It's Monday 7/3! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

Happy 4th of July weekend!

 I had a sort of frustrating week last week, just working hard and feeling overwhelmed. As always, I know I am trying to do too much, but there's so much I want to do! On top of that, though, I kept getting urgent messages to upgrade to Google Analytics 4 for my two blogs before July 1. So, rule-follower that I am, I spent days struggling through awful behind-the-scenes tech stuff--not my forte! I have blogs because I'm a writer, not a coder. Google's instructions didn't even work for Blogger (which is owned by Google!), so I had to look for instructional videos, which still did not quite match up to what I was seeing on my own screens (of which I had about 10 browser windows open by then). I'm not sure I completed it correctly, but--even worse--after all that, I'm not sure I actually had to do any of it! I realized (too far into the process) that I don't actually use Google Analytics most of the time; I just use the simple statistics Blogger provides within the platform.

By Friday evening, I was feeling frustrated, overwhelmed, and grumpy. So, I took Saturday off and enjoyed a wonderful day with my husband. We went to a morning matinee of the new Indiana Jones movie, which was excellent! It was old-style movie fun, with plenty of suspense, action, and humor. After the movie, we went to a restaurant for lunch and sat out on their patio, with a lovely view of our favorite local creek. Take-out Thai food for dinner rounded out our day. And Sunday night, we watched the last-ever Ted Lasso episode - wah!! So sorry to see it end. If you haven't tried it yet, it's a must-see, full of humor and heart. We will definitely miss it. And tonight, we're looking forward to a picnic barbecue dinner with friends.

Movie in the morning - a treat!

Lunch al fresco

__________

On the Blog

More frustration from Blogger: last week, I wrote a review of The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara, and Blogger immediately tagged it as "not meeting community standards." They've been doing this a lot lately. In this case, they say it looks like spam (it's a book review exactly like the other thousands of book reviews on my blog!). I am still waiting for them to review it--I suspect the holiday weekend interfered with them doing it quickly--so I can't share that with you yet. They did let this one go through:

TV Tuesday: Silo - we are enjoying the TV adaptation of one of our favorite book series! 

And, remember, there is still plenty of time to sign up for the Big Book Summer Reading Challenge! It runs until early September, and you only need to plan to read one 400+ page book between now and then to participate. There's a whole community in our Goodreads group with fun Big Book chat all summer long. 

__________

On Video

Friday Reads 6-30-23 - my brief weekly reading update

Rootin' Tootin' June on the Range Tag - this was a fun one! All about books, TV, movies, and travel in the American West. I included some photos of our many trips out West.

__________

 What We're Reading 

 

Guess what? Yup, I'm still reading my biggest book of the summer, Voyager by Diana Gabaldon, book 3 of the Outlander series. At over 800 (large) pages, this is an intimidating Big Book, and it's been on my shelf for two years and was in my Big Book Summer stack last year! But as soon as I started reading it, I thought, "why did I wait so long?" She writes such fascinating, detailed historical fiction, with a touch of time travel and an epic love story at the center of it. The series is about a British woman in 1945 who goes back in time to 1700's Scotland. This book is no exception and was completely engrossing from the very first pages: action-packed, suspenseful, and filled with fascinating historical details. I'm over 600 pages in and still can't wait to pick it up again every day! I should finish it this week.

 

 

I finished my second audio book for #BigBookSummer Challenge, The Strangers, book one in the Greystone Secrets series by Margaret Peterson Haddix, one of my favorite middle-grade authors. Her books are always engrossing, with twisty plots and in-depth characters. This one focuses on three siblings: sixth-grader Chess (short for Rochester), fourth-grader Emma, and second-grader Finn. They are shocked to come home from school one day and hear on the news their mom is watching that three kids--with their same names, ages, and birthdays!--have been kidnapped from another state. Then their mom takes off urgently on a business trip, and nothing seems right. The kids, along with an older friend, begin to investigate. The secret here is a good one! I really enjoyed it and now want to read book two.

 

 

 

My husband, Ken, is reading one of his Father's Day gifts from me (and another Big Book, though just barely), The Quiet Boy by Ben H. Winters. He and I are both fans of Winters' The Last Policeman trilogy, but he says this novel is entirely different, a legal thriller with two trials woven together, one in the past and one in the present, involving malpractice and murder. He's enjoying it.

 

 

 Our son, 28, is now onto book nine, Shadowmage, of the Spellmonger series by Terry Mancour. This one is only about 800 pages long, a shortie for him! He loves this series.

 __________

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?