It's Monday 2/18! What Are You Reading?

Book By Book

Another late Monday for posting my weekly reading summary. Whew, last week turned out to be a doozy! Monday through Wednesday were supposed to be quiet days, set aside for writing. Nope. The week was one crisis after another – lots of doctor’s appointments, family stuff, other appointments, plus yet another trip to the Apple Genius Bar for my laptop! The good news is that I can once again get audiobooks onto my iPod – the bad news is that I have to manually rebuild much of my iTunes library playlists, etc. As long as I can listen to my books!!
I spent the weekend preparing all our tax stuff, especially the medical expenses. It’s a complicated calculation because I can’t count anything paid for with before-tax dollars (like insurance premiums and anything we paid with our HSA). Anyway, we just got back from meeting with our tax guy and turned everything over – done with that mess for another year!

Thank goodness for our books in hectic, busy times like this! Here is what we’ve all been reading this past week:

• I finished reading The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2017 and was on every Top Ten list that year – all well-deserved praise! It’s historical fiction but with some fantastical twists added. For instance, the Underground Railroad is a literal railroad underground! Also, each state that Cora, a runaway slave, travels through on her way north has its own unique identity and approach to slavery and race relations. Much of it is chilling and some of it is brutal, but it is also a completely compelling and captivating novel, with a wonderful main character. 
• Now, I am reading another hardcover from my TBR shelf, Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver, for my neighborhood book group. I am already loving it! It’s a split narrative that takes place in one house in Vineland, NJ, which was created as a utopian community in the 1860′s. One side of the story takes places back then, when a female botanist who corresponded with Charles Darwin lived in the house, with a high school science teacher who’s not allowed to teach about Darwin’s theories next door. The other half of the story takes place in the same house in the present, with a family dealing with a lot of crises – the husband’s father is very ill and living with them, and their two adult children have both had to move back home (along with a newborn baby). I love Kingsolver’s novels to begin with, and her way of connecting the two stories is so clever & engaging. 
• I am still listening to The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea on my iPod – I had hoped to read it for Nonfiction November and ran out of time. This works out well now because I just pitched a book column to Shelf Awareness for Cinco de Mayo that includes this book (and was accepted by my editor). It’s the true story of an attempt in 2001 by 26 Mexican men to cross the border into Arizona through a desolate stretch of desert known as the Devil’s Highway. It was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction and is certainly relevant to the immigration controversies and challenges rocking our nation (and the world) right now. However, the author really doesn’t address political or moral issues related to immigration – his focus is on telling this harrowing story from the facts collected through interviews and police reports and on the human toll. It’s fascinating, compelling, and eye-opening.
• My husband, Ken, is reading a paperback I gave him for Christmas: Edge by Jeffrey Deaver. Though we both love Deaver’s Lincoln Rhymes series, this is a stand-alone novel, so we were intrigued by it. He says it’s very good so far.
• Our son, Jamie, 24, finished the FINAL book 14 of The Wheel of Time series, A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson – woohoo! This one weighs in at a hefty 1168 pages. He loves this series and has been looking forward to the conclusion. He says this last book was action-packed right from the first chapters and wrapped up everything very well.
• Now, Jamie would like to read book 4, Kingdom Blades, of the series A Pattern of Shadow and Light by Melissa McPhail, another favorite series of his. But, being him, he decided he wanted to first re-read the first 3 books in the series. So, he’s just re-started book 1, Cephrael’s Hand, a mere 780 pages.

Blog posts from last week – I had big plans to catch up, but the week got too busy! –

Fiction Review: True Enough by Stephen McCauley – insights & humor combined

Middle-Grade Review: The Creepy Case Files of Margo Maloo: The Monster Mall by Drew Weing – book 2 of this fun, creative graphic novel series is just a good as the first!

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.

You can follow me on Twitter at @SueBookByBook or on Facebook on my blog’s page.   

What are you and your family reading this week?