It's Monday 12/18! What Are You Reading?

Book By Book

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

It was another week mostly spent lying on the couch for me (or outside in my lounge chair when the weather cooperated), but I am feeling some hope. My son and I went to see our functional medicine specialist last week, and with her help, I think I have figured out what is causing this awful relapse and how to improve things (mostly my very restricted diet has gotten even more so). With those changes, I managed dinner at a friends’ house Friday night and a campfire and takeout with other friends Saturday, when it was almost 60 degrees out. We have such amazing friends, who are so patient, kind, and compassionate toward me and my limitations. So, yeah, two evenings in a row out until 8:30 pm–living the wild life!

I also managed to enjoy some holiday traditions with our family last week. We went with our younger son to cut down a tree on Monday. I couldn’t walk far, but it was nice to be out! 

And while our older son was home for his medical appointment, we decorated the tree, all four of us together. It had been a few years since we managed that, and it’s one of our favorite parts of the season. Our ornaments are all memories–of family, friends, childhood, and our travels–so we enjoy pulling them all out and reminiscing. Afterward, we watched our all-time favorite holiday special, Muppet Family Christmas; it’s an obscure one from 1987, and our VHS tape won’t play anymore, but we managed to find it on YouTube. We can pretty much recite it by now, but it still makes us laugh and ushers in the holiday season for us!

On the Blog

Movie Monday: Leave the World Behind – this tense apocalyptic thriller adapted from a novel kept us riveted!

Memoir Review: How to Forget by Kate Mulgrew – the actress tells about her mother and father’s deaths from dementia and cancer, respectively, and about their lives in this moving memoir.

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On Video

Friday Reads 12-15-23 – my brief weekly update of what I am reading and listening to – two outstanding novels!

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As is my tradition in December, I am reading some of my most highly anticipated books, trying to catch up on my previous book gifts before I get more for Christmas! First up is Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, which my husband gave me for my birthday. I absolutely loved The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Zevin (read it twice, laughed, and cried), and I’ve heard all the rave reviews of this one. It’s immersive and engrossing from the first pages, and I fell in love with Sam and Sadie immediately. They are childhood friends who end up designing video games together, but the writing and the characters are what make this novel special. It follows them well into their adult lives, with all of their sorrows and joys.

I similarly chose an audio book I’ve been meaning to get to all year: How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu, which was on lots of Best Of lists and an award finalist. I’m not sure how to describe this very unique book. It starts with an apocalyptic plague, unleashed by melting permafrost in the Arctic in 2030. Like Cloud Atlas, which I loved, this is a novel told in different stories, each featuring different (though sometimes intricately linked) characters, spanning generations. But this one also has a science fiction focus, as this ancient virus changes life on Earth. That might sound depressing, but the focus is more on the resilience and creativity of humanity, rather than on its demise, in the face of a devastating crisis. It’s excellent so far and very original.

My husband, Ken, finished Holly by Stephen King, a new novel featuring the character Holly Gibney. She’s working for the Finders Keepers detective agency that she and Bill Hodges started and working on a strange case of multiple disappearances in a small midwestern town. I love what King said about Holly, that she was supposed to be a minor walk-on character in Mr. Mercedes, but he couldn’t get her out of his mind. She also appeared in Finders Keepers and End of Watch (the Bill Hodges trilogy), plus The Outsider, and now she has her own book. My husband said this one has nothing supernatural in it; it’s a straight-up crime novel, though pretty gruesome. I can’t wait to read it myself! 

Now, Ken has started reading The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, a book I read for the Big Book Summer Challenge this year that will definitely be on my Top 10 list this year!

Our son, 29, has been on a Brandon Sanderson kick, after I signed him up for the big “secret project” kickstarter for his birthday last year. He’s been receiving packages of Sanderson books and swag each month, and after enjoying two of those new books, he turned his attention to one of Sanderson’s older standalone novels, Warbreaker.