It's Monday 5/17! What Are You Reading?

This week was Work in the Garden Week here. Inspired by the excellent book Nature's Best Hope by Douglas Tallamy (my review at the link) and a great discussion with my neighborhood book group, I may have possibly over-bought at our local nature center's annual Native Plant Sale! I spent all week weeding our beds (which are seriously neglected after my year+ of not being able to do anything), and we picked up our plants and two trees Saturday morning.

Our native plants (and trees in the back seat!)

We spent the rest of the weekend weeding, digging, and planting! Our son came by to help for a bit, but he's a busy young man with an active social life (I am hugely grateful to him for all the digging, which I couldn't have done). About half of the plants are in now, and I'm headed out in a few minutes to get some more of them into the ground. The beds are still pretty weedy, but I want to at least get all the new stuff planted. We have a very hot week coming up (going from highs in the 70's to the 90's!), so we'll be watering a lot this week.

6 new plantings among the older daffodils

Our Mighty Oak! (a Scarlett Oak)

Our older purple irises are in full bloom now!

My itty bitty azalea bush finally growing & blooming after 10 years!

We also had a lovely picnic celebration for my father-in-law's 96th birthday! He tends to go downhill in evening, so we opted for a lunchtime picnic at a local park. He really enjoys spending time outdoors, and it seems to life his spirits and improve his cognition, so we also had him over this weekend to watch us work in the yard. We celebrated his birthday with Popeye's, watermelon (his fave), amazing cupcakes from a local bakery, and gifts.

A fun picnic celebration for 96 years!!

With all that, I didn't quite finish editing and uploading my April Wrap-Up video, but that will go up this week. In the meantime, you can check out my brief Friday Reads video, where I gush about Clock Dance and Becoming!

 

And, just a reminder that it's almost time for Big Book Summer 2021!! My annual reading challenge officially starts every year on Memorial Day weekend, so the kick-off this year will be Friday, May 28. You only need to read one "big" book of 400 or more pages by the start of September (Labor Day in the U.S.) ... or you can read as many as you want! I am already pulling together my stack of Big Books (more than I can possibly read in one summer, as usual) to choose from, so look through your TBR shelves and list and get ready for some summer reading fun! If you haven't participated in the past, you can read the rules from the 2020 Big Book Challenge here--it'll be the same (easy-going like summer), except for the exact dates.

And, here's what we've all been reading this week:

I finished one of my Mother's Day gifts from my son, Clock Dance by Anne Tyler. My husband and I both enjoyed some of Tyler's earliest novels but then sort of lost track of her, so I've been wanting to read her more recent novels. The novel opens to the story of a young girl named Willa growing up in a small town in Pennsylvania, with a little sister, a kind father, and an unreliable mother. The novel revisits Willa's life at four different points--1967, 1977, 1997, and 2017--and Willa has a chance to change her life at each of these major turning points. I'd forgotten just how amazing Tyler's writing is! This novel is warm, immersive, funny, and uplifting, all about community and found families. I loved every minute of it, and even though the ending was perfect, I was so sad to leave Willa and her friends behind. I'm still thinking about it and missing it several days later, so that should tell you something!

Now, I am reading Force of Nature by best-selling author Jane Harper, another of her Australian thrillers centered around Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk. Five women go into the woods (the Australian bush) for a weekend-long corporate backpacking retreat, a mandatory team-building activity. The men's group returns on time Sunday, but when the women's group finally staggers out of the forest, many hours late, there are only four women. One of them, Alice, is missing. Falk and his partner get called in because Alice just happens to be their main informant in building a case against her company. As the search for Alice continues, the higher-ups urge Falk to finish obtaining the necessary evidence against the company. Did Alice merely get lost? Did her prickly personality go too far and get her in trouble with her fellow hikers? Or is something more sinister going on? It's great so far!

On audio, I've been re-listening to Becoming by Michelle Obama. One of my book groups discussed it on Zoom last week, and since it was still on my iPod, I thought I'd just re-listen to some parts of it to remind me of the details. Well, I am still listening! This is not a political book; it's the very personal story of Michelle's own life, from her childhood through to 2017, as they leave the White House. It covers her experiences growing up on the South Side of Chicago, going to Princeton and Harvard as one of few Black students in the 1980's, her zigzagging career path as she tries to figure out what to do with her life, her experiences as a mother, and yes, her support of Barack's political career, as he strives to find bigger and better ways to make a difference in the world. Despite the fact that she was a First Lady, her tone (the audio is read by her) is warm and friendly, and her story is surprisingly relatable. I am only one year younger than her, so I could especially relate to many of her experiences. I'm loving this audio all over again! It's like listening to a good friend tell you about her life.

My husband, Ken, finished A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra, a novel which garnered multiple awards and accolades when it was released in 2013. I read this book back in 2015 with one of my book groups and loved it (my review). It was quite a departure from Ken's usual thrillers. It takes place during the Chechnyan wars. A newly orphaned eight-year-old girl is taken by a kind neighbor to the local hospital, which is mostly bombed out. A doctor named Sonja remains there, working by herself day and night to care for anyone who manages to find their way there. The girl and the neighbor are still in danger from those who killed her parents, and they hide out at the hospital (he is a doctor so pledges to help Sonja in return). It's all about connections between people and how love and hope can survive in the worst circumstances. It's a powerful, moving novel, and Ken enjoyed it very much.

Now, Ken is reading a book I put into his Easter basket (oops, I mean from the Easter bunny!), Camino Island by John Grisham. It takes place on a quiet island off the coast of Florida, where Bruce Cable owns a small bookstore and also deals in rare books (which are occasionally not completely legal). A young novelist with writer's block, Mercer Mann, is paid a lot of money to go undercover and infiltrate Cable's circle of literary friends, to discover his secrets. It sounds like a fun book-centric thriller! He's enjoying it so far.

Our 26-year-old son is immersed in one of his favorite series, Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. He's now onto book 4, Rhythm of War, which is a mere 1232 pages ... and hardcover! He loves epic fantasy, the longer the better, and he thinks my annual Big Book Summer Challenge (coming up in two weeks!) where I read 400+ page books each summer is pretty funny. When he was twelve, we were halfway across the country on a day-long journey through airports when we realized he'd stuffed the hardcover edition of the complete works of Arthur Conan Doyle into his backpack for the trip! That's our boy.

 

Blog posts from last week:

Fiction Review: Forest Dark by Nicole Krauss - parallel narratives set in Israel that explore the characters' inner lives

Fiction Review: Astray by Emma Donoghue - outstanding collection of short stories, each based on a nuggets of real-life historical news 

Summary of Books Read in April - a great 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?