It's Monday 1/29! What Are You Reading?

Book By Book

Hosted by The Book Date

Wow, last week was so busy! This is good–it’s proof I am feeling much better–though I definitely pushed past my limits and needed to rest yesterday. I continued to help my friend with her move, meeting with a junk hauler to get an estimate, arranging a charity pickup service for donations, and helping to sort through stuff on Saturday. I’m grateful to feel well enough to help! In between, I hosted a Zoom meeting for our local chronic illness support group, went to a doctor’s appointment, and finished up an online course I was taking for Amazon Ads (for my book)–lots of work but helpful. And we enjoyed Sunday dinner with our son last night, which was very nice.

Our weather was crazy, going from snow-covered landscapes and temperatures in the 20′s to heavy rain to 50-degree days with no snow. The two photos before are from the same vantage point, 24 hours apart! And I saw this magnificent hawk fly right in front of me and alight on these branches in our neighborhood.

Beautiful hawk

Wednesday

Thursday – 24 hours later!

On the Blog

Nothing new except the Monday post last week–too busy!

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On Video

Recommendations for Mardi Gras: Books, Movies, TV Shows – I’m participating in the Mardi Gras Readathon, a Booktube event, this month and next, but even if you aren’t, here are some great recommendations to enjoy the season!

Friday Reads 1-26-24 – my quick weekly video update about what I am currently reading: a nonfiction classic, a YA novel on audio, and a YA graphic novel.

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I’ve almost finished reading As They Were: Autobiographical Essays by M.F.K. Fisher, a classic memoir I didn’t get to for Nonfiction November. I’m really enjoying this collection of essays. She’s renowned for her food writing, and some of these essays do focus on food. But others are about travel and different places she’s lived and visited. I loved the first essay, about her childhood in California. This book fits perfectly for the Mardi Gras Readathon on Booktube, hosted by Kat’s Novel Adventures; it covers two of the bingo spaces: France and food.

In between essays, I started reading Look on the Bright Side by Lily Williams and Karen Schneemann, a YA graphic novel and sequel to Go with the Flow.  Here, the four best friends are starting their sophomore year of high school. Brit is recovering from endometriosis surgery (a topic from the first novel), and Christine has romantic feelings toward Abby but is worried about ruining their friendship. This sequel deals with friendship, first loves, and all the complicated feelings that go along with that. It’s great so far!

I finished listening to listening to I Am Not Alone by Francisco X. Stork, a YA novel. I’m a longtime fan of the author, who wrote (my reviews at the links) Irises, Marcello in the Real World, The Memory of Light, Disappeared, and its sequel, Illegal. Like The Memory of Light, this new novel deals with mental illness in teens. Here, Alberto is an undocumented Mexican teen living in New York with his older sister, her baby, and her abusive boyfriend, Wayne. Alberto is smart but has always had trouble with school, so he learns by reading books and has done well taking English lessons at the community college. He earns money to send home by working for Wayne, who’s a landlord for expensive apartment buildings. While working in one apartment, Alberto meets Grace, a girl who seems to have it all–wealth, education, a boyfriend. Grace is on track to go to Princeton for pre-med, but nothing feels right to her since her parents’ divorce. As Alberto deals with the increasingly urgent voice in his head, he and Grace become friends. As with all Stork novels, this was fabulous, with plenty of emotional complexity and heart. It provides a good understanding of what it’s like to live with mental illness.

And now, I’m getting a head start on Black History month, listening to Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe. It’s set during the summer of 1999 (recent history) on the South Side of Chicago. It focuses on four young girls, living in the Robert Taylor Homes projects that summer, as one by one the apartment buildings around them (part of the same project) are getting demolished and the residents forced out. It’s good so far, really providing an immersive feeling of that time and place, as the girls jump rope, try to avoid gang violence, and watch families around them lose their homes.

My husband, Ken, finished IQ by Joe Ide, one of his Christmas gifts from me. It’s the first book in a 6-book (so far) mystery/thriller series, about a man in East Long Beach, an LA neighborhood, who’s known as IQ. With so much crime in the area, he takes on the cases the LAPD doesn’t have time for.  Ken enjoyed it and wants to read more of the series. Now, he’s just started reading The Secret by Lee Child and Andrew Child, book 28 of the Jack Reacher series, my husband’s all-time favorite! We just finished watching season two of the Reacher TV series, too.

Our son, 29, finished rereading Realm Breaker by Victoria Aveyard, book 1 in her Realm Breaker series, and is now reading book 2, Blade Breaker, that we gave him for Christmas. 

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