It's Monday 11/30! What Are You Reading?

Tomorrow is December! How did that happen??

I hope that everyone in the U.S. enjoyed a nice Thanksgiving, even if it was different than usual. We had both of our sons home for a socially-distanced dinner with the windows open and masks on when not eating! And we had a nice Zoom gathering with extended family in the morning--we miss them all very much, and it was lovely to see their smiling faces.

Happy Socially Distanced Thanksgiving!

 

Unfortunately, the smallest turkey I could find was 20 pounds ... for just 5 of us (and it was the second dinner for my son and his girlfriend). So, we had leftovers for two days after Thanksgiving, and yesterday, I made a big pot of Turkey Wild Rice Soup (my recipe at the link). 

Turkey Day 4 - Turkey Wild Rice Soup

 

On Thanksgiving Day, everyone left before dessert, so we were left with two and a half pies for just my husband and I! Our older son helped the next day, thank goodness, but I've pretty much been stuffed since Thursday and am looking forward to getting back to a more normal diet!

It was a busy, busy, busy week with all that shopping, cooking, and cleaning. We went to a local tree farm to pick out our tree on Saturday. We usually wait until the first weekend in December (at least), but the past two years, they were sold out by then! With everyone so eager to start the holiday season early this year, we figured we better go early. It was different than usual, of course, with no hayride or popcorn and cocoa, but we found a great, freshly-cut tree (nice and fat, the way we like!), and our older son will be back in town next weekend so we can all decorate it together. It's our favorite part of the holiday season!

We found our tree!

 

Amidst all that crazy, hectic activity, we managed to enjoy our books, too (always!). Here's what we've all been reading this past week:

I finished H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, an unusual memoir about how she dealt with her father's sudden death by getting and training a goshawk, known to be one of the more difficult hawks to train. Helen was already an experienced falconer, but training a goshawk was a different experience for her. The memoir follows the parallel paths of her grief over the loss of her father and her training of Mabel, her new goshawk. It also weaves in all kinds of history of hawks and falconry, including the experiences and writings of T.H. White, author of The Once and Future King, and other acclaimed books, who also trained a goshawk--and wrote a book about it--while dealing with personal emotional pain. It was a slow read for me (or maybe I was just too tired at night and at naptime to read much!), but it was very interesting and moving. I know nothing at all about hawks, so I learned a lot, but, like Helen, I did lose my father about five years ago, so I could certainly relate to her grief.

I have also been enjoying another nonfiction middle-grade graphic "novel" in the History Comics series, The Great Chicago Fire: Rising from the Ashes by Kate Hannigan and Alex Graudins. I absolutely loved The Roanoke Colony: America's First Mystery in the same series, so I've been looking forward to this one. It's about the famous Great Chicago Fire of 1871 that burned for two days and destroyed a huge portion of the city. The narrators are a young sister and brother who get separated from their parents and spend two days running from the fire with crowds of people and trying to find their family, which puts the disaster in perspective for kids reading the book. It ends with a section on the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, the Columbian Exposition, in which the city was able to celebrate its rebirth. As with the Roanoke book, I am learning a lot (like the fact that Mrs. O'Leary's cow did not start the fire!) and am enjoying reading it.

My current print book is also my current audiobook! I don't usually do this, but I got both the print and audio versions of Educated by Tara Westover from the library. This highly-acclaimed memoir is the December choice for one of my book groups. Of course, I have heard all about this best-selling book since its release almost three years ago, so I am thrilled to finally be reading/listening to it. The author describes her unusual (and often horrifying) childhood growing up isolated in the mountains of Idaho with her survivalist father. She and her siblings did not attend school, were not homeschooled, and were made to work in their father's scrap business, which was extremely dangerous. They also did not receive any medical care, except from their mother's herbs, even when horrible accidents occurred while scrapping. At seventeen, Tara left to attend college, which was a stunning experience for her. She'd never written an essay, taught herself algebra and trig, and had never heard of the Holocaust. So far, it's a fascinating, engrossing story that I am enjoying in both forms--perfect for #NonfictionNovember!

My husband, Ken, is reading one of my top reads of 2020 (maybe THE top one), Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. I'll let my Monday update from August speak for itself here: "I LOVED THIS BOOK! It was amazing, and I just want to tell everyone to read it! I always enjoy time travel plots, and this book is part of her Oxford Time Travel series, which also includes To Say Nothing of the Dog, which I also enjoyed (they are loosely related and don't have to be read in order). This time, in 2155, a young female student, Kivrin, has traveled back in time all the way to the 1300's, in England's Middle Ages. It's the first time they've sent anyone back that far, and there are all sorts of concerns since so little was recorded about that era. Hours after Kivrin leaves, though, a contemporary emergency occurs when one of the techs working on the project comes down with a devastating virus, and says that something went wrong with the time travel, just before he passes out. This shouldn't happen, given the high-tech medical precautions used in this future (no one even gets colds), so there is a scramble to figure out what the virus is and where it came from. Meanwhile, the team at Oxford doesn't realize it, but the reader knows that Kivrin arrived in the Middle Ages with the same debilitating symptoms. What a premise--a contemporary woman horribly sick in the Middle Ages and all alone. The action goes back and forth between the present-day and the past, and the suspense is incredibly compelling. The mystery in the present and the happenings in the past continue to evolve and intertwine, and I came to care about the characters so much that I can't stop thinking about them, a week later. Ok, yes, there are two epidemics involved in this novel, and some similarities to our present situation (the book was written in 1992) are a bit unnerving, but the story, characters, and suspense are so great that I didn't care.  I loved every minute of it! (My review is at the link above)." Ken is loving it, too, especially the humor, and is almost finished.

Our son, 26, had to set aside The Demon Cycle series by Peter V. Brett after finishing book 2, The Desert Spear, because he didn't have book 3! He was going to stop at his favorite used bookstore on the way out of town yesterday. So, he has moved back to the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind with book 4, Temple of the Winds. It sounds like the series is filled with murder, swords, treachery, and a unique magical world--yup, that ticks all his boxes! He has been powering through each long book, so they must be really compelling. He loves this kind of stuff. And hopefully, his stop at the bookstore yesterday was a fruitful one. I'm going to finish my book gift list this week--can't wait to choose some awesome fantasy novels for our son!

 

Blog posts last week:

Middle-Grade Graphic Novel: One Year at Ellsmere by Faith Erin Hicks - boarding school drama with a touch of fantasy

Summary of Books Read in October - an excellent, spooky reading month for me!

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?