It's Monday 3/4! What Are You Reading?

Book By Book

Busy week last week! The first part of my week was focused on writing, and the weekend was our annual Mardi Gras party. We used to live in New Orleans, so Mardi Gras is a major holiday at our house. We always look forward to our annual gathering of close friends, but it’s a lot of work, too. So, I made a huge pot of jambalaya Friday evening (I made the red beans last week), and we spent Saturday decorating the house and getting everything set up. We had a wonderful collection of old friends, family, and our sons’ old friends, and I think everyone had a great time. Family left by Sunday afternoon (including my husband, for a business trip), and then I collapsed!

Now, I need to catch up on everything I didn’t do last week, including a bunch of e-mail and…visiting blogs. My evenings were FULL last week, with book group and two trips to drop off/pick up a car for repairs, and that is usually my blog time. I did spend an hour writing a book review last night for my blog…and then, just as I was ready to put my laptop away, it disappeared when I tried to publish it! Not fun. So, I wrote my review of Unsheltered twice – I hope you enjoy it!

Here’s what we are all reading this week:

• I finished Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver for my neighborhood book group last week, and I loved 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 (in real life). One side of the story takes places back then, when a high school science teacher who’s not allowed to teach about Darwin’s theories lived in the house, with a (real-life) female botanist who corresponded with Charles Darwin living 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 parallel stories in different time periods is so clever & engaging. You can read my full review and listen to a wonderful sample of the audio book at the link.
• Next, I dove into my first Booktopia book, which is also a book that I have proposed reviewing and interviewing the author to my editor at Shelf Awareness: The Den by Abi Maxwell. Oddly, this is also a split narrative about two families in the same place about 150 years apart – what a coincidence, right? In this novel, there are two sisters in each time period, and in both, the older sister gets pregnant and leaves home and eventually goes missing. It’s a complex story, but I’m enjoying it so far – almost finished and hoping I get the chance to interview the author.
• I forgot to mention last week that I have been slowly making my way through a very unique illustrated book, Tales from the Inner City by Shaun Tan. Tan is known for his amazing illustrations, graphic novels, illustrated short stories, and even a short film. This unusual book is a collection of short fantasy stories about animals in an urban environment. Some stories are just a few lines long and others are 5 or more pages, each with at least one huge, colorful, two-page painting. They are all very weird and imaginative, about worlds that are different than ours, with a focus on the connections between animals and humans. It’s almost impossible to describe briefly, but I am enjoying it.
• On audio, I finished listening to The Blinds by Adam Sternbergh, a unique thriller that I devoured! It’s about an isolated town in Texas where all its citizens (about 50 of them) are in witness protection, either criminals or innocent witnesses. The Blinds is an experiment where each person’s memory – or at least portions of it -  is erased before they arrive in town, so no one knows who is who or what they did before. It’s been a dull, sleepy town for eight years but now there’s been both a suicide and a murder, and Sheriff Calvin Cooper must try to keep the peace as the outside world threatens to interrupt their uneasy harmony. It was unique and compelling, and I listened during every spare moment!
• My husband, Ken, is reading Inside a Silver Box by Walter Mosley, a science fiction novel. He likes Mosley’s mysteries featuring Easy Rawlins, and he and I both enjoyed The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, a wonderful and moving novel about aging. This is the first of Mosely’s science fiction novels either of us has read. My husband is about three-quarters of the way through it now.
• I noticed Ken left the Mosley novel at home for his trip this week (probably because he didn’t want to finish it and either have to bring a second book or run out of reading material!) and brought with him The Child Finder by Rene Denfeld, a thriller that I gave him for Christmas. It got a lot of great buzz when it was published in 2017, so I hope he enjoys it.
• Our son, Jamie, 24,wants to read book 4, Kingdom Blades, of the series A Pattern of Shadow and Light by Melissa McPhail, a favorite series of his. But, being him, he decided to first re-read the first 3 books in the series. So, he finished book 1, Cephrael’s Hand last week and has started on book 2, The Dagger of Adendigaeth. He says he’s enjoying it and is glad he decided to re-read because he’s remembering details he’d forgotten…and the series is sooo good!

Just one blog post last week:  

Fiction Review: Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver – warm, immersive story of two families in one house, 150 years apart

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?