It's Monday 8/26! What Are You Reading?

What a week! Lots of unexpected ups & downs. My sons were away with their grandparents last week, so it was supposed to be my quiet, productive writing week, but I caught my father-in-law's respiratory virus and bronchitis. Just mild symptoms the first few days but then it hit me HARD, as is typical with my immune disorder. I was mostly incapacitated Thursday and Friday, when we also got the news that my husband's first cousin died. He had late-stage Parkinson's, so we knew this was coming, but he is the second cousin (the other was this guy's brother) that my husband lost in the past few months, leaving him with almost no family members left. We scrambled to try to make travel plans for this weekend, but last-minute flights - and on a holiday weekend - were outrageously expensive. We finally had to admit defeat (we even considered driving, which would have been kind of crazy - about seven days of driving round-trip for less than a day at the funeral), and booked just my husband on the cheapest flights we could find (thank you, Southwest!).

We had plans to go away for the weekend to Frederick, MD - plans we'd postponed LAST weekend when my FIL got sick - and by Saturday morning, I was feeling a bit better, so we went. It was just a little 24-hour getaway about two hours away, but we probably should have stayed home so I could rest. We DID enjoy it and discovered an amazing town we'd driven through before but never explored, but by Sunday, I was much worse again. Guess I should have been reading on the couch instead of walking all over town! So, we enjoyed it, ate some outstanding meals, and loved the town, but I paid for it. Today, I am back on the couch, awkwardly typing while lying down.

My husband and I in beautiful Carrol's Creek Linear Park - Frederick, MD

The upside of sick days is...lots of reading time! Having to set aside my laptop and lie on the couch isn't so bad when I can pick up a good book. And I have been reading some great ones! Here's what we've all been reading this past week:

I finished my 9th Big Book Summer book, the fast-paced, post-apocalyptic thriller, The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin (review at the link), which is the third and final book in the trilogy that began with The Passage and The Twelve, about a government experiment gone wrong and a really nasty virus that turns people into vampire-like (but not exactly vampires) "virals." I love this series, as do my husband and son (my husband already finished it, and my son, like me, finished the first two). I loved this novel, even more than the second one! It was engrossing and compelling, and it's so much fun to get completely absorbed in a novel like this! I read its 600 pages in record time and loved every minute of it. It was a very satisfying ending to a favorite series.

I am now reading a book which will be my transition book from Big Book Summer to my dark & creepy fall reading for RIP Challenge: The Likeness by Tana French. This is the second book in her popular Dublin Murder Squad series. I read the first one, In the Woods, way back in 2013 (review at the link) - I don't know why I waited so long to get to book 2 because her writing is just so good! She has a special talent for writing intricate mysteries/thrillers filled with surprising twists that are also beautifully written (see a sample in my review at the link). This one has a super intriguing premise: a young woman shows up dead in the first pages, and she looks exactly like Cassie, one of the main detectives in the series, AND she is using an ID that Cassie used years ago in an undercover assignment, an identity that was completely made-up by Cassie and her boss. Creepy set-up, right? But it gets even better as they quickly decide that the only way to solve the case is for Cassie to go undercover again...as the woman who was using her old fake identity! Totally twisty and so far, completely engrossing.

I am still listening to my last Big Book on audio, The Desert Sky Before Us by Anne Valente. I received an ARC of this book for possible review in the spring, and I was interested in it but didn't have the time to fit it in, so I was glad to also get the audio for review this summer. It's the story of two very different sisters who take a road trip, arranged by their mother before her death, to travel from Illinois to Utah, where they have permission to have a second funeral at a dig site. Their mother was a paleontologist, one sister is a former race car driver, and the other one just got out of prison for arson. The reader knows from the start that both sisters have secrets, though I suspect that more secrets will be revealed. I was most enticed by the road trip aspect of this novel, and it is even better than I hoped so far, with the women following a kind of geocaching scavenger hunt their mother left for them. Interesting and with plenty of emotional depth, too.

My husband, Ken, is also reading his last Big Book of the summer, though he's not sure if he'll finish this one by Labor Day next week. He's reading Creole Belle by James Lee Burke, a prolific and well-loved novelist that neither of us has ever read before. I bought this one for him for Father's Day at Northshire Bookstore during Booktopia because I was looking for a new thriller series he might enjoy. The series features Detective Dave Robicheaux on the Gulf Coast and from what I read, it sort of combines elements of westerns and thrillers. There are more than 20 books in this series, but I chose this one because it was recommended by the booksellers and it is set in New Orleans, where we used to live. We always enjoy reading books set in our favorite city, and my husband also lived in the Houston area for almost ten years, so I think he'll really like the Gulf Coast setting. He seems to be enjoying it so far.

Our 24-year old son, Jamie, is enjoying Death's Merchant, book one in the Common Among Gods series by Justan Henner. He says it's a really original story about gods and humans, but not the familiar Greek or Roman gods. I see it's been described as an "epic fantasy" and "1200-page doorstopper full of captivating characters and humor." Yup, that sounds right up his alley! I can tell he's enjoying it because he's been reading a lot. He probably didn't have much reading time out on the boat with his younger cousins last week, but I'm sure he fit in a little bit!




Blog posts from last week: 

Movie Monday: Once Upon a Time in...Hollywood - my son and I both loved this original, fun movie that overlaps the Golden Age of Hollywood with the reign of Charles Manson

TV Tuesday: The Widow - a fast-paced thriller set in central Africa

Fiction Review: The City of Mirrors - an exciting and satisfying end to The Passage trilogy

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?

Just one week left (until September 2), so if you've been participating in the Big Book Summer Challenge, finish up your Big Books and post reviews and/or in the Goodreads group. All the details, including the review links list and the link to the Goodreads group are on the Big Book Summer Challenge page.