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Book By Book

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Life

Happy Easter! I hope everyone who celebrates it had a wonderful holiday. We drove to Rochester, NY, (my hometown) to stay with my step-mom and celebrate Easter (a day early on Saturday) with my aunt, uncle, and cousins. Both of our sons were there, so we enjoyed spending time with them as well. My family celebrates Easter with a traditional Ukrainian feast. My contributions were holubtsi (cabbage rolls) and hren (beet and horseradish relish).

We enjoyed the time with my step-mom, as always, and had a wonderful early Easter at my aunt and uncle’s. We ate all our favorite foods, watched old home movies (including some old 8 mm movies from the 60′s and 70′s just recently digitized), caught up, and shared lots of memories and laughs!

The “kids” table – all adults now!

Ukrainian Easter feast

Easter baskets (even though they’re 26 an 29!)

Easter with our family

Oh, and last week, the painters finished the work in our entryway/stairway/hall! We chose the color Gratifying Green (don’t you love paint color names?) and love the way it turned out! We just have to put everything back now.

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On the Blog

Movie Monday: American Fiction – my husband and I both enjoyed this warm, thoughtful, entertaining (and hilarious!) movie about books, the publishing industry, and family. Highly recommended! My review and a trailer at the link.

Middle-Grade Review: Parachute Kids by Betty C. Tang – I enjoyed this excellent graphic novel based on the author’s real-life experiences as a ten-year-old, living in the U.S. with her teen siblings to attend school, with her parents in Taiwan. Fascinating, informative, and very entertaining.

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On Video

The Reader Profile Tag – this fun tag is all about my preferences as a reader, with some thought-provoking questions!

Friday Reads 3-29-24 – my quick weekly update about what I am reading and listening to

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I finished my second book for Booktopia (tickets available; my recap/vlog from Booktopia 2023), The Audacity by Ryan Chapman. This novel is a satire that loosely mirrors the Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos case but with a focus on the spouse. Guy, a middling piano composer, is married to Victoria, a hard-driving, high-intensity woman who started PrevYou, a medical company whose simple aim was to cure cancer. Guy comes home from yet another charity gala (he runs the company’s philanthropic arm) to find out that Victoria is missing. She went kayaking in San Francisco Bay and her kayak came back without her. Guy quickly figures out that this was her way of disappearing since news of her company’s failure was about to break (and we hear from Victoria, in a secluded cabin, in chapter 2). Guy decides since his life is about to blow up, he’ll go out in style and attends an exclusive retreat on a private island for the world’s top 0.01%, where they aim to solve the world’s problems. The satire is excellent, and I enjoyed the humor. I’m hearing from some other Booktopia readers that not everyone liked this one, though! Check out my Friday Reads video for a more in-depth description.

Now, I am reading a very different novel for Booktopia, Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy, who is the best-selling author of about a dozen books (though he’s new to me). Where The Audacity was a very raucous novel, this one is a very quiet, tender story about a woman named Helen. She is 83 and living in a retirement cottage (in the UK) in the small village where she grew up. She’s lived all over the world but decided to come home after losing her son and her husband. Helen is very lonely and lives each day in a quiet routine, until she has a surprise encounter with a mouse. It’s very good so far.

My last audio book for Middle-Grade March and Fierce Women Reads was Home Away from Home by Cynthia Lord. Mia and her mom always visit her grandma in Maine every summer, but this year, Mia’s there alone. Her mom and her boyfriend are working to sell their old house and find a new one, for “a fresh start.” Mia wishes everything would stay the same, but she loves visiting her grandma in the small, seaside town. Things are different there this year, though, too. Mia meets grandma’s neighbor, Cayman, who’s her age and seems to have made himself at home at grandma’s house! The two kids spot an unusual white bird of prey when they go to check on the baby eaglets the town is known for. I enjoyed this middle-grade novel that deals with lots of typical adolescent issues, with a hefty dose of nature added in (which I loved).

My husband, Ken, finished a nonfiction book I loved last November, The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman, about a Polish couple who saved over a hundred Jews in WWII Warsaw (my review at the link). He’s certain he read it before, though neither of us can figure out when, since I just brought it into the house a year ago! He still enjoyed it the second time around. Now, he’s reading Red Knife by William Kent Krueger (a favorite author for both of us), book 8 in his Cork O’Connor series. My husband finally activated his library card and got this one from the library – clearly, he’s enjoying retirement!

Our son, 29, is still very busy with job interviews (trying to decide between two offers this week!), but he’s enjoying a book I gave him for his birthday last year, Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie, one of his all-time favorite fantasy authors (and he has many favorites). This is book 1 in World of the First Law, a spin-off of his hugely popular First Law trilogy.

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