It's Monday 6/6! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

We're fully into the annual Big Book Summer Challenge now! And since it runs all the way until early September, there is still lots of time left to join the fun! You set your own goals, even if it's just one book, and a Big Book is any book with 400 or more pages--any type, any genre. You can check out all the details on the Big Book Summer challenge page.

Join the fun!

Our "big" news is simply that my husband and I finally had a day off this weekend, just for fun! With all the trips, family visits, cleaning, cooking, etc. in recent months, we really needed a little break. Plus, the weather broke and went from 95 and humid all last week to a lovely, dry 80 and sunny this weekend. So, we greatly enjoyed a hike along an idyllic local creek on a perfect summer day Saturday.

Ahhh! Back out on the trail.

My husband, with one foot in PA and one foot in DE.

Perfect reflection of the trees in the creek.

We enjoyed take-out Saturday evening and some good TV, plus coffee and pain au chocolat on Sunday morning at home. And our son came back to visit yesterday, and he and I went to an out-of-state doctor's appointment today, through beautiful, scenic Amish farmland on another lovely day.

Here's what we've all been reading this week:

 

I kicked off my own #BigBookSummer Challenge with a fast-paced thriller, 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). I loved it! We also started watching the new TV show, Bosch: Legacy last week, 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. And all of Connelly's books are excellent.

I've also been listening to my first Big Book on audio for the summer, 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 (and only) 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, is reading his first Big Book of the summer, too! He chose a chunkster I loved, All Clear by Connie Willis. This is part 2 of 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.

 

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 just finished book 3, Scholar of Magic (which, by the way, is almost 700 pages in print!). When I asked what he plans to read next, he grinned and said book 4! That would be Disciple of War. He's really loving this series and says the characters are fully-developed and really pull you into the stories.

Blog posts from last week:

TV Tuesday: Shining Girls - I loved this book and am loving the TV adaptation - so good!!!

Fiction Review: The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michelle Richardson - this novel surprised me with its emotional depth and historical detail.

Memoir Review: The Year of the Horses by Courtney Maum - one woman's struggle with depression and how horses and polo helped her begin to heal

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?