It's Monday 12/10! What Are You Reading?

Happy Monday! We dove into the holiday spirit this weekend and got the family together on Saturday to put up and decorate our Christmas tree, which is always one of our favorite parts of the season. Our tree is covered with memories - stuff our kids made in school, photo ornaments from each year, and many, many ornaments from all of the wonderful places we've visited on vacation! It was a very nice day - and a minor miracle that we were able to get both sons home at the same time.

As for me, I was much better last week, after a 2-month long relapse of my chronic immune disorder. I had just one bad day when I needed to rest all day, but otherwise, I left the house almost every day! A big reason to celebrate, and I was so grateful to be out and about again. You should have seen how excited I was to go to Trader Joe's - exhilarating just to feel normal again. Unfortunately, I am going to start on a new treatment protocol for Lyme disease today (a recurrence of which triggered this recent relapse), so I am expecting to get worse again, but hopefully not for too long. I got a lot done last week and cleared my calendar for this week, so I'm ready!

Meanwhile, as always, we are all enjoying our books - here's what we've been reading this week:

• I finished The Lost Girls: Three Friends. Four Continents. One Unconventional Detour Around the World by Jennifer Baggett, Holly Corbett, and Amanda Pressner. The subtitle is pretty self-explanatory - it's a memoir with chapters written by the three authors about the year they spent traveling around the world. The travel is fascinating, but I am also intrigued because they all worked in magazines/freelance writing (which is what I do, though on a smaller scale). I really enjoyed this book - it was an incredible journey, both personal and global.
• Next, I picked up my book group's selection but just briefly! They were discussing another nonfiction book, Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes by Richard A. Clarke and R.P. Eddy. It's about modern catastrophes - everything from the Gulf War to Hurricane Katrina to financial disasters - and how, in each case, there was one person who foresaw what would happen...but no one listened to him/her. It's an interesting premise, but my copy was very late coming in at the library and then I wasn't feeling well enough to go to the meeting, so I only read 2 1/2 chapters of it! What I read was intriguing, though, and my friend told me it was a good discussion.
• I know Nonfiction November is over, but I can't seem to stop reading nonfiction! I am currently reading The Light Years, a memoir by Chris Rush that is due out in April. A few weeks ago, I was e-mailing with Victor Lodato, author of Edgar and Lucy, a wonderful novel and one of the featured books at Booktopia VT two years ago. I met Victor at Booktopia, so in our recent e-mail exchange, he told me about this memoir that he had helped to edit. He said it was amazingly good and asked if I'd like to receive an advanced copy, possibly to review. Everything he said was true...and more! It's a moving, powerful, funny story of a seriously warped childhood among the drug culture of the 1960's and early 1970's, and I'm enjoying it very much.
• In between, I squeezed in a quick middle-grade graphic novel, The Creepy Case Files of Margo Maloo - The Monster Mall by Drew Weing. You may recall that I read the first book in this series (my review at the link) for the RIP Challenge this fall and absolutely loved it, so I was eager to read book 2. The sequel was just as good as the first one - fun, original, humorous, and just a touch spooky.
• I started a new audio book, moving back to fiction finally! I am listening to Release by Patrick Ness, a teen/YA novel narrated by a gay teen whose father is a hardcore evangelical pastor. The novel all takes place in a single day - possibly the worst day of Adam's life, when everything that could go wrong does. It's completely engrossing, and I'm really enjoying it.
• My husband, Ken, is reading Dead Wake by Erik Larson, the king of entertaining narrative nonfiction. He says this story of the sinking of the Lusitania is interesting so far, and he keeps reading facts out loud to me, saying, "Did you know this...?"
• I think that Jamie, our 24-year old son, is still finishing his favorite Wheel of Time series, with the final book #13, Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson.

Blog posts last week:

Nonfiction Review: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt - modern classic narrative nonfiction - highly entertaining!

Memoir Review: Seven: In the Lane of Hope by Michael J. Marini - warm, funny memoir of a remarkable family

Great Gifts for Readers and Writers - gift ideas for your friends and family...or to add to your own wish list!

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?