Happy Labor Day!
It’s also the last day of Big Book Summer 2025!! 📚📚📚 If you participated, enjoy finishing your last big book today, and please share what you read this summer in the Goodreads or Storygraph groups or in the comments of the Big Book Summer page (which has the links to the groups). If you have a blog or YouTube channel, you’re welcome to share any wrap-up posts or videos in the links list at the bottom of that page.
Life
We’re on our way home from North Carolina, where we spent a wonderful weekend with my family, celebrating my aunt’s 85th birthday. She’s my dad’s last remaining sibling, and I’m so glad we could be there! My cousin pulled off a major surprise for her mom, there were lots of friends and family at the party, and we all had a great time (group pic is my family on my dad’s side).
After the party, family gathered at my cousin’s house for a relaxed evening and campfire. This is me with my cousins (and another family member on the left).
We camped at nearby Jordan Lake State Recreation Area, a beautiful park with huge, wooded campsites where we enjoyed some downtime.
What We’re Reading
I am still reading The Love Songs of WEB DuBois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers (and no I won’t finish this very big book today!). This is such a stunning, powerful novel. It follows a modern Black family’s history and genealogy from the Creek Indians who originally lived on their farm in Georgia to the young girl stolen from Ghana and sold into slavery to the white settlers and slave masters whose lives all weave together to eventually create young Ailey. Their story is full of tragedy (and some gruesome abuse in multiple generations), though there is also joy, lots of love, and healing. Wow.
On audio, I’m still listening to The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese (and, no, I won’t finish this one today either!). Another outstanding multi-generational saga, this one set in India and starting in 1900. It’s beautifully written (I also enjoyed his Cutting for Stone), with in-depth characters I’ve come to care about. I’m really enjoying it.
My husband is still reading The Splinter Effect by Andrew Ludington, a thriller about a time-traveling archaeologist. He’s enjoying it and is almost finished with it (but was too tired to read last night!).
On audio, we were hoping to finish 61 Hours by Lee Child, but Libby took it back last week. Instead, we’ve been listening to She Rides Shotgun by Jordan Harper, a thriller on audio I loved years ago. I’ve been wanting my husband to hear it for ages. It won the Edgar Award for Best Debut Novel in 2017. It’s an action-packed novel with a great sense of humor about an ex-con marked for death who has to take his 11-year-old daughter on the road to keep her safe. He’s loving it, too. And I just found out that a movie adaptation was released August 1! Can’t wait to see it!
What Are You and Your Family Reading?
