It's Monday 2/7! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Our older son is home visiting! We haven't really spent much time with him since Thanksgiving. Our car that he drives broke down on his way home for Thanksgiving and had to be left at a random (sketchy-looking) garage off the NJ Turnpike where it was towed. He and my husband finally picked it up on Saturday; the engine had been replaced (yeah, the entire engine!). They barely got home before it lost power steering. Apparently, the mechanics didn't reconnect it properly, so all the fluid leaked out. Oh, and while it was up there for two months in that sketchy garage, rats got into it and chewed a big hole in the backseat and the trunk! Little too much excitement with the car this weekend. So, my husband set rat traps (ew) and they're taking the car back into a shop today for repairs and a thorough check ... but a local repair shop that we trust!

A photo of the four of us Thanksgiving weekend

On the bright side, we get a little more time with our son! We had a nice steak dinner with the whole family here last night, we've been catching up on our favorite TV shows that we watch with him (he lived with us for a long time), and it's very nice to just have some downtime together when it's not a big holiday.

I've been trying to catch up here on the blog and with my YouTube videos. I uploaded two new videos last week:

• 2021 Reading Wrap-Up: Best Books of the Year!
• Friday Reads 2-4-22  - a brief update of what I was reading last week.

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

I decided to mostly devote my February reading to Black History Month, with a focus on Black authors and characters. My first pick is Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead, a novel my husband gave me for Christmas that I've been dying to read! It's excellent so far, set in the early 1960's about a man named Ray Carney, who is torn between the legitimate furniture business he started and his wife and children and the pull of earning extra money through criminal activities, like other members of his family. It's great so far!

 

I'm also reading (in between the cracks in my time!) a middle-grade graphic novel, Marshmallow and Jordan by Alina Chau. Jordan is a middle-school girl in Indonesia who was a star basketball player until an accident left her confined to a wheelchair. She finds an injured baby elephant that she names Marshmallow (her mom's a vet who tends to the injury) and begins to find a new purpose on the water polo team, though she has a lot of challenges ahead. I'm loving the positive portrait of a disabled girl who is dealing with both struggles due to her disability and ordinary middle school stuff, and the setting is beautifully depicted.

 

I listened to a short audio last week, Kent State by Deborah Wiles, a YA book. I loved Wiles' middle-grade novel, Revolution, set during the summer of 1964, about voting rights. This time, she is writing about the tragic killing of four Kent State students by National Guardsmen on May 4, 1970. This is a stunning, powerful book, and the audio is especially moving and well-done. It is performed by multiple narrators, each representing first-person views of the events surrounding that day: students at Kent State who knew the ones who died, townspeople who were scared by the students' protests, a National Guardsman who was there, and a Black student from nearby Ohio State. Each presents a different perspective on what happened and how people felt, all relayed as real people, remembering and discussing. So, so powerful--should be a must-listen for all students (and adults!).

 

Now, I have moved onto another audio that fits perfectly for Black History Month, Black Boy by Richard Wright, a memoir first published in 1945. The author talks about his childhood in rural Mississippi in the Jim Crow South, about poverty, hunger, racism, abuse, and fear. The audio is excellent, and hearing the author's words from a first-person perspective is especially evocative and powerful.

 

My husband, Ken, finished reading Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson, book one of The Malazan Book of the Fallen series, a fantasy novel recommended by our son. This is a long, dense book that took a long time to read. He said it was really complicated and hard to follow at first, but he ended up enjoying it. 

 

After that complex read, Ken is thoroughly enjoying some entertaining escapism with his favorite series, Jack Reacher, and reading the latest book (#26), Better Off Dead by Lee Child and Andrew Child, Lee's younger brother. I gave this to him for Christmas (every year!), and he's been looking forward to it. He and I just started watching the new Reacher show on Amazon Prime, and we are both (one fan of the books and one who's never read them) enjoying it so far.

 

Our son, 27, is reading Chronicles of the Black Company by Glen Cook, book one in the series of the same name. He says it's a series he's been wanting to read for years, and he spotted it in our local second-hand bookstore last year.

 

Last week's blog posts:

Fiction Review: The Sentence By Louise Erdrich - outstanding, especially on audio!

Nonfiction Review: Bottles of Lies by Katherine Eban - stunning investigation of fraud in the generic drug industry

Fiction Review: Happiness by Aminatta Forna - warm, quiet novel about two different people whose lives intersect

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?