It's Monday 10/26! What Are You Reading?
Book By Book
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| Hosted by The Book Date |
Life
How can it possibly be the end of October already??
I spent another week housebound and mostly couchbound, as this relapse of my chronic illness continues. But I am hugely grateful for two things: good books and the incredible beauty I can see right from our back deck! While we’re not at peak color yet here in Delaware, the leaves are beginning to change, and we’ve had an incredible string of lovely, sunny fall days.
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| Beautiful view from my reclining chair on the deck |
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| View from the front yard – fall colors starting to show! |
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| Quiet Sunday morning on the porch |
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| Lots of reading on the deck last week! |
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| Our resident squirrel eating leftover birdseed |
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| Surprise book mail from the Book Cougars podcast! |
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Victorian Literature Tag - I don’t read a whole lot of Victorian literature, but these questions (and a bit of research!) helped me realize that the category is broader than I thought!
Weekly Reading Wrap-Up - Last week included Dewey’s 24-hour Readathon, RIPXXI, and SO many good books in print and on audio!
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I’m enjoying fall reading, with the annual RIP XXI event (Readers Imbibing Peril – my 11th year!) for reading darker books in September and October.
I just finished reading The Poppy Fields by Nikki Erlick, author of The Measure, which I remember hearing good things about. This is another speculative fiction novel, about a scientist named Ellis who has invented a “sleep cure” for grief. People suffering from a loss (of all types) go to her facility in the California desert called The Poppy Fields to sleep for a month or two. The “sleep” is sort of like an induced coma, with special medication given while they sleep so that they wake up feeling better and ready to move on with their lives. There is a catch, of course: 25% of sleepers experience a side effect, where they no longer feel emotions for the person they lost (they remember everything but feel neutral). Helpful for someone after a painful divorce but devastating for someone grieving a loved one. The novel follows three strangers, each heading to the Poppy Fields for their own reasons, who end up traveling together and connecting with each other. I love a road trip novel, and this one involves a very thought-provoking premise. There are also fun parallels to the Wizard of Oz … not just the poppies but three travelers (one has a small dog!) each looking for something different. I really enjoyed this engrossing novel with great character development, in-depth emotional resonance, and thoughtful discussions about love, loss, grief, and healing.
I also finished my audiobook that’s been in my review backlog since its release in 2020: Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore, a Read with Jenna pick. It focuses on a group of girls and women in 1976 Odessa, Texas, as the area is at the brink of another oil boom. Fourteen-year-old Gloria Ramirez is brutally assaulted on Valentine’s Day. The next morning, she somehow makes it to the nearest farm house and knocks on the door, which is opened by Mary Rose Whitehead, a twenty-six-year-old woman with a nine-year-old daughter and a baby on the way. Her husband is a cattle rancher. The man who assaulted Gloria comes to the house looking for her and is quickly arrested (all in the first chapters!), but the incident changes both women’s lives. Mary Rose eventually moves into town with her two children because she no longer feels safe. Corine is the grief-stricken widow across the street who lost her husband suddenly to cancer, just as they had retired and were planning to travel. Ten-year-old Debra Ann is pretty much on her own, since her mother left six months earlier and her father works long hours. The narrative eventually includes other women and girls, as well, whose lives are all intertwined, all of them hiding secrets, grieving losses, and struggling to move forward. It’s a gritty, powerful story about women being limited by society, sorrow and loss, female empowerment, and healing. It was outstanding and very moving.
My husband, Ken, is reading Past Crimes by Glen Erik Hamilton, a thriller I gave him for his birthday recently. This is the first book in the Van Shaw series, and the author’s been compared to Lee Child, Ken’s favorite novelist. He said he’s enjoying it, though it’s not as action-packed as a Reacher novel. His reading has slowed considerably now that football season has started … and two weeks later, basketball season also started! The sports world has gone crazy.
Our son, 32, finished reading The Lost War by Justin Lee Anderson, fantasy novel and a new author for him. He said he enjoyed it and is definitely going to read the rest of the trilogy. Last I checked, he was reading Lord of the Isles by David Drake, the first book in a 9-book fantasy series. Sounds right up his alley!
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