It's Monday 8/16! What Are You Reading?

Today is a very special day: it's my oldest son's 27th birthday! It's also his first birthday ever that we haven't all spent together, so that's a little sad. But, we had a brief but wonderful visit with him last weekend, and he received his gifts in the mail. He lives out of state now, with his girlfriend, and is working today (but a nice birthday surprise: a late start so he could sleep in!). In short, he is happy, and after all of his very difficult medical struggles the past 17 years, we are thrilled to see him taking these steps toward independence - best gift ever! 

My son's 1st birthday - how'd it all go by so fast?

 

Birthday party memories! For his 8th, we transformed our house into Hogwarts!

Of course, his birthday gifts include a stack of books! I had a lot of fun picking them out for him. If you've read my blog for a while, you know that he loves to read epic fantasy series - the longer, the better. So, I chose a couple of books that were next up in some favorite in-progress series, but I had the most fun picking out some new stuff for him to try. I got a great suggestion from an old high school friend and got lots of great ideas from this video, Top 10 Fantasy Series by Daniel Green - I may be watching Daniel's videos before every holiday, as he seems to like the same books my son does! If you or someone you love enjoys reading fantasy, definitely check out his videos!

I ordered from Bookshop. It's a new website with the convenience of shopping online (and easy shipping) that also supports indie bookstores! So, even though I had to ship my son's gifts, I could still buy on Bookshop and credit some of my purchase to our little local indie bookstore, where I usually shop. It worked perfectly, and shipping was quick, too.

Here are the books I ended up choosing for him, for fantasy fans:

• Charmcaster by Sebastien de Castell, book 3 of the Spellslinger series (thanks to Beth Fish Reads blog for that suggestion - he loves the series!)
• Call of the Hero by Robert J. Crane, book 10 of The Sanctuary series.
• NPCs by Drew Hayes, book 1 of Spells, Swords, Stealth series, about an NPC in a game who must become an active player to save his world - very cool premise (this is the one my friend mentioned).
• Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames, book 1 of The Band series - this is the one I heard about in Daniel Green's video linked above - he says it is funny, too, so a perfect fit.
• The Fantasy Fiction Formula by Deborah Chester, because it has long been my son's dream to try his hand at writing fantasy, and I am happy to help.
  

Life here is still pretty stressful and overwhelming, so I declared another Respite on Saturday evening. We didn't have much time (about 18 hours) and couldn't go anywhere, but we pledged to relax and enjoy each other's company during our respite. I wrote about it on my chronic illness blog. So, that brief break helped us both to relax a bit and de-stress. Today, I am on my own and pretty wiped out from the weekend, so I am trying to take care of myself and recharge.

I did manage to upload a couple of new videos to my YouTube channel last week (click the links to watch):

• July Reading Wrap-Up - brief summaries of the books I read in July and what I liked about them.
• Friday Reads, my weekly quick video on what I am currently reading and listening to.

Here's what we are all reading this week:

I am, of course, still reading the biggest book of my summer, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. My copy is "only" about 600 pages, but they are very big, densely-printed pages. Most versions show almost 900 pages. Believe it or not, this is my first-ever classic Russian novel! Really! We didn't read any in school. I'm already a third of the way through it so am feeling more confident that I will finish by the end of #BigBookSummer (Sept. 6).  It's set in 19th-century Russia (I had to look that up - there's really no mention of the timing of the novel), about Anna, a charismatic woman of the aristocratic class who is married and has a son. While visiting her brother in Moscow, she meets Count Vronsky, and the two are instantly attracted to each other and eventually begin to have an affair, making Anna's life very difficult. So far, I'm finding it easy to read (no archaic language), with short chapters and a lot going on. I'm working hard to keep the Russian names straight (everyone seems to have three names). It's starting to get pretty tragic for poor Anna, so I am hoping things get better for her.

On audio, I am listening to another Big Book (from my large audio backlog), The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man by Jonas Jonasson. I've been thinking about how to describe this very unusual novel! First, it's a sequel, and I have not read the first book, but that seems to be OK. Alan is 100 years old and is relaxing in Bali with his friend, Julius (a petty thief). They are both Swedish, and seem to have come into some money at the end of the first book. The two of them do have a lot of adventures, and the book is light and funny: from Indonesia, they ended up in North Korea! But the novel is also filled with facts about world history and global events, since Alan has lived through much of history and seems to know a lot about the world. He is also a first-class BSer, who seems able to talk himself out of anything! The friends travel all over, get into crazy situations, and somehow manage to escape. It's quirky and sometimes pretty outrageous, but it is also fascinating and very funny. I'm really enjoying the audio book so far.

My husband, Ken, finished his latest Big Book (his 3rd or 4th?), Genesis, a medical thriller by Robin Cook, the king of that genre. Neither of us has read a Cook novel in many years (decades?), but my neighbor dropped a couple of them off for us - thanks, Mari! This one has a fascinating plot. It's about a medical examiner in NYC who's performed an autopsy on a woman who seems to have died of an overdose, but her family and friends swear she's never touched drugs. The victim was also pregnant, and no one knows who the father was. The Assistant ME turns to a controversial new technique on her own: collaborating with an ancestry DNA website to try to find the identity of the mystery father. This one sounds ripped from the headlines and very current. Ken enjoyed it.

Now, Ken is back to the last of his Father's Day gift books, reading The Hotel Neversink by Adam O'Fallon Price. I chose this one from the list of 2020 Edgar Award winners (it won for Best Original Paperback). It's about a spooky hotel in the Catskills (a favorite vacation spot of ours). When the hotel opens, children begin disappearing, and that mysterious vanishing continues for generations. Asher Sikorsky is the ruthless patriarch who bought the hotel in 1961, and the novel follows his family, as his daughter tries to make the hotel profitable, and his grandchildren later grapple with the hotel's legacies. So far, my husband's not thrilled with disappearing children at the center of the plot (he loves thrillers but kids in peril is always tough to read about). It sounds like a creepy, ghost-y kind of story, so I may add it to my huge stack to read in the fall for the R.I.P. Challenge.

Our son, 27 today!, is still reading Rebel Spring, book 2 in the Falling Kingdoms series by Morgan Rhodes. He recently finished re-reading book 1, also called Falling Kingdoms, and was eager to move onto the next book. His summer internship includes some down periods each day when it's OK for him to pull out a book, so he's taking full advantage of that. That's pretty much a dream job for him--one where he is allowed to read throughout the day! 

 

 

Just one new blog post last week, besides my Monday post:

Fiction Review: The Summer Guest by Justin Cronin - a quiet, compelling story about family, relationships & secrets, set against a gorgeous backdrop.

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?