It's Monday 4/11! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

More of the same this past week: visiting my father-in-law (whose dementia was really severe last week) daily, caring for my own chronic illness (a few good days and a few down days), and more cool, wet weather. It felt more like February than April yesterday!

We did get some sunshine and blue skies on Friday, so I went for a very short walk at our local nature center. I wasn't feeling well those last two days of the week, but I just had to get out, so I kept it short and slow and enjoyed the fresh air and sunshine! After so much rain, our creek was full and muddy and every tree had new buds on it.

High water!

Our iconic covered bridge

New buds on all the trees!

On Saturday, my husband and I turned an errand into a mini-getaway. We took our camper to an RV center, about an hour south of here, for repairs. We've been unable to travel for so long that this felt like a tiny road trip! We listened to a favorite podcast, I read magazines in the car, and we stopped for lunch while we were down there. We enjoyed the break from routine!

Wish we were going camping now!

I added two new videos to my YouTube channel last week:

• March Reading Wrap-Up
• Friday Reads 4-8-22

 

Remember, I'm not doing monthly summaries here on the blog this year, but you can hear about the great books I read in March in that video. I'll post my challenges summary here next Monday, after I finish my March reviews!

I finished This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger, our All-County Reads selection for this year and our next book for my neighborhood book group. I loved everything about it! I have been hearing rave reviews of Krueger's books for years, so I was excited to read this novel (my first of his). It's set during the Depression, beginning in 1932 at the Lincoln Indian Training School in Minnesota, which houses, among hundreds of other kids, two white orphaned brothers named Odie and Albert and a mute Indian boy found abandoned as a baby and named Moses. These three, plus a six-year-old girl, set off down the river on their own in a canoe to escape from violence. It's suspenseful adventure but also a moving and powerful coming-of-age story. This will definitely be one of my top books read this year.

 

This weekend, I started my next Booktopia book (click on Events and scroll down for more information), Black Cloud Rising by David Wright Faladé. This is Civil War historical fiction about a real-life unit of all Black soldiers, who were mostly ex-slaves just recently emancipated. As the Union army made their way through coastal Virginia and North Carolina, the newly-freed slaves rushed to enlist and join the African Brigade. The story is narrated by Richard Etheridge, the son of a slave and her master, who is now a Sergeant in the brigade. I'm only 50 pages in so far but am already immersed in the story and learning a lot about this part of the Civil War I wasn't very familiar with. I can't wait to meet the author in May!

 

On audio, I've been listening to a relatively-unknown classic, The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. This is not a detective story/mystery but science fiction! I didn't even know Doyle ever wrote in this genre. It's set before WWI and begins in England, when a journalist looking for adventure signs on with an eccentric scientist who claims to have found an isolated spot in the Amazon where prehistoric animals (including dinosaurs) still survive. It was the first novel that introduced his Professor Challenger character. Given that it was published in 1912, it has some cringy instances of racism, but the story is intriguing and compelling, and I want to see what happens next. It's a fascinating premise.

 

 My husband, Ken, just started a new book, The Sense of Reckoning by Matty Dalrymple (my review from last fall at the link). I love this series! It's about a woman named Ann Kinnear who can sense spirits and sometimes helps to solve mysteries. In this novel, Ann travels to Mount Desert Island, Maine, to help investigate a haunted hotel. That just happens to be one of our favorite places (the island is home to Acadia National Park), and the author always includes lots of details of the setting and location. So far, my husband is enjoying all those familiar place names, learning a bit of history we didn't know about the island, and enjoying the growing mystery of the hotel.

 

I don't know what our son is reading this week, but he'll be home for Easter!

Last week's blog post - just one! I have some catching up to do on reviews:

Middle-Grade Review: The Graveyard Riddle by Lisa Thompson - a mystery in a cemetery, plus some great middle-grade issues

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?