It's Monday 5/18! What Are You Reading?

I love the quiet solitude of a Monday morning. This weekend was mostly spent cooking and caring for our 17-year old son who had oral surgery on Friday to get his four wisdom teeth extracted. He seems to be healing well and went to school this morning. I've been feeling particularly stressed and overwhelmed lately. Between the oral surgery and my father-in-law's 90th birthday last week, it was a hectic week with little productive time, so I just feel like I am behind on everything. My big accomplishment for the weekend was getting the kitchen island cleared of clutter and paper - woohoo!

As always, we enjoyed our books last week:

• I finished Ellis Island by Kate Kerrigan for my online family book group, and we finally started our discussion! I enjoyed this novel about a young girl growing up in Ireland in the early part of the 20th century who goes to America to earn some money and ends up feeling torn between her husband in Ireland and her exciting new life in NYC. The author responded to one of my Tweets and answered some questions from our discussion. It's always great to hear directly from the author!
• With my book group commitments finished for the month (well, I missed my neighborhood book group meeting last week), I moved onto some YA - my TBR shelves for kids/teen/YA books are overflowing! I finally started Blue Lily, Lily Blue, book 3 in the Raven Boys series by Maggie Stiefvater. I love this series!
• I finished listening to Ask the Dark by Henry Turner, a teen/YA novel on audio. It was absolutely riveting, narrated by a boy who often gets into trouble, about a series of missing boys in his town and how he was the only person who could piece together what happened to them. Suspenseful and moving.
• I started listening to Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, another teen/YA novel, on audio. This was one of my downloads from the first week of SYNC - be sure to check out this great source for free YA and classic audio books all summer long! They feature a new pair of audio downloads (one modern YA paired with one classic) each week. This is only week 2, so you still have plenty of time. So far, I am enjoying this popular YA novel that I somehow missed before.
• My husband, Ken, finished Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley. He bought it after I read Mosley's amazing novel The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey and went to hear Mosley speak for our All-County Reads program. When I showed Ken the long list of books Mosley had written, he decided to try one. This is the first book in the Easy Rawlins mystery series. He said it was great - very well-written - and he is looking forward to reading the next book in the series. We are both new Mosley fans!
• Ken is going on a business trip this week (a hectic one with quick turnaround), so he chose a short YA novel for his next book. He is reading Enclave by Ann Aguirre, the first book in her Razorland trilogy. Our son recently read this novel and enjoyed it. I still need to read it!
• Jamie, 20, has been overwhelmed with end-of-the-semester work but is reading Mountain Man by Keith C. Blackmore, a book his dad lent him, to continue his Zombie obsession. A week from now, he will be done with the spring semester - then he can read nonstop for two weeks!

I tried to catch up a bit on the blog last week:

Review of Masterminds by Gordon Kormon, a suspenseful middle-grade audio book

Celebrate Mother's Day with a Good Book!, a reprint of my monthly book column in Vital! magazine

Review of Rainey Royal by Dylan Landis, an adult novel I read for Booktopia

Review of Fram by Steve Himmer, another adult novel I read for Booktopia

Saturday Snapshot, with photos of late spring in our neighborhood

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.    

Our family on my father-in-law's 90th birthday last week