Ahhh ... it was such a relief to have a full week at home, after taking four trips in three weeks! Even though my chronic illness is much better, after finally recovering from the lingering effects of COVID with treatment from my doctor, all that travel was still a lot for me! I feel like I am back to my "normal" baseline, which still requires a lot of sleep and a daily nap, but my stamina is quite low after almost two years of relapses for various reasons. So, I am enjoying being in my own house, sleeping in my own bed, and just starting to begin some short walks and other very light exercise.
My main kind of activity lately is weeding our gardens (a little at a time)! They'd gotten a little overgrown after that hectic month. Overall, though, I've been absolutely thrilled this spring with all the lovely flowers here! Last spring, I got a little carried away after my neighborhood book group read Nature's Best Hope by local author Dough Tallamy, all about the importance of planting native plants. I bought a LOT of plants last May at our local nature center's annual native plant sale, and it took us a month to get them all into the ground! All that hard work paid off this spring, though, as they all came back up--some of them so much bigger than last year!--and bloomed beautifully. A little peek:
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Blue phlox and white anemone, planted last spring
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| New blue phlox and older yellow daffodils |
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| Amsonia blue ice, planted last spring - finally blooming! |
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My sad little azalea! About 15 years old & still tiny but blooming!
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Our purple irises have gone crazy this year! Love them!
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The other big deal in my life is ... my annual Big Book Summer Reading Challenge, which kicks off this Friday, May 27! This is the10th anniversary of the challenge, so I have some fun surprises planned, including a double end-of-summer giveaway and some cool Big Book Summer products that I will unveil on Friday. In the meantime, you can see the new logo I created this year:
In case you're not familiar with Big Book Summer, it is a fun and very easy-going challenge that anyone can participate in (even if it's Big Book Winter where you live!). A Big Book is 400 or more pages, and you can read just one over the whole season or two or however many you want. I like to choose a whole stack, including one classic, and devote my summer to Big Books, even though I never get through them all. The details will be explained in my post on Friday here on the blog (and I'll post a video on YouTube, too), but in the meantime, you can check out my post from Big Book Summer 2021.
So, look through your bookshelves and your to-be-read list and see if there are any Big Books you've been wanting to read!
Oh, and Big Book Summer and I will be featured on the Book Cougars podcast this week! Their new episode drops on Tuesday, May 24. The hosts, Chris and Emily, interviewed me when we were at Booktopia together, so check that out - besides, it is an awesome book podcast!
I uploaded two new videos to my YouTube channel last week:
Booktopia 2022 at Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, VT - a recap of our fabulous bookish weekend, complete with books & authors featured, photos, and video clips.
Friday Reads 5-20-22 - my brief weekly update of what I'm reading, in print and on audio
And here's what we are all reading this week:
I finished The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michelle Richardson
for my book group and absolutely loved it! In 1936, nineteen-year-old Cussy is working as a
Pack Horse Librarian, as part of the WPA, bringing books via mule to her isolated neighbors in the Appalachian hills of eastern
Kentucky. Cussy is the last living female of the Blue People of
Kentucky, a family whose genetic defect that caused blue skin was passed
down through generations. I had to go to Wikipedia to look
this up, and it is all based on fact, including the setting of
Troublesome Creek. It's a wonderful historical novel that delves into both things--the pack horse librarians and the blue people, who suffer horrible discrimination. Cussy
is a fabulous heroine, spreading literacy and the joy of books through
her very poor and insulated community. The poverty depicted here, during the Depression, was horrifying, so there are some very sad scenes, but there is joy as well and it ends on a hopeful note. My book group gave it an average rating of 7.5 (of 10) , and I'm still thinking about it, five days after finishing it!
I also finished The Year of the Horses by
Courtney Maum, one of our Booktopia selections, which I had to set aside briefly to read my book group book. This memoir is about the author's personal
battles with severe depression. She was married with a two-year-old
daughter when her insomnia and other symptoms finally got bad enough for
her to seek help. Looking back, she realized she had struggled since
childhood. With the help of therapy, she turned back to her childhood passion, horses and riding,
to help herself heal. She eventually became immersed in the world of polo. It's an interesting and engaging story.
Now, I am fitting in one short book before I begin to tackle my Big Books this summer: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu, a Christmas gift from my husband. I heard about it on a BookBub list of "uplifting science fiction" novels. I love anything to do with time travel, so this sounded perfect for me. It's definitely a very unique book so far! For starters, the main character is named Charles Yu, and he is a time machine repairman. He goes wherever (and whenever) people have gotten themselves into trouble and need help. His main goal in life, though, is to find his missing father, who was one of the early inventors of time travel before he disappeared. It's odd and twisty so far, and I'm enjoying it.
On audio, I started listening to a new book: again, trying to fit in one more short one before I switch to Big Books (yes, audios count, too!). I'm listening to The Final Six by Alexandra Monir, a post-apocalyptic YA novel. In this near-future world, climate disasters have finally passed the tipping point; the seas have risen and are quickly moving further inland, and it is now impossible to save the Earth. Plan B is to send a team of six teens out into space to set up a colony on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons that looks like it could support human life. A group of 24 of the best and brightest teens have been chosen to attend International Space Camp. Of those, the final six will be chosen. The story focuses on two of the 24 in particular: Leo, an Italian championship swimmer who is grieving the loss of his family and Naomi, a brilliant science/computer student whose life goal is to find a cure for her brother's heart defect. I'm completely engrossed in the story so far, as the teens train and compete for the top six positions.
My husband, Ken, finished reading Afterland by Lauren Beukes. I picked this one out for him because we both liked Shining Girls,
by the same author, and we are very excited about the new TV adaptation
that started recently on Apple TV, starring ... Elizabeth Moss! It's amazing so far! Meanwhile, this newer novel from Beukes is a
post-apocalyptic story about a world where most of the men are dead. A
twelve-year-old boy named Miles is one of the few boys left, and his
mother will protect him at any cost, from the many women who want a
piece of him: as a scarce reproductive resource, a sex object, or a
substitute son. It's described as a high-stakes thriller that Stephen
King said is "smartly written," so it should be good! Ken enjoyed it.
Ken is also preparing for the launch of Big Book Summer on Friday! So, he's reading some short stories in the meantime, from the collection Machine Learning by Hugh Howey, a book that I loved! There are some great stories in this collection of mostly science fiction and fantasy (I'm still haunted by the one about the Roomba that learned a little too well). The collection also includes three new stories from the world of Howey's best-selling Silo trilogy (all three books are perfect for Big Book Summer) that begins with the novel, Wool, one of my top books of all time. I hope he enjoys it as much as I did.
Our son, 27, told me this morning that he finished reading book 1, The Choice of Magic, of a new-to-him series, Art of the Adept by Michael G. Manning. He said he loved it so much that he immediately bought and started book 2, Secrets and Spellcraft. He thinks my Big Book Summer Challenge is hilarious because he doesn't normally read any book below 400 pages!
I am way behind on reviews, so just one new blog post last week:
Fiction Review: The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn - fascinating historical fiction, about a Russian woman sniper in WWII
