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It's Monday 12/4! What Are You Reading?

Monday, December 4, 2023 13:42

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Book By Book

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

Why does time seem to speed up just when you need more of it? That’s how it always feels at this time of year, when I realize that I once again did not get an early start on all of my holiday to-do’s! So, last week was mostly the annual rush to get things done. I scrambled to do my shopping on Cyber Monday (and beyond); because of my illness and this continuing relapse, I do almost all of my shopping online. I got most of it done last week, with just two more people to buy for and a stop at my local indie bookstore this week (my one in-person stop) to order books. Books make the best gifts! I’ve also been rushing to upload photos from the year to Snapfish, so I can make/order the annual photo books, calendars, and ornaments. And I updated my address list and printed labels this weekend, though we haven’t yet started signing and mailing cards.

I am still spending most of my time on the couch, though we did get a few days where the temperature hit 50 (or close enough), so I am trying to enjoy every minute on the back deck that I can!

Might have been pushing the weather but the sun was out!

My view from the deck

I did get out for one very short walk!

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On the Blog

Two Great Teen/YA Graphic Memoirs – I reviewed two graphic memoirs, Layers by Pénélope Bagieu, a coming-of age memoir told in sixteen stories, and Dreamer: Growing Up Black in the World of Hockey by Akim Aliu, about racism in both youth and pro hockey and what the author is doing to improve things for today’s kids.

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On Video

Friday Reads 12-1-23 – my brief weekly update on what I am currently reading, as last week I finished up my Nonfiction November books.

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What We’re Reading

I finished We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby, a collection of essays, for my last Nonfiction November book. I’ve been hearing about Irby for years, and my husband gave me this one for my birthday. She doesn’t pull any punches! Her essays are honest, poignant, and funny. Some are on topics I can’t really relate to, like dating in the modern world, but other topics are universal. And I was surprised to learn that she also has a chronic immune disorder, Crohn’s. It’s not a focus of her writing here, but as with any chronic illness, it’s an integral part of her life, so it affects everything. She can be very blunt, especially when it comes to bodily functions and sexual encounters! I enjoyed the wide range of essays here.

On audio, I finished listening to The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World by Melinda Gates. It”s all about her charitable work, focused on improving the lives of girls and women, here in the U.S. and around the world, with a special focus on availability of birth control and education, two aspects that she learned had a profound effect on women and on their communities. She includes lots of stories about girls and women all over the world (which are pretty eye-opening), as well as data and research and how her foundation tries to help, plus her own personal stories. It’s a fascinating and inspiring book.

And by the time I finished those, it was already Friday, and my book group meets this Thursday to discuss Homecoming by Kate Morton, which is over 500 pages! I doubled up and got both the print book and the audio from the library to help me read faster. I haven’t read a Morton novel since The Forgotten Garden in 2011, and this novel has a similar structure, alternating between different characters and timelines to weave together a full story. Here, on Christmas Eve 1958 in Australia, a mother and her four children are found dead at a riverside picnic, and in 2018, a woman in London rushes home to Australia when her beloved grandmother is hospitalized. Family secrets and mysteries are slowly revealed. I was a bit confused at the beginning, but now things are starting to come together, and I’m engrossed in the story. Wish me luck in finishing by Thursday!

My husband, Ken, is still reading 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. I can’t wait to read it myself!

Our son, 29, finished reading Brandon Sanderson’s just-published The Sunlit Man, which takes place in the Cosmere universe my son loved in the Mistborn series. For his birthday last year, I signed him up for Sanderson’s big Kickstarter, and this was the fourth book he received. It’s a gorgeous embossed hardcover, and he said it was phenomenal!! Now’s he’s moved onto another Sanderson novel, The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England, which was the second of the “secret project” Kickstarter books that he wrote during the pandemic. This one sounds like fun!

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What Are You Reading Monday is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date, so head over and check out her blog and join the Monday fun! You can also participate in a kid/teen/YA version hosted by Unleashing Readers.

You can follow me on Twitter at @SueBookByBook or on Facebook on my blog’s page.

What are you and your family reading this week?

Source: https://bookbybook.blogspot.com/2023/12/its-monday-124-what-are-you-reading.html

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