It's Monday 4/3! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

NOTE: If you subscribe to my blog, my April newsletter is late due to problems with the provider--I'm hoping they fix the issues today!

Life

Happy Spring!

Happy Easter!

I have a super-busy week coming up, with loads of appointments, meetings, interviews, etc. crammed into three days. Then we'll drive to my hometown, Rochester, NY, to celebrate Easter with family. 

Last week was a celebratory one for us; my husband and I are still filled with joy about our older son being healthy enough to manage a full-time job now and finding his dream job at just the right time. We had a wonderful phone call last night to get all the details of his first week. He actually ended up working six days straight, since they had something scheduled on Saturday. His boss assured him this was very rare. But he managed it OK!! He handled the commute (three trains) fine, likes his co-workers, and is excited about the work and already learning a lot. I can tell he loves being intellectually challenged again. He's been chronically ill since age 10 (now 28), so this all feels like a miracle to us. We hung up the phone, and I burst into tears (happy ones).

Spring finally feels like it has arrived here! My favorite harbinger of spring, forsythia, is all over. I just love that eye-popping yellow, especially against a brilliant blue sky. Daffodils are up, too; ours are a bit later since they're in a shadier spot. And, if you've been following my blog for a while, you may remember my excitement two years ago when I bought lots of native perennial plants from our local nature center (inspired by Nature's Best Hope by Doug Tallamy) that took us a month to plant! It's so exciting now to see them coming back up for the second year. We worked on cleaning up our gardens this week. I'll post more pictures when the newer plantings bloom!

My fave sight in spring: bright yellow forsythia!

Our daffodils have finally bloomed!

Everything blooming in a neighbor's yard

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On the Blog

 Fiction Review: Be with the Dead by Matty Dalrymple - my favorite mystery/suspense/thriller series takes on the publishing industry with the main character talking with two dead thriller authors!

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On Video

In or Out Book Tag - a fun tag video about likes and dislikes when it comes to books and reading.

Friday Reads 3-31-23 - my quick weekly reading update  

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What We're Reading

I finished reading my April book group read, The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. I enjoyed The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Benedict, so I've been looking forward to this one. It's historical fiction based on the real life of Belle da Costa Greene, personal librarian for J.P. Morgan and his famous Pierpont Morgan Library of historical manuscripts, books, and art, beginning in 1908. Belle had Morgan's complete authority in purchasing decisions for the esteemed collection and became famous in her own right, doing a job that was typically handled by men at that time. But Belle had a secret: she was actually a Black woman, passing as white in very public persona and moving among the upper echelons of Gilded Age society. It was excellent, detailing Belle's fascinating job as well as the pain and anxiety she endured in hiding her true self from the world. I'm looking forward to the discussion on Wednesday.

 

I also finished a middle-grade graphic memoir, A First Time for Everything by Dan Santat. Graphic novels for review went digital last year, and I only had a very old Kindle (black and white). Last week, I finally figured out how to download the PDFs and read them on my new iPad Mini. I'm so excited to be catching up on graphic novels again, and this was my first in a long time. It was wonderful, about how a three-week study abroad program the summer before high school completely changed the author's life. It's when he gained confidence, started to like himself (he was teased and bullied at home), and began to realize how important drawing was to him! It's filled with gorgeous illustrations of the story but also of the many European countries they visited. Highly recommended! My Friday Reads video includes a peak at the pages.

Now, I am back to books for Booktopia 2023! That's a fabulous annual book event held in Vermont the first weekend in May, where readers and authors hang out together--tickets are still available! (Click Events and scroll down to the bottom.) Here's my summary from Booktopia 2022. The booksellers choose about 8 authors with new books coming out. I just started reading Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett, an unusual novel narrated by a group of dead people in a town cemetery! Yup, you read that right. In a small New Hampshire town, 22-year-old Emma returns home, a medical school drop-out. Her father is dying from a mysterious brain disease and sees animals all over, as well as Harold, a long-dead naturalist in the area who once lived in their house ... with a lot of wild animals. That's about as far as I've gotten so far, but the writing is excellent; it's intriguing, warm, and funny.

 

I finished listening to a middle-grade audio, The Midnight Children by Dan Gemeinhart, released last summer. I always enjoy Gemeinhart's novels; The Honest Truth and The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise are two of my favorites. A boy named Ravani Foster lives in a town called Slaughterville. He's a nice kid, but he's lonely and is bullied a lot. One night, looking out his bedroom window at midnight, he sees seven children of different ages carrying suitcases get out of a truck and enter an abandoned house on his dead-end street. Ravi gradually gets to know the kind and quiet Virginia and eventually, the other kids, too. But this family carries some deep--and dangerous--secrets. It was a wonderful story about friendship and family, with a bit of magic in an otherwise realistic narrative, set against the gruesome backdrop of a town named after its main industry, a slaughterhouse.

 

Now, I'm listening to This Is Our Place, a YA novel by Vitor Martins that caught my eye for its setting and its unique story. It's set in Brazil and is narrated by a house! Yes, I've got some unusual narrators going on right now. In this novel, we hear (from the house) about three different teen residents of the house: one in 2000, one in 2010, and one in 2020. It's great so far.

 

  My husband, Ken, finished reading Across the Sand by Hugh Howey and says this newer series is just as good as Howey's Silo trilogy: Wool, Shift, and Dust. Now, he's made a sharp turn and started reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I love Dickens, and this one is my favorite, so he bought a copy recently when we visited an indie bookstore last month. I love to hear him laughing while reading it and reading passages out loud to me because this novel really shows off Dickens' wit.

 

I was so excited to hear about my son's new job yesterday that I forgot to ask what he's reading! But since he worked six long days last week, I'm guessing he is still reading book 3, The Four-Part Key, of The Aldoran Chronicles by Michael Wiseheart. He really enjoys this author's novels.

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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?