked. Then he started to draw and paint and showed himself to have a quick wit and a rolling, seething, murderous hatred for his stepfather

Hayden writes very readably. Though Kevin must have been scary, he is rarely scary to her and this is not a frightening book. It is reassurance we all need. In the wreck of this world, love still works. We can heal each other, if we listen.

MURPHY’S BOY (SILENT BOY) remained Torey’s favorite book for many years. 

“I felt I had found my writing voice with MURPHY’S BOY, “ she says.

  “My youth showed a little too much for comfort in ONE CHILD and I would completely re-write SOMEBODY ELSE’S KIDS, if I had my choice.”