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

Ahhh....Monday, and all is quiet here at home. I enjoyed my first week alone last week, with the kids back at school and tried hard to keep the stress levels down and the vacation mindset alive! I did a lot of writing (check back tomorrow when I will recap how I did in two writing challenges) and tried to get caught up on a lot of things that I got behind on during the summer. I also spent a lot of time out on our deck, manages a couple of walks, and finally began watching some of the TED talks my husband has been telling me about - I'm hooked!

We enjoyed plenty of reading last week:

• I finished Hope's Boy by Andrew Bridge, an excellent memoir about a boy who grew up in foster care. It was an emotionally moving book, and I can't wait to talk about it at my library's book discussion group this week.
• I also finished A Matter of Days by Amber Kizer, the teen/YA audio book I've been listening to this summer. It's a post-apocalyptic tale of a teen girl and her younger brother making their way across the country after a viral pandemic kills 95% of the population. I really liked it and enjoyed the audio production.
• I am now reading The Fever Tree by Jennifer McVeigh for my nieghborhood book group, also this week. It's about a young British woman in the 1870's who emigrates to South Africa to marry a man she barely knows. I'm enjoying it so far, but I better start reading faster if I want to finish it by Wednesday!
• My husband, Ken, finished Break No Bones by Kathy Reich. This was the first Reich novel that any of us have read - this series is the basis for the TV show Bones - and Ken said it was very good though different from the TV show.
• He just started Time and Again by Jack Finney, a classic time travel novel that Ken gave me for Christmas one year. I hope he likes it as much as I did.
• Jamie, 19, probably hasn't had much personal reading time at all lately - he is busy with college and friends!
• Craig, 15, got his reading list for this year's Brit Lit class. He's not too excited, but I am! Lots of excellent novels on the list, both classics and modern, and I think he may actually enjoy some of them (though he'd never admit that). So far, they are discussing their summer reads, The Lord of the Flies and The Housekeeper and the Professor. And guess what? His first writing assignments are blog posts for their classroom blog! I like this teacher.

My writing challenges kept me busy with other writing projects, but I managed a few book blog posts:

Review of The Time Machine, a new audio production of H.G. Wells' classic story.

Snapshot Saturday, in case you want to see pictures of my recent vacation in Cape Cod and Maine.

Wrap-up of My Big Book Summer Challenge - if you were participating in the challenge, be sure to link your own wrap-up post to the challenge page. There is also a separate list of links for reviews of Big Books. If you didn't participate, check out some of the reviews listed to get some ideas for your own Big Book reads!

What are you and your family reading this week?

(What are you reading Monday is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey, with a kid/teen version hosted by Unleashing Readers.)