It's Monday 7/30! What Are You Reading?

Whew, what a hectic, crazy, whirlwind week! Lots of time with my sons last week, helping them (and them helping me) with shopping, financial stuff, student loans...and of course, feeding them! We couldn't find a dinnertime when everyone was free, so we had a nice family lunch on Saturday. All that running around last week left me pretty wiped out this weekend (due to my chronic illness), so we focused on catching up and also relaxing at home. I had to turn down two invitations from friends, but we made up for it with a wild Friday night watching the first two episodes of the new (last!) season of Orange is the New Black - soooo good! And when we lost power for a few hours on Saturday (we've had storms every day for weeks now), we escaped out to try a new BBQ place and see The Incredibles 2 at the theater (both with lovely a/c). Both were very good. Yes, we are at the point now where we go see children's movies by ourselves!

So, busy, busy week, but we always find time for books...and especially our Big Books this summer! Here's what we've all been reading:

• I am still reading - and loving - Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld, a YA novel that's been on my shelf for way too long. This is my 3rd book for my Big Book Summer Challenge. This engrossing YA novel has two intertwined narratives that are both great. In the first, a teen girl participates in NaNoWrMo (a month-long writing challenge every November), writes a paranormal YA romance, sells it to a publisher, and moves to NYC. The other story is the actual novel she wrote, as she struggles with edits and rewrites. The two stories are told in alternating chapters, and both are absolutely compelling. This is what summer reading should be - where you can't wait to pick up the book again and you stay up way too late reading just one more chapter! 
• I mentioned last week that I started listening to Made for Love by Alissa Nutting, a novel with some strange elements. It's about a young woman escaping a bad marriage to a tech mogul, after he demands she has a chip implanted in her brain so he can "meld their minds," so she moves to her father's trailer in a senior citizen trailer park, where her dad is happily setting up housekeeping with his new lifelike sex doll, Diane. I was going along with the strange bits until one character encountered a dolphin in the ocean and became...uh...sexually attracted to dolphins instead of women. Yeah, it slid from merely quirky to seriously weird, so I gave up. Life's just too short, and I have WAY too many other books waiting!
• Instead, I started another audio book that I am thoroughly enjoying so far, Plus One by Elizabeth Fama, a YA novel (another freebie from SYNC). It's set in an alternate reality, where the reduced population after the flu pandemic of 1918 led to the remaining people being divided into Rays, who live during the day, and Smudges, who live at night. Sol is a seventeen-year old Smudge. Her brother was transferred to day-living as part of a court settlement four years ago, and is now married with a newborn baby. Since Sol and her brother are now on opposite schedules, they are not allowed to see each other (except for an occasional Unity Day). Sol's beloved grandfather who raised them both is dying, though, and Sol is determined for him to hold his new granddaughter before he dies. To accomplish that, she must break a lot of laws and take a lot of risks. A Ray doctor's apprentice named D'arcy gets pulled into helping Sol. I am really enjoying it so far - lots of suspense and action, and I think a love story is coming, too.
• My husband, Ken, finished his second Big Book of the summer and one of my all-time favorites, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. This was one of my Big Book Summer reads a few years ago, and Ken gamely watched the movie adaptation with me, even though he found it pretty confusing (I loved the movie). It's a complicated but engrossing book, with multiple interwoven stories that show how we are all connected across space and time. He enjoyed it, though not quite as much as I did.
• Now, Ken is taking a break from the Big Books to read a thriller that was one of my potential review books, Last Seen Alive by Claire Douglas. It was just released in June. I listened to and enjoyed another of Douglas' novels, Local Girl Missing, on audio.
• Our son, Jamie, 23, is reading book 10, Crossroads of Twilight, of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. He has been plowing through this series, one huge book at a time. It's Big Book Summer all year-round for him; he rarely reads a book with under 400 pages. Most of the books in this series are between 900 and 1200 pages! 

Just a couple of blog posts last week -

TV Tuesday: GLOW - entertaining show about 80's women's wrestling - fun!

Fiction Review: Dragon Teeth by Michael Crichton - historical fiction published posthumously

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?   

P.S. I normally keep my chronic illness blog and my book blog lives separate, but I would love some support from my book-loving friends! I was nominated for a WEGO Health Patient Leader Hero award. In order to move onto the finals, I need lots of endorsements. It only takes a moment - just use this link to my award profile and click Endorse Sue Jackson. This means a lot to me because I now spend a lot of my time helping other patients, and the award would help me to reach even more. Thanks!