It's Monday 9/19! What Are You Reading?

Book By Book

 Life

Arrrgh! Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day! Celebrate appropriately!

My health has continued to rule my world recently. I was even sicker last week than the week before and confined to the house (and mostly, to bed and the couch). I talked to my specialist in NY on Friday, and we discussed possible causes and treatments for this unexplained flare-up. She’s amazing and always there for me, and as usual, she had some ideas to try and immediately called in four new prescriptions. I started two of them this weekend. My energy is a bit better, but I still have awful flu-like aches, a sign that my immune system is still in overdrive and I still need to rest.

So, last week involved a lot of old Grey’s Anatomy episodes! I recently started re-watching the series from the beginning, and it makes me smile and laugh (and sometimes cry, which can be good, too). Excellent sick-day watching. I think I lived more in the world of Seattle Grace Hospital last week than I did in the real world, which was just fine. I’m also enjoying my books, of course, as you’ll see below.

The highlight of my week was our older son coming home for a visit yesterday. This was just a quick 24-hour visit (he has a dentist appointment here today), but it’s always wonderful to see him. It made me very happy yesterday to see the brothers back together and enjoying each other’s company and for all four of us to be around the dinner table together. 

No new videos or blog posts from last week. 

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What We’re Reading

I finished reading The Butterfly Cabinet by Bernie McGill, a Gothic novel set in a castle in Ireland between 1870′s and 1960′s. It’s all about long-held family secrets, a mother sent to prison, and how characters’ actions affect later generations. I enjoyed it and found it dark and intriguing. I missed my book group last week, but apparently, I was the outlier. My book group rated this novel 3.9 … out of 10! That’s the lowest rating I can ever recall in our group, though I’m not sure what the others disliked so much.

 Now, I have moved onto a new release, The Witches of Moonshyne Manor by Bianca Marais, a friend, two-time Booktopia author, and one of my favorite authors! I absolutely loved Bianca’s first two books, Hum If You Don’t Know the Words (in my top 10 of all time) and If You Want to Make God Laugh. This new novel is quite different but just as fabulous! It’s about five octogenarian witches trying to save their beloved home and land, as both the bank and an angry mob threaten them. It’s about witches and magic, yes, but it’s also about friendship, aging, and sisterhood. As with all of Bianca’s novels, she tackles some difficult topics with a wonderful (one might say wicked) sense of humor. This book is lots of fun and the perfect pick-me-up for a sick week! 

Continuing with the R.I.P. Challenge, I finished listening to Mysteries of Trash and Treasure: The Secret Letters by Margaret Peterson Haddix, one of my favorite middle-grade authors. This is the start of a new series for her, being released on September 20. It’s about two kids whose parents each own their own businesses clearing out people’s houses … but with very different approaches. Colin’s mom takes a Marie Kondo-type approach to curating possessions, while Nevaeh’s dad’s business is The Junk King, and all her siblings work for him. Their parents are fierce rivals, but when Colin finds an old shoebox of letters between two kids from the 1970′s, Colin and Nevaeh team up to solve its mysteries. Each book in the series will examine people’s relationship to their stuff and focus on a different era of history. I absolutely loved this fun, intriguing novel!

 My husband, Ken, has started reading This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger, which I loved this spring (my review at the link). In fact, it is one of my top books read this year so far. This is the story, beautifully told, of four orphans who escape from an abusive facility during the Depression and make their way downriver in a canoe. They encounter all kinds of people and situations as they head toward the Mississippi and uncertain futures. This wonderful novel includes history, suspense, family drama, humor, and so much more.

Our son, 28, just finished reading The Pillars of Creation by Terry Goodkind, book seven in the Sword of Truth series, which he loves. In fact, while he was home, he visited our huge used bookstore this morning and bought the next four books in the series! Plus he picked up the birthday books he forgot here on his last visit, so he’s set for a while. 

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