It's Monday 11/9! What Are You Reading?

Somehow, it is spring again here! We're on our 5th day of perfect weather: warm and sunny with temperatures in the mid-70's! I know it won't last, but we are making the most of it. My husband is out golfing, and I am typing this on our back deck.

Our lovely campsite last week

 

We took advantage of this sudden warmth by squeezing in one last mini camping trip this year (only our second). As before, we were gone less than 48 hours, but it was lovely to spend time outdoors and just relax and leave our worries behind (including all the political turmoil and nail-biting vote counting!). We drove about two hours south to a new-to-us place, Pocomoke River State Park in Maryland, which featured a nice campground (not too crowded this late in the season), hiking trails, and a lovely river for boating and fishing. I managed a short hike with my husband, and we mostly just relaxed, enjoying a campfire and, of course, reading!

Reading al fresco!

 

I'm afraid of jinxing things, so I won't say much about my 8-month long downturn in my chronic illness, except that I have had 4 truly good days in a row, and the aches are almost completely gone. I was able to enjoy our trip and take a short hike and am still feeling good today. Draw your own conclusions ...

Here's what we've all been reading this past week:

I transitioned from #RIP XV Challenge to #NonfictionNovember! I resumed reading White Trash: the 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg, which I read half of for a book group and then set aside for some spooky stuff in October. It starts by busting the myths of the U.S.'s original colonies that we all learned in history class: the staid, hard-working Pilgrims who came here seeking religious freedom and established a successful, class-less society. Instead, the author cites a wide variety of historical documents that show that the first settlers brought England's strict class society with them, with landed gentry given access to the property here and ships full of vagrants, criminals, homeless children, and other poor people sent here to provide labor for building and planting. Even before Africans were brought here in slave ships, the colonists had indentured servants (whose children were often owned by the wealthy also) and other kinds of unpaid labor--lots of different ways to have slaves without using the word. The book goes through each period of U.S. history, revealing what life was really like for poor whites and what leaders' attitudes were toward the lower class. I am just starting Part 3, which is about modern times, but every chapter had been absolutely fascinating so far! I keep interrupting my husband's reading to tell him random, crazy facts I'd never heard before.

I had to once again set that one aside temporarily for another book group choice for this week, When All Is Said by Anne Griffin, a novel set in Ireland. It's an unusual framework for a story, with an 84-year-old man sitting at a bar in the town he grew up in, "talking" (in his head, I guess) to his son who lives in the U.S.  in what seems to be a good-bye speech. He makes a series of five toasts, with five drinks, to five people who have been an important part of his life. Each toast is a different chapter in which he explains who the person is/was and how they influenced his life, delving back into his childhood, his married life, and more, and including a long-buried secret. It's good so far, a very interesting and unique way to tell the story of a life. It reminds a bit of the concept behind Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom, though the story itself is quite different.

I finished listening to Follow Me by K.R. Alexander, a middle-grade novel. As a spooky ghost story, this seemed like the best way to end the #RIP XV challenge and enjoy Halloween week! Tamal has just moved into a big house on a hill overlooking a small mill town. He and his parents moved from NYC and are happy to have more room and a quieter place to live. The house comes with rumors of ghosts, but don't all old houses? Anyway, Tamal's father loves those "ghost catching" shows on TV and thinks it is all good fun. But before they've even unpacked, Tamal sees a ghost: a little girl dressed in old-fashioned clothes, holding a teddy bear. Paranormal events quickly ramp up, as Tamal digs into the house's history and tries to keep his two new friends safe (and himself, too). This is a great ghost story and quite spooky, but the audio production was pretty awful. The narrator is an adult male doing different overdone little kid voices, and it was like nails on a chalkboard to me! I was into the story enough to keep listening, though, and I did enjoy it ... just go for the print version of this one.

I am focused on #NonfictionNovember for my audiobooks also now. I started with The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois, a historical and literary classic written in 1903. Du Bois was an African-American who graduated form Harvard in 1895 (a feat in itself at that time) and was a renowned historian and sociologist. So far in my listening, this famous tome is reviewing a portion of U.S. history with respect to African-Americans. Coincidentally, at the same time I have been reading White Trash, so I am reading/hearing about the same periods of history--for instance, the post-Civil War era--from two different perspectives: that of Blacks, both freemen and freed slaves, and of poor, rural whites. It's been fascinating so far to fit these two different points of view together, as both are a far different story of U.S. history than what I learned in school! I'm enjoying it so far and learning a lot. Apparently, this book is considered an important book in the study of sociology (which Du Bois helped create), and it feels especially important to read it at this moment in time.

My husband, Ken, finished reading a birthday gift from me ((by amazing coincidence, I want to read it, too!), The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware. He and I both enjoy Ware's many novels (see my reviews of The Woman in Cabin 10 and In a Dark, Dark Wood); they always provide good nail-biting thriller fun! Rowan Caine accepts a nanny job in the Scottish Highlands and is thrilled with the luxurious and modern "smart home" (I can see where this is going already!). Somehow, a child in her care ends up dead, and she ends up in prison awaiting trial for murder. The novel is structured as a letter she is writing to her lawyer from prison, describing what happened there and admitting that she made some mistakes, but she's not guilty of murder. Sounds like a great set-up! Ken enjoyed it, as he always does with Ware's novels.

Now, Ken has started 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)." I hope that Ken enjoys it as much as I did!

I texted our son, 26 (and recently moved out), this morning to see what he's reading now. He set the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind aside temporarily (but just bought book 4, so he'll be back to it before long!). He's now reading The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett, book one of The Demon Cycle. Amazon says it's a series about humans versus demons, in a world where humans must live in magical wards to protect themselves from the hordes of demons that come out every night. But the demons are winning, with more humans killed every night. Three young people dare to stand up to the demons and sleep outside the magical ward in a desperate attempt to rediscover the secrets of the past that used to keep people safe. He must be enjoying it because he already bought book two!

Blog posts last week:

TV Tuesday: The Stranger - Twisty Netflix thriller based on a Harlen Coben novel

Fiction Review: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - easy to see why this spooky & well-written novel is a 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?