It's Monday 6/7! What Are You Reading?

Book By Book

Happy Monday! It was a busy week here, with a lot of frustration due to my trying to switch to a new e-mail list provider. I ran into some unexpected limits that I didn’t expect and can already see that the new service I signed up with (Mailchimp) probably won’t work for me. In fact, it’s looking unlikely that I can use any free service, and I really have no budget since this blog doesn’t earn an income–it’s a labor of love! So, I am stuck for now and very frustrated. My issue is that Mailchimp (and most providers) limit you to only about 8 e-mails per month for the number of subscribers I have, even for their paid service! With the old system (Feedburner, which is going away), I sent an e-mail anytime there was a new blog post, but I usually have 3-5 blog posts per week, so after one week, I’m almost up to my monthly limit already! I sent a poll out to the entire e-mail list to ask if people prefer the old system, with one e-mail per blog post, or a weekly (very long) e-mail with all of the week’s posts in it.

Meanwhile, a Question for Other Bloggers: 

What e-mail list service will allow me to send 3-5 e-mails per week to a list of roughly 1250 subscribers, without breaking the bank?

Whew, sorry for all that, but it was a very frustrating week, and I am really stuck on how to solve this issue. Any input would be appreciated! Not to sound like an old fogey, but why can’t things just stay the same??

So, we spent a lot of time outdoors working this weekend, planting the last of our native plants that I purchased a month ago (it was SO horribly hot for digging holes!!). 

We spent Sunday scrubbing down our porch and all the furniture to prepare for the season–it was covered with a thick coating of that yellow-green pine pollen that inundates us every May. Everything is still drying now, but it will be nice to have a clean porch again when we put it all back together. It was 95 and humid here yesterday, so soaking everything with the hose was the only tolerable outdoor job anyway!

We took time out on Saturday to take my 96-year-old father-in-law to a local park for a picnic lunch–the time outdoors is really good for him, and he enjoys it. Even though we’ve been hearing a lot about the 17-year cicadas that are out now around here, we weren’t quite prepared for the NOISE! They are very localized, so we hadn’t experienced this yet, but WOW, we were stunned by the sound level–turn on the volume of the video below to get a taste of it, but you can’t imagine what it’s like being out there surrounded by them! It was deafening. So much for a quiet picnic – ha ha – but my FIL enjoyed the novelty and was engaged and asking questions (he has some dementia), so that was good.

And, of course, we enjoyed our books last week! Here’s what we’ve all been reading:

I finished my first Big Book Summer book, End of Watch by Stephen King. This is the 3rd and final book in the Mr. Mercedes trilogy. I enjoyed Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers. And my husband has been waiting for me to read this last book, so he and I can watch seasons 2 and 3 of the Mr. Mercedes TV show! I won’t give away any spoilers, but this third book continues the story of Bill Hodges, a retired police detective in Ohio, and his now-business-partner, Holly Gibney (who also makes an appearance in King’s The Outsider). Together, they solved the case of the Mercedes Massacre in book 1 and the stolen manuscript in book 2, but now a suspiciously odd string of suicides brings them back into an active police investigation. It was gripping and super-suspenseful, as always. The first two books were mostly straight-up mystery/thriller stories, but this third one brings in some of that King creepiness with some supernatural phenomena. Last night, we started season 2 of the Mr. Mercedes TV show, but it was highly annoying to me how much was different from the books, including the killing off of a beloved character! Best to wait a bit longer after reading a book to watch it’s TV or movie adaptation.

Now, I am reading 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. I’m only on chapter three so far, but it’s already 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’m also enjoying 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). It’s great so far!

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 (saving it 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 adolescence 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.

My husband, Ken, is also 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, though it is still slow-going.

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! 

Blog posts last week:

Movie Monday: Chaos Walking – film adaptation of one of our favorite YA trilogies!

New E-Mail List (I had such high hopes!)

Fiction Review: Force of Nature by Jane Harper – super-twisty thriller set in the Australian wilderness

Fiction Review: Clock Dance by Anne Tyler – LOVED this novel! I missed Tyler.

Middle-Grade Graphic Novel Review: 7 Reasons Not to Grow Up by Jimmy Gownley

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?