It's Monday 4/29! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Whew, I am back from the whirlwind nerd marathon that is Booktopia! Just got back about 8 pm last night, had a doctor's appointment this morning and had to refill my weekly medicine boxes, so this post is a bit late today.

We had a wonderful time at Booktopia in lovely Manchester, VT, at the fabulous (truly) Northshire Bookstore. I left Thursday morning at 9:30, stopped in Connecticut for lunch and a nap and to pick up my mom, and then I drove us to Vermont. We arrived at our guest house about 8:15 pm. so it was a very long day of travel! We stopped for dinner at the aptly named The Gnome Bistro in East Chatham, NY, and the food was delicious!

At The Gnome Bistro!

Friday morning I met two good friends from previous Booktopias at Up for Breakfast, one of many amazing restaurants in Manchester. I used my new gift card (which comes with the admission fee) to buy huge stacks of books (but all as gifts) and browse the many sections of the bookstore. 

Booktopia officially kicked off at 11 am, and then we had two days of interactive author events. I loved meeting Mary Beth Keane, author of Ask Again, Yes and The Half Moon!

Me with author Mary Beth Keane

She also sat with us for Friday night's group dinner, so it was wonderful to chat and get to know her better. Our table did very well in book trivia, though we were disappointed not to place in the top 3 (tough competition there!). The dinner and trivia game are always a blast! In fact, I had so much fun, I completely forgot to take any videos or photos until the very end, when people were leaving.

The aftermath of Friday's dinner & book trivia!

Me and my mom

I attended more author events the next day. I enjoyed all the ones I went to, and Simon Van Booy (I'll review his excellent novel later this week), Shannon Read (author of Why We Read), and Ryan Chapman (author of The Audacity) were all interesting and entertaining. (Excuse the strange settings of some photos--the elevator at the bookstore was out of service, so many events were held at the church across the street.)

Shannon Reed

Ryan Chapman

Simon Van Booy was hilarious!

Booktopia ends with an event Saturday evening where every one of the nine featured authors has ten minutes to speak. I enjoyed hearing from the authors whose events I missed. There was a special extra event Sunday, at a local auditorium, with Chris Bohjalian (a local Vermont author) speaking, but with my chronic illness, I just couldn't manage the extra day.

Caroline Leavitt

Amitava Kumar

Karin Lin-Greenberg

Then, we went out to dinner with some friends, old and new, and had a wonderful time talking and laughing (again, not a single photo). My mom and I capped off our weekend with a stop at Up for Breakfast before hitting the road for the long journey back home.

Our favorite breakfast spot anywhere!

Watch for my Booktopia vlog later this week--I didn't get many videos or photos of participants, but I got lots of footage of the authors and the bookstore.

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On the Blog

Movie Monday: Dune and Dune: Part 2 - my husband and I both enjoyed these movies, based on his all-time favorite book.

Fiction Review: The Half Moon by Mary Beth Keane - I enjoyed this intricate portrait of a married couple at mid-life.

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On Video

Old School Tag - I had an absolute blast making this video all about the books, movies, TV shows, games, and more that I enjoyed during my childhood and teens. Loads of fun nostalgia for you kids of the 60's, 70's, and 80's!

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 What We're Reading

I'm still reading a Booktopia selection, My Beloved Life by Amitava Kumar. This is a multi-generational novel set in India that begins with a man named Jadu, born in 1935 in a small rural village. Part 1 focuses on Jadu, but Part 2 changes to the perspective of his daughter, Jugnu, and later parts on his grandchild (those parts also take place in the United States and elsewhere). It's a sort of quiet read that I'm enjoying very much so far. There are a lot of fascinating details about life in India, against a historical backdrop, which has been interesting. It also delves deep into these characters, their lives, and their hopes and dreams. I enjoyed meeting the author who is a very engaging speaker.

 

I finished listening to The Boy Who Failed Dodgeball by Jordan Sonnenblick. I absolutely loved his novel, Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, one of the best middle-grade novels I've ever read that had me both laughing out loud and crying. I was delighted to discover that this isn't just any novel; it's autobiographical, focusing on Jordan's own sixth-grade experiences. Right from the start, with mentions of Evel Knievel, the Green Machine, and going to the rollerskating rink on Friday nights, I was grinning from ear to ear (I love nostalgia). He is also, as always, hilariously funny and also honest and warm. And it's read by the author! I enjoyed it so much that I'm going to look for his earlier autobiographical novel (about fourth grade), The Boy Who Failed Show and Tell.

 

For those long hours in the car this weekend, I chose a novel I've very much been looking forward to, Sand by Hugh Howey, which I got for my husband in print last year. We are huge Howey fans and were both spellbound by his highly acclaimed Silo trilogy (Wool, Shift, and Dust), and I enjoyed his short story collection, Machine Learning (reviews at the links). Like the Silo trilogy, Sand has a post-apocalyptic setting, where a whole new world has been created after some sort of disaster. In this case, it takes place centuries into the future, after the central U.S. has been transformed into a desert wasteland, but humans still carve out lives for themselves in this very different world. Our old world is buried deep under the dunes, and sand divers, like the siblings at the center of this novel, use new technologies to dive into the deep sand to look for "artifacts" that might be useful or valuable. It's excellent so far, and really helped last night when I was exhausted and still driving!

 

My husband, Ken, is reading a book I read many years ago (2012), that's been sitting on his side of the to-be-read bookcase for a very long time, Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks (my review at the link). It's set on Martha's Vineyard in the 1660's, about the unique friendship between a 12-year-old Puritan girl, Bethia, and the native son of a chieftan, Caleb. It's inspired by a true story--Caleb was the first Native American to attend Harvard. Historical fiction is not my husband's usual genre, but Brooks is such a talented writer (one of my favorites) that I know he'll enjoy this as much as my book group did. I don't think he did much reading while I was away this weekend!

 

Our son, 29, finished Raven Caller by David Daglish, book 2 in his The Keepers series. We gave him that one for Easter. He has been re-reading The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington, book 1 of The Licanius Trilogy and should finish today so he can start book 2, An Echo of Things to Come.

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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?

Fiction Review: The Half Moon

In February, I finally read Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane, as a Buddy Read, with a Booktube friend in Singapore (my review at the link). She and I both loved the intricate family drama and really enjoyed discussing it. So, I was thrilled when I spotted Mary Beth Keane on the author list for Booktopia, an annual event I attend each spring! I read her more recent novel (now out in paperback), The Half Moon, and found it to be another winner.

Malcolm seems to be living his dream, owning a bar called the Half Moon where he has worked since he was a young man, talking and laughing with familiar patrons each night, and married to the love of his life, Jess. But underneath the surface, there are several storms brewing. As the novel opens, a real-life winter storm is headed toward Gillam, NY, (the same town as in Ask Again, Yes). In the last hours before Malcolm closes the bar for the approaching storm, he gets some devastating news about Jess, who left him months earlier, saying she needed time to herself. When Malcolm awakes the next morning to find the power is out and the entire town is snowed in, he also gets a visit from the police who tell him that one of his bar's regulars has disappeared. And only a few people, including Jess, know that Malcolm and the bar are in deep financial trouble. It's the perfect storm, as all of these crises collide in one freezing cold, snowbound week in a small town.

While the present-day action all takes place over a week, flashbacks and characters' memories fill the reader in on all that led up to this week: how Jess and Malcolm met fifteen years ago, their hopes and dreams, their long struggle with infertility, the history of the bar, and what Jess has been doing since she left Malcolm. There are plenty of intriguing plot twists here, but as in Ask Again, Yes, the focus is on relationships and the characters' interior lives. In particular, this novel explores midlife, with all of its joys and sorrows, routines and disruptions, surprises and disappointments, all within a small town setting where everyone knows everyone else. I love this kind of emotional complexity in a novel with such layered real-feeling characters. Malcolm and Jess are dealing with a lot, and things seem pretty dark in the middle of the novel, but Keane wraps it up perfectly. I thoroughly enjoyed this thoughtful, warm story about relationships, changes, and forgiveness. I can't wait to meet the author this weekend!

296 pages, Scribner

Simon & Schuster Audio

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge
 

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Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible.

 

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Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

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Movie Monday: Dune and Dune, Part 2

My husband's all-time favorite book is Dune by Frank Herbert (the best-selling science fiction novel ever and winner of the first Nebula award in 1966). He's read it several times, he's read many of its sequels, and he's seen the 1984 movie adaptation. He was so excited when the recent Dune movie adaptation was released in 2021 and really wanted to see it on the big screen, but we missed it (I'm immune compromised, and theaters were still off-limits). He watched it by himself on TV when it hit streaming. When we heard that Dune: Part 2 was coming out this year, I told him I would watch the first movie with him at home, so we could see the sequel in the theater (I wear a mask). That's just what we did recently! We both enjoyed this fast-paced, epic sci fi adventure.

This is a complicated science fiction universe, so bear with me here--my husband will help me with a simple description (and of course, I will avoid all spoilers)! Arrakis is a desert planet, set tens of thousands of years in the future. It is the native home of the Fremen, people who live in harmony with the environment. But the huge sand dunes contain a powerful drug, melange, which is known as spice. Spice has many uses, including allowing people to travel faster than the speed of light, so everyone wants to control Arrakis and the spice mining and trade. The Emperor has given Arrakis to the House of Atreides to run, though the evil House of Harkonnen wants to control it. Duke Leto, played by Oscar Isaac, and Lady Jessica, played by Rebecca Ferguson, are the heads of House of Atreides, and their son, Paul (played by Timothee Chalamet), is set to inherit it. Lady Jessica is a Bene Gesserit, part of a matriarchal organization whose members possess almost superhuman mental, physical, and sensory powers. The Reverend Mother, played by Charlotte Rampling, comes to test Paul and discovers that his powers are quite strong (due to a combination of genetics and training). Paul has visions of a frightening future, but he doesn't understand them. Paul sees a young Fremen woman named Chani, played by Zendaya, in his visions, and he meets her toward the end of the first movie. The sequel picks up right where the first movie ended (no spoilers), and much of it takes place among the Fremen, where Paul and his mother are hiding.

OK, that was tough, but I think I managed to describe it in simple terms (my husband and Wikipedia both gave me way too much information! ha ha) and without any spoilers. So, clearly, my husband is  superfan and knows all about this universe, and I was coming into it 100% cold. I was very glad we watched the sequel just a few weeks after seeing the first movie. And we both enjoyed it! It's a complex world, yes, but the movie leaves out some of the background detail of the books. I was able to follow the plot and characters without a problem. It's basically a story about the battle for the planet Arrakis between warring Houses, so there are similarities to stories like Game of Thrones (though that is fantasy and this is science fiction) or Star Wars. But I wouldn't call it a war movie. Like those other TV/movie worlds, it is complex story-telling, filled with in-depth characters you get to know, with drama, love, and hate between them. It is also thought-provoking, as it deals with environmental issues and native people's lands being invaded by outsiders. And it's all set against this fascinating, unique world. The cinematography is amazing, and it's definitely one to see on a big screen if you can. Oh, and it has huge, monstrous sandworms! The acting and writing are excellent, and the human dramas have as much impact as the battle scenes. As a superfan, my husband loved it, which I think is high praise, as we all know that some adaptations of our favorite books don't turn out so well. And I thoroughly enjoyed it, as well. From the way Part 2 ended, it is clear there will be another sequel, and we'll be watching it from our recliner seats in the theater!

Dune is available on Hulu, YouTube, and Max, with a subscription, and for $3.99 on many other services, including Amazon Prime.

Dune: Part 2 is still available in some theaters (recliner seats have been game-changers for me!) and for $24.99 on several streaming services, including Amazon Prime.

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.

See where it's playing near you:

 

It's Monday 4/22! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

Booktopia week is finally here! Woohoo! I leave on Thursday to first drive to Connecticut to pick up my mom and then drive us both to Vermont. I can't wait to see all my Booktopia friends, eat some great food, talk with the authors and other readers, and enjoy all kinds of bookish  fun!

Last week was a busy catch-up week, in between our vacation and the Booktopia trip (in fact, I still have over 200 unread e-mails!). I led a Zoom meeting for our local support group, caught up with friends (via text), and got as much work done as I could. I weeded our smallest garden this weekend, and my husband mulched it. I love this time of year when everything is in bloom!

Our redbud in bloom

Garden weeded and mulched

Shades of purple: lilacs in front of the redbud

Our dogwood in bloom

This weekend, our older son and his girlfriend came to visit from Long Island. We just love having them here and spending time together. Friday night, our younger son was home for dinner, so we had all of us together around the kitchen table--made this mom's heart happy! This is the only photo I took all weekend- ha ha - love seeing those extra shoes in the entryway telling me everyone is home :)

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On the Blog

Catching up on reviews:

3 Great Middle-Grade Audio Books - Mini Reviews - I enjoyed these three audio books during Middle-Grade March, each unique and enjoyable.

Fiction Review: The Audacity by Ryan Chapman (a Booktopia selection) - In a Theranos-type scandal, the unwitting husband, Guy, is left stunned and betrayed by his wife and decides to go out with a bang. Not everyone's cup of tea, but I enjoyed it.

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On Video

Virginia Spring Camping Travel Vlog - Come along on our recent vacation to two beautiful state parks, plus a fascinating historical site, a museum, and some great food! Lots of photos and videos of nature.

Friday Reads 4-19-24 - a 2-week catch up, including several Booktopia selections, fiction, poetry, short stories, and a thriller on audio (under 15 min).

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 What We're Reading

I finished a Booktopia selection, The Half Moon by Mary Beth Keane, the author of Ask Again, Yes, which I just read in February (and loved!). Malcolm is the owner of the Half Moon, a longtime bar in his hometown of Gillam (same setting as Ask Again, Yes). He's married to Jess, a lawyer who recently left Malcolm, saying she needed some time apart. The novel flashes back to the past, to show how Malcolm and Jess first met and the horrible infertility struggles they faced, as well as Malcolm's history with the bar and how he came to buy it. Besides Jess leaving, Malcolm is also having financial problems. As the novel opens, a series of huge snowstorms hits the town, cutting off power and shutting things down for a week. As with her previous novel, this one is all about relationships, with lots of emotional depth, though there are some plot twists, too. I really enjoyed it and can't wait to meet the author!

 

I started another Booktopia selection, Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart by GennaRose Nethercott, a collection of short stories. She is the author of the acclaimed novel Thistlefoot. I don't read a lot of fantasy, horror, and fairy tales, but so far, these are intriguing and well-written. The first story is about young people working at a very strange roadside attraction, The Eternal Staircase. The second story features a group of middle-school mean girls who turn to witchcraft when a new girl arrives at school. So, these aren't necessarily real monsters and beasts (though I think there are some of those later) but more about the monster within us all. It's sort of horror-adjacent, but it was enough to give me really bizarre, restless dreams after reading those first two stories! This is definitely a daytime-only read for me I'm a wimp), though I'm interested to see what else she comes up with.

 

I've also started one final Booktopia novel in print that came in from my library, My Beloved Life by Amitava Kumar. This is a multi-generational story set in India that begins with a man named Jadu, born in 1935 in a small rural village. I'm still in Part 1, about Jadu, but Part 2 focuses on his daughter, Jugnu, and later parts on his grandchild (those parts also take place in the United States and elsewhere). It's a sort of quiet read that I'm enjoying very much so far, about 100 pages in. There are a lot of fascinating details about life in India, against a historical backdrop. It also delves deep into these characters, their lives, and their hopes and dreams. I'm looking forward to meeting the author.

 

I went most of the week without an audio book (gasp!), catching up on podcasts. I finally chose an audio I've been saving and really looking forward to: The Boy Who Failed Dodgeball by Jordan Sonnenblick. I absolutely loved his novel, Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie, one of the best middle-grade novels I've ever read that had me both laughing out loud and crying. I was delighted to discover that this isn't just any novel; it's autobiographical, focusing on Jordan's own sixth-grade experiences. Right from the start, with mentions of Evel Knievel, the Green Machine, and going to the rollerskating rink on Friday nights, I was grinning from ear to ear (I love nostalgia). He is also, as always, hilariously funny and also honest and warm. I'm loving this so far. And it's read by the author!

 

My husband, Ken, finished Righteous by Joe Ide, book 2 in his IQ series. I put this one in his Easter basket! Now, he is reading a book I read many years ago (2012), that's been sitting on his side of the to-be-read bookcase for a very long time, Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks (my review at the link). It's set on Martha's Vineyard in the 1660's, about the unique friendship between  12-year-old Puritan girl, Bethia, and the native son of a chieftan, Caleb. It's inspired by a true story--Caleb was the first Native American to attend Harvard. Historical fiction is not my husband's usual genre, but Brooks is such a talented writer (one of my favorites) that I know he'll enjoy this as much as my book group did.

 

I  forgot to ask this weekend, but I think our son, 29, is still reading Raven Caller by David Daglish, book 2 in his The Keepers series. We gave him that one for Easter!

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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?