It's Monday 7/22! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

This will be a very brief post because I am still very sick. It was COVID--I finally tested positive last Tuesday. COVID is very dangerous for my immune disorder (ME/CFS), often triggering a worsening that can last for months or years. The last time I caught it, in January 2022 from my father-in-law's nursing home, I was very sick for about a month and my ME/CFS was worse for about six months. This time, I was able to get Paxlovid (it wasn't available last time), which has been shown to reduce the chances of lingering effects, so I am hoping that will make a difference. At this point, though, 10 days in, my energy is still pretty much zero. Sitting up for any period of time does me in (hence, today's short post), so I've been spending my days lying flat on the couch--thank goodness for reading! My sore throat is much better (not fully gone yet but almost), though the sinus and chest congestion feel just a bit worse today. Because of my immune dysfunction, I am very prone to bronchitis, so I'm hoping to stave that off. The good news is that I tested negative today, so hopefully, my family is safe now! My view this past week:

My cozy nest on the couch!

I try to get out on our screened porch when I can

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 What We're Reading

 

 

 

I am reading the biggest of my books for #BigBookSummer, Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon. I'm so grateful for this enormous, epic story to lose myself in! This is book 4 in the Outlander series, and though last summer I said that book 3, Voyager, was my favorite so far, this one is giving it some stiff competition! Much of it is set in America, in western North Carolina in the Great Smoky Mountains, an area we have visited and love for its natural beauty. Jamie and Claire are basically homesteading there, in the wilderness, and I am loving the descriptions of that familiar natural world, as well as the historical details and plot twists inherent in this series. And there have been some big time travel-related surprises that made me squeal in delight! Thank you, Diana, for giving me this fabulous world to escape to!

 

On audio, I finished listening to Hereafter by Tara Hudson, another book for #BigBookSummer Challenge. This is a YA novel about Amelia, who is dead--well, technically, a ghost. She is in the river, where she has once again had what she thinks of as a nightmare (though, of course, she doesn't sleep) where she has relived her terrifying death by drowning. Still shaken, she notices a car with its headlights on, slowly sinking, and next to it a boy who is also sinking. Although she can not normally touch or affect living people, she somehow manages to save his life. When he is pulled from the water and is being wheeled into an ambulance, she goes to him to make sure he is OK ... and he sees her! This has never happened before, and it affects them both deeply. There is a bit of a love story here (YA, after all), but also some fascinating afterlife details and even a war between good and evil. I enjoy a good ghost story, and this one was good!

 

As soon as my husband got home from his trip last week, he said, "Are you done with Lonesome Dove?" He immediately dove into that amazing novel. I think he's enjoying it, though we haven't been able to read next to each other in bed this past week since I've been isolating. (my review at the link.)

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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?

It's Monday 7/15! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

 

Life

Very, very sick today so will keep this post shorter than usual. My 7-month no-crash streak with my chronic illness is over 😪. Apparently, I was exposed to some sort of infection last week because I've had a very severe sore throat and swollen glands the past two days. That's actually quite common in ME/CFS (signs of immune activation), but it hasn't happened to me in many years. Two negative COVID tests so far, but that seems most likely.

Before this started Saturday night, I had a very nice, quiet week to myself, while my husband was golfing in his hometown in Oklahoma with his two closest friends from high school. I got a lot done at home, finished recording the audio of my book (a LOT of editing left to do!), and saw good friends twice last week. I also ran errands, so there were multiple chances for exposure to something (though I do wear a mask in public). On Saturday, I took several boxes of books to our library's monthly book drop-off and enjoyed a short walk in a local park before the extreme heat and humidity hit (97 today and tomorrow!).

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On the Blog

Movie Monday: A Quiet Place: Day One - fantastic movie with great character development, just as good as the first two!

Middle-Grade Review: Countdown by Deborah Wiles - Book one in an outstanding historical fiction series, The Sixties Trilogy, that pairs the perspective of a fictional child with real-life documentary-style historical media. 

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On Video

1000 Subscribers! Ask Me Anything! - I hit a big milestone with my YouTube channel recently (I'm almost up to 1500 now), with the help of Big Book Summer. As is tradition on Booktube, I'll do a Q&A video, so get in on the fun and ask me anything!

Friday Reads 7-12-24 - my brief weekly update of what I am reading

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 What We're Reading

Last week for Big Book Summer, I read The Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley, and it was so amazing!! I should have listened to all the rave reviews a long time ago. Eighteen-year-old Daunis often feels torn between two worlds in her hometown of Sault Saint Marie in northern Michigan on the Canadian border. Her mother's parents are French and Italian, and her father was Ojibwe, part of the local tribe. Daunis is loved and deeply involved in both families but doesn't always feel a full part of either. She's also outstanding at hockey, though she doesn't play anymore. Her Ojibwe brother is on the area's premier hockey team, and there's a new guy on the team, Jamie, who Daunis is instantly attracted to. But she also has a lot of worries. Her best friend, Lily, has a very persistent ex-boyfriend who's addicted to (and possibly even dealing) meth. Her uncle recently died from an overdose of meth, and Daunis can see the growing effects of the drug throughout her community. I was surprised to find that this novel is a mystery/thriller, but it is also beautifully written, fascinating with lots of details about Ojibwe culture, and has plenty of emotional depth. I even cried! I loved it.

This weekend, I started the biggest of my big books, Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon, book 4 in her fabulous Outlander series. I love this series that combines time travel with historical fiction and an epic love story and have so far read Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, and Voyager (my favorite so far). This one begins in America in 1767, with Jamie and Clare and friends in Charleston, SC. I'm loving it so far, and it's perfect immersive sick day reading.

On audio, I am listening to Hereafter by Tara Hudson, another book for #BigBookSummer Challenge. This is a YA novel about Amelia, who is dead--well, technically, a ghost. She is in the river, where she has once again had what she thinks of as a nightmare (though, of course, she doesn't sleep) where she has relived her terrifying death by drowning. Still shaken, she notices a car with its headlights on, slowly sinking, and next to it a boy who is also sinking. Although she can not normally touch or affect living people, she somehow manages to save his life. When he is pulled from the water and is being wheeled into an ambulance, she goes to him to make sure he is OK ... and he sees her! This has never happened before, and it affects them both deeply. There is a bit of a love story here (YA, after all), but also some fascinating afterlife details and even a war between good and evil. I enjoy a good ghost story, and this one is excellent so far.

When my husband, Ken, left, he was reading Big Time by Ben H. Winters, one of our favorite authors who wrote The Last Policeman trilogy. This is a sci fi thriller about a dark conspiracy to harvest and sell people's time, extracted like organs for transplant. Sounds like an intriguing concept, and I know it must be gripping and fast-paced because Ken was already two-thirds of the way through the novel in less than a week. I doubt if he had much reading time this week! He should be home in a few hours.

 

Our son, 29, might be still reading book 2 of the Licanius Trilogy by James Islington, An Echo of Things to Come since he started a new job two weeks ago! He's enjoying this one, but he won't have a lot of reading time now. And I need to adjust to the fact that I can't text him for a reading update on Monday morning anymore because he's at work! I did text him this weekend but forgot to get a book update. I need to adjust to not being able to text him on Monday mornings! He's loving his new job so far.

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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?

Middle-Grade Review: Countdown

Back in 2015, I read Revolution by Deborah Wiles, which was book 2 in her Sixties Trilogy. I absolutely loved the novel (my review at the link), but it took me this long to finally read book 1, Countdown. I listened to it on audio and absolutely loved it. These books overlay the experience of a child against a historical backdrop, showing their perspective(s) of significant events in our history. The result is engrossing and fascinating.

Revolution took place in 1964 in Mississippi and was about the Freedom Summer. In Countdown, the setting is Maryland, near Washington, DC, in 1962, during the Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis. As the novel opens, eleven-year-old Franny is in school. She's upset because her teacher never calls on her to read aloud during Social Studies and fumes while she calls on other kids all around her. The class goes out for recess, and Franny doesn't know what to do because she forgot to bring her Nancy Drew book, and her best friend Margie seems to have a new best friend, Gale. Their typical school day is interrupted by a shrill, shrieking sound: the town's air raid siren! They're supposed to hide under their desks when it goes off, but what do they do when they're outside? Their teachers call all the students together, and they crouch on the ground against the brick building and cover their heads in terror until the all-clear alarm when their principal calls out, "It's OK, kids, it's just a drill!" At dinner that night, Franny and her younger brother, Drew, tell their parents all about the frightening air raid drill. Also at the table are their older sister, Jo Ellen, who just started college, and Uncle Otts, who lives with them and sometimes thinks he is still fighting WWI. Tonight, the air raid siren set him off, and he was marching to all their neighbors' houses, wearing his helmet and passing out civil defense literature, much to Franny's embarrassment.

The story continues in that vein, focusing in on Franny's perspective, as she worries about school and friendships and is starting to notice boys (well, one boy), while the world seems to be in frightening chaos all around them. She tries to protect her little brother and her uncle, while her older sister is getting involved in protests at college with a new group of friends. Their father is in the air force, which makes the threats of nuclear attack, Communism, and potential war all the more frightening.

What makes the books in this series so special is that the author integrates real-life documentary-style media throughout: quotes from magazines, ads from the time, headlines and excerpts from newspapers, posters from schools featuring duck and cover drills, and excerpts from social studies textbooks of the time. In the print version, all of this is interspersed with the narrative, scrapbook-style. I worried I would miss some of that by listening to the audio, but the audio book is equally immersive, with real TV and radio ads, recordings of Walter Cronkite reading the news, radio programs, and even John F. Kennedy addressing the nation about the Cuban Missile Crisis. This helps today's kids to better understand exactly what Franny and her family and friends are experiencing, and it provides a fascinating window to the past for us adults. Integrating all of those primary sources with the story narrative is very powerful, as Franny deals with both ordinary kid problems and extraordinary world events. Franny is a very likable and relatable narrator, and the other characters are equally interesting and realistic. I absolutely love these books and will definitely be reading book 3. And I hope that teachers are using these books in the classroom!

400 pages, Scholastic

Scholastic Audio

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Alphabet Soup Challenge - C

Literary Escapes Challenge - Maryland

Big Book Summer

 

Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher in return for an honest review. My review is my own opinion and is not influenced by my relationship with the publisher or author.

 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. In the sample, you can hear some of those historical audio clips

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too). This sample is from part of Franny's narration.

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!