It's Monday 9/21! What Are You Reading?

Well, fall has truly arrived here in the US Mid-Atlantic now; it seems like our temperatures dropped from 90's to high's of 60's in a week! We shifted from air-conditioning to heat, and brought out the sweatshirts and jackets.We enjoyed another evening of take-out food and a campfire with friends in our driveway Saturday--we actually needed the fire to stay warm this time!

My son and I had an hour's drive each way to medical appointments on Friday, through the Amish farmland of Lancaster County, PA. We often see more buggies than cars on the way up to see his medical team. This time, we stopped on the way home at an Amish farm market. Despite all the pumpkins, winter squash, and other fall bounty, we focused on the last of the summer produce, though we did grab a half-dozen hot, fresh, just-cooked apple cider donuts, too! We had an awesome end-of-summer feast that night; it was the best green beans, corn on the cob, and watermelon we'd had all summer. I cooked that meal (plus steaks with sauteed onions) just so we could bring leftovers to my father-in-law for lunch Saturday. He's 95 years old and is really getting sick of not leaving his apartment building! Bringing all his favorites to him for a special meal when we had our weekly outdoor visit helped, though--he thoroughly enjoyed every bite.

I don't want to focus on my health but suffice it to say that I am still in bad shape. This 6-month downturn of my chronic illness is still bad, and last week was rough again, with lots of necessary couch time. It's getting me down.

Thank goodness for books! Seriously, reading and enjoying different reading challenges has been a highlight for me these past six months, with both the pandemic and my own body limiting what I can do. Reading takes me all over the world! Here's what we've all been reading this week:

Well-immersed now in the fall RIP XV Challenge, I finished reading one of the many mysteries/thrillers filling up our TBR bookcase, The Dry by Jane Harper. I gave this to my husband for Father's Day, he just recently finished reading it, and I couldn't wait to dive into this debut novel that made such a splash a few years ago. It's set in Australia in a small farming community during a terrible drought. Aaron, now a Federal Agent, returns to the town for the funeral of his childhood best friend, Luke. Everyone in town believes the prevailing theory: that Luke, like many others, was at the end of his rope emotionally and financially, so he shot his wife and son and killed himself. Luke's parents ask Aaron if he will look into it, and he agrees. However, there is also a 20-year-old cold case: the death of a girl that Luke and Aaron were friends with. Back then, the two boys alibied each other, but now there are some questions about that as the present and the past collide. It was a suspenseful and twisty novel, and I loved being immersed in some fast-paced thriller action again!

When I was choosing my next book from my stack for RIP XV last night, I was feeling particularly exhausted, sick, and down, so I wanted a quick, fun book that I could escape into. I chose a middle-grade fantasy novel, The Door by Andy Marino. This is a review book that's been sitting on my shelf since 2014! It's about a twelve-year-old girl named Hannah who lives in a lighthouse with her mother on the North Atlantic coast. She's grown up in a very sheltered, unusual way with her mother home-schooling her and no one allowed to visit the lighthouse. In fact, her mom seems kind of paranoid. But they finally get visitors one day, an old friend of her dad's from out of town and his nephew, Kyle. Hannah is also excited to be starting public school finally, though she's worried about how her new classmates will respond to some of her weird habits and tics, like her made-up language, the voices in her head, and her difficulty walking up or down stairs. She's surprised to see Kyle on her first day of school and to find out that he is starting school there, too. Somehow, this all links up with a mysterious door to nowhere in the lighthouse that Hannah has always wondered about ... but that's all I know so far!

I finished a RIP Challenge audiobook, Feed by M.T. Anderson, a YA dystopian novel. It was a finalist for the National Book Award (plus won a bunch of other awards) and takes place in an imagined future. Teens (and other people) live with "the feed" constantly broadcasting directly into their brains. It reads your thoughts, listens to your words, and responds with a barrage of targeted information, entertainment, and ads. The main character, Titus, has been trained to rely on the feed to such an extent that he barely knows how to think for himself anymore. Then he meets a girl named Violet who's been homeschooled and didn't have a feed until she was seven. After a hack leaves Titus, Violet, and their friends without their feeds for a few days, Titus, with Violet's influence, starts to think more about what the feed means and how it affects his life. The audio was very well-done, with sections of it providing the feed that Titus is hearing, in between regular narration, making it especially immersive. It's a dark, foreboding story, making me want to perhaps spend less time online and more time reading!

Now, I've started my next audiobook for RIP XV, Sycamore by Bryn Chancellor. Funny enough, when I started it, I thought it was a different book: Sycamore Row by John Grisham (which I also want to read!), so I was a little surprised at first! But I have also wanted to read/listen to this one. There is a mystery at its heart: 17-year-old Jess disappears during a walk in a small Arizona town in 1991. Then, the action shifts to 2009, when town newcomer, Laura, is out on a hike when she discovers a skeleton embedded in a dry lake. Is it Jess? The format of this novel is unusual so far, with each chapter written from a different person's perspective. At first, it was a bit confusing on audio, with each chapter's abrupt shift to a new character, but I am starting to get into the flow of it. One reviewer compared it to Olive Kitteridge, which is a series of interrelated stories all set in the same small town. I'm enjoying it so far.

My husband, Ken, has also turned to the RIP Challenge--though most of what he reads all year-round are mysteries, thrillers, and other dark stuff! He finally started another gift from me, Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz. I've been anxious for him to give this one a try, since it got so much buzz when it was released a few years ago. It's a book-within-a-book, where a book editor is reading the manuscript of one of her perennial crime writers. The manuscript is a classic English mystery, in the style of Agatha Christie, as is typical for this writer, but at some point, the editor starts to think there is more than meets the eye to this new manuscript: some sort of real-life mystery. I've read that it's a very clever premise, with a twisty plot. Ken confirms that the early part of the novel was very classic British mystery, but it's getting twistier now.

Our son, 26, has started a new epic fantasy series, Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. He's almost finished with book 1, Wizard's First Rule, almost 600 pages read in one week for all you Big Book Summer fans! It sounds like it's filled with murdery, swords, treachery, and a unique magical world--yup, that ticks all his boxes! He has enjoyed this first book so much that he used a birthday gift card on Friday to visit his favorite local used bookstore and picked up book 2, Stone of Tears (over 1000 pages), and book 3, Blood of the Fold, so he is all set for quite a while!

Blog posts last week:

TV Tuesday: Russian Doll - we LOVED this show! Definitely binge-worthy.

Fiction Review: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens - clever, witty classic

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?