It's Monday 6/14! What Are You Reading?

Book By Book

Whew, we had a rather frantic, unexpected sort of weekend, though everything turned out fine.

First, we enjoyed a lovely gathering with four of our oldest friends Saturday evening. We all lived in New Orleans at the same time (and worked for the same company) in the 80′s and have remained good friends for decades. One couple is now moving to Nashville, so we got some takeout from our favorite local New Orleans restaurant and gathered in a friend’s porch to catch up, reminisce, and say goodbye. It was a wonderful evening of good food, good conversation, and good friends.

We walked back in the door at home afterward, and my phone rang. It was a nurse from my 96-year-old father-in-law’s apartment (he lives in Independent Living but had used his call button to call a nurse from the neighboring nursing care home), telling us she’d called him an ambulance for chest pains. As we suspected, it turned out to be indigestion, though the pain woke him from a deep sleep and scared him. As with most hospital ER trips, it took all night for them to run all the tests, check with all the specialists, and finally release him. He’s fine, just a false alarm, but he and my husband were up all night in the ER; my husband got home at 6 am!

So, we decided to cancel our camping trip planned for Sunday through Tuesday. This wasn’t as big a disappointment as you might think because we’d been wondering if we should cancel anyway because of the cicadas. The 17-year cicadas have emerged here, and they are making a huge racket! There aren’t too many near our house, but there are in some local parks to the south, including the one where we had a reservation. We tried a 1-hour picnic at one of those parks last weekend, and the noise was deafening. You might think we’re being picky and squeamish, but a friend who has them all around their house said they measured the noise at about 85 decibels!! When I called the park to cancel, the ranger told me the cicada noise there was “apocalyptic”! So, maybe it was all for the best.

Since we were supposed to be away today, we took a vacation day: had breakfast out at one of our favorite places and went on a nice hike on a new-to-us trail along a gorgeous stream. Then, my husband went golfing, and I came home for my usual nap (and now, my Monday blog post!). So, we enjoyed a nice day outdoors.

Meanwhile, Big Book Summer is rolling right along! Lots of people have signed up to participate and are having fun picking their Big Book(s) and sharing what they’re reading on social media and in the Goodreads’ group. It’s a fun time of year!

On my latest Friday Reads video, I talk about the challenge and what I’ve been reading.

Here’s what we’ve all been reading here this week, Big Books and more!

I finished my last book group pick before a summer hiatus, The Mighty Queens of Freeville by Amy Dickinson. The author is the famous advice columnist, Ask Amy, but this is a very personal memoir. It’s about her family and her hometown, and her experiences going back there as a single mother after a devastating divorce. As she explains in the beginning of the memoir, hers is a family of mostly women (dubbed by her daughter as The Mighty Queens of Freeville), and many of them are/were divorced single mothers. It was excellent: moving and immersive. She’s very honest about how damaged she felt after the unexpected divorce and her struggle to get back on her feet and figure out what to do with her life. I also enjoyed that her hometown is in Upstate NY, not too far from where I grew up (though I grew up in a suburb of Rochester vs. her rural town). I enjoyed her honest and funny memoir very much, as did the rest of my book group.

After that, it was back to the Big Books! I’m now reading The Lost Time Accidents by John Wray. I haven’t gotten very far yet with all of this weekend’s excitement, but it’s got a time travel plot, which is my favorite kind of novel! I heard about this through a podcast called The Readers (I don’t think it’s still on), which was hosted by Simon and Gavin way back when. Gavin also loved time travel novels and recommended this as one of his all-time favorite books. So, I kept it on my TBR list all these years and added it to my Books I would Like as Gifts list for my family! My husband gave it to me for Christmas, and I saved it for Big Book Summer. All I can tell you so far is that a man named Waldemar Tolliver is “stuck outside of time” at the start of the book. As he narrates his present predicament, he goes back to tell his unusual family history, beginning with a strange discovery about time that his great-great grandfather made in 1903, and how his namesake, his great-uncle, further investigated it. It’s interesting so far, and I hope to have more reading time this week!

On audio, I am listening to another Big Book! (Yes, audios count for the challenge, too, based on the page count in the print book.) I am listening to The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna by Juliet Grames, a novel published in 2019. I’ve heard lots of rave reviews of this book, so I’ve been looking forward to listening to it (perfect for Big Book Summer). It’s the story of a woman named Stella, who encounters many life-threatening incidents during her childhood in rural Italy and youth in the United States. She protects her younger sister, Tina, but life changes dramatically when the family immigrates to America just before WWII. The story is told from the perspective of a family member in Connecticut in the present day, to explain why the two now-elderly sisters don’t get along. It’s an engaging and unique family epic, and I’m enjoying it so far. The historical detail and settings are beautifully rendered.

My husband, Ken, is reading his first Big Book Summer pick (yes, he joins the challenge, too!), For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. Like me, he likes to read classics once in a while, and this one has been on our shelves for a bit. It’s about the Spanish Civil War and is based on Hemingway’s own travels to Spain as a journalist in 1937 to cover the war for the North American Newspaper Alliance. I think this is the third Hemingway novel my husband has read, but I have never read anything by Hemingway! I know, isn’t that crazy? I never even read any Hemingway in school. Ken was struggling with this one at first. He said the language was very different from other Hemingway novels, and it was hard to understand. He seems to be getting into the story now, and while it was slow-going at first, he said he read 80 pages in the ER Saturday night!

I believe our 26-year-old son is still immersed in one of his favorite series, Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. He’s reading book 4, Rhythm of War, which is a mere 1232 pages … and hardcover! He loves epic fantasy, the longer the better–it’s always Big Book Summer for him! He laughs about my annual challenge and says he rarely reads anything less than 400 pages. He’ll be coming to visit this week, for Father’s Day, so we’re looking forward to seeing him.

Blog posts last week:

Fiction Review: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides – a twisty psychological thriller

Fiction Review: Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver – another beautiful, heartwarming, thoughtful, and engaging story set in the American Southwest from my favorite author.

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.

What are you and your family reading this week?