It's Monday 5/30! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Happy Memorial Day to those in the U.S.!

And Happy Big Book Summer to readers everywhere!

That was my big news of last week, kicking off my annual Big Book Summer Reading Challenge on Friday. This is what summer means to me, especially this year when we're not able to travel or plan vacations. I look forward to it all year ... as do a lot of other people, apparently, because sign-ups starting pouring in as soon as I posted it Friday!

You can read all the details in my Big Book Summer blog post, but it's simple and easy-going, like summer. A Big Book is any book--any type, any genre--with 400 or more pages (e-books and audios count, too). And you only need to read one Big Book between now and early September to participate! Many people choose 2 or 3 Big Books for the summer, but I like to pull a stack off my shelves (summer is also great for my TBR Challenge) to choose from throughout the season. You can see what I hope to read in My Big Book Summer Plans--I know I won't get through every book in this stack, but it's nice to have options! Everyone is welcome to participate (even if it's winter where you are). The details of how to sign up are on the challenge page. And check out the list of links at the bottom of that page, to see what others are planning for Big Book Summer. You can also watch my Big Book Summer video kick-off, which includes some background on the challenge, what I plan to read, and some Big Book recommendations I've enjoyed in previous summers.

Since this is the 10th anniversary of Big Book Summer Challenge, there will be a double giveaway at the end of the summer for all participants. And I also created some Big Book Summer products to help celebrate the milestone this summer! So, join the fun!

Oh, and Big Book Summer and I were featured on the Book Cougars podcast last week! I had a blast being interviewed by the hosts, Chris and Emily, who are friends from Booktopia. They have participated in Big Book Summer the last few years. My interview is toward the end of the episode at the link, but everything about their podcast is fun!

That's been the focus of much of my holiday weekend. In addition, our son and his girlfriend came to visit from New York, and we enjoyed a nice dinner with them last night and breakfast together this morning before they left. Great to spend time together!

Here's what we've all been reading this past week, with the start of Big Book Summer:

First, I finished my last short book before I began to tackle Big Books: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu. I heard about it on a BookBub list of "uplifting science fiction" novels. It's definitely a very unique book! 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, with lots of made-up science (it is, after all, a science fictional universe), but it's also an in-depth look at his relationship with his father through the years (he visits some key moments from his childhood), and it's funny, too! It was weird but enjoyable.

And then, onto Big Book Summer! Woohoo! For my first Big Book, I chose one of the shorter books from my stack, a fast-paced thriller to kick things off. I'm reading Dark Sacred Night by Michael Connelly, a favorite author of mine and my husband. This is part of his newer series featuring female detective Renee Ballard, but this one is a cross-over where Ballard works together with Connelly's most famous detective, Harry Bosch. They are digging into a very cold case that got under Harry's skin, while Renee also juggles her work as an LAPD detective on the "late show" (the midnight shift). It's great so far, though we also started watching the new TV show, Bosch: Legacy this weekend, which was a little weird to be reading about and watching the same character! If you haven't yet seen the original Bosch TV series on Amazon, we highly recommend it.

On audio, I finished 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 they think can 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. The story was engrossing and suspenseful and kept me rapt while weeding my garden last week!

Now, I am onto my first Big Book on audio for the summer! I decided to kick things off with A Lite Too Bright by Samuel Miller, which I am loving so far. As it opens, eighteen-year-old Arthur Louis Pullman the Third is trying to deal with the disaster his life's become, after he lost his car, his best friend, his girlfriend, and his college scholarship. His dad wants him to spend time with his aunt and uncle in the family home, but on his first night there, Arthur discovers an old journal written by his grandfather, the original Arthur, a Salinger-like famous but reclusive author whose first novel is still read by high school students. Arthur's grandfather had Alzheimer's, and a week before his death, he went missing and was found dead many hundreds of miles from home. With the help of the journal (written from the depths of dementia), Arthur is now trying to follow his grandfather's last movements, riding cross-country on trains and trying to decipher his last written words. It's excellent so far!

My husband, Ken, has started his first Big Book of the summer, too! Yes, he participates in the challenge as well. He chose a chunkster I loved that's been waiting on his side of the TBR bookcase: All Clear by Connie Willis. This is part 2 to the duology that began with Blackout, which I read for Big Book Summer 2021. Both books are outstanding and among my very favorites. The premise is that, in 2060, a group of Oxford historians have all gone back in time to different places and times within England during WWII. Their goal (as in all of this Oxford time travel series) is to study history by witnessing it first-hand. But this time, something goes wrong with the technology and some of them get stuck back in the 1940's in the midst of war-torn England, with three of them in London during the Blitz. These books are both so great! They're a mix of fascinating historical detail, nail-biting suspense, and the kind of twisty time travel problems that I love, plus humor, too. You can read my reviews of both books (no spoilers!) at the links above--I just read my review of All Clear, and now I want to read the book again!

Our son, 27, good-humoredly pokes fun at my annual Big Book Summer Challenge because he rarely reads a book under 400 pages! He favors hefty epic fantasies with 600-1200 pages in each book. He is currently hooked on the series Art of the Adept by Michael G. Manning. He finished book 2, Secrets and Spellcraft, last week and was so into the story that he grabbed his Amazon gift card and immediately downloaded book 3, Scholar of Magic, to his Kindle (which, by the way, is almost 700 pages in print!). He's reading that now and just loving this series.

Blog posts from last week:

Fiction Review: The Verifiers by Jane Pek - fun, suspenseful mystery with a sense of humor!

Fiction Review: The Hollows by Jess Montgomery - gripping 1920's historical mystery about a woman sheriff

Big Book Summer Reading Challenge 2022 - all the details and how to join the fun!

My Big Book Summer Plans 2022 - see what I plan to read this summer

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?