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| Hosted by The Book Date |
Life
I'm going to try to keep this brief today because I have SO much to do to get ready for ... Big Book Summer 2026! This fun annual reading event kicks off this Friday, May 22, so come back here then for all the details! We'll be gone most of the week for a graduation and have to attend a funeral this afternoon, so I'm running out of time!
The good news is that my chronic illness relapse finally ended, thanks to (I think) restarting tirzepatide (microdoses) about a month ago. My energy is much better, and I've now had four days with no flu-like symptoms! I even left the house three days in a row last week--for an overdue haircut, my book group, and an orthodontist appointment. And I enjoyed a quiet weekend to myself (lots of time to work on Big Book Summer preparations), while my husband and son went to Atlantic City for golf and fun (my husband's birthday gift).
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| Purple irises in full bloom! |
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| That bright color makes me smile! |
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| Lovely days for the convertible last week (now 90's!) |
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| I was able to start talking tiny walks again last week! |
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| Lots of different woodpeckers at our feeder! |
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Chronic Illness Vlog: Relapse & Treatments - This vlog provides an inside look at my daily like with ME/CFS during a bad relapse, while I searched for new immune treatments (and found one!)
Weekly Reading Wrap-Up - Excellent YA, an outdoor thriller I'm loving, outstanding classic nonfiction on audio, and more!
LIVE CHAT: What Are You Reading? - I hosted my first-ever live chat on Saturday! It was a lot of fun, with great participation. You can watch the replay and see the chat as it happened. This discussion included SO many recommendations of excellent books that my TBR is overflowing! (You can skip ahead past the first five awkward minutes until more people joined and the discussion started.)
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I ended up DNF'ing The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post by Allison Pataki, after I read 100 pages and attended our book group discussion (I got a late start). This is historical fiction about the heiress to the Post cereal/General Foods empire. I really didn't think I was interested in the subject, but the beginning of the novel really grabbed me. Marjorie was just a young girl in 1891, when her mother took her very ill father, Charles W Post, to Battle Creek, Michigan, to visit the famous Dr. Kellogg and his Sanitarium. The doctor's methods are unusual, to say the least (and obviously, cereal grains play a large role!), but her father's eventual improvement seems more due to the homemade food in the home where they're boarding than from the great doctor's ministrations. A prologue in 1968 shows Marjorie hosting Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird in her Mar-a-Lago estate (I had no idea she built and lived in Mar-a-Lago!). I read as far as her (first) marriage and then listened to my book group discuss the rest. As I suspected, much of the rest of the book focused on her wealth, her marriages, the grand homes she built, and lavish parties she threw. One member noted that she would have preferred to hear more about her role in the business side of things. Our group gave it an average rating of 6.8, with ratings varied from 4 to 9! I'm just not that interested in that sort of "lifestyles of the rich and famous" narrative, so when I got home and looked at my bookcase filled with books I am dying to read, I decided to move on.
I am now reading Heartwood by Amity Gaige, which my husband gave me for Valentine's Day (he knows me so well!). Forty-two-year-old Valerie goes missing while solo hiking the Appalachian Trail in the last section, in the North Woods of Maine. This is a massive wilderness with dense tree growth. Beverly, lieutenant in the Maine Game Warden service, heads up the search efforts for Valerie, which include hundreds of law enforcement and volunteers and continues for over a week (so far). In the novel, you get the perspectives of many different people: Valerie herself, as she writes letters to her mother in her notebook; Beverly; interviews with Santo, who hiked with Valerie for much of the trail and bonded with her, and an older woman named Lena who watches the crisis unfold from afar while she chats with her electronic pen pal in Maine. It's excellent so far, filled with suspense and tension and great character development.
I finished listening to a classic nonfiction book on audio, Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck. I've been meaning to read this book for ages and was thrilled to discover that actor Gary Sinise narrates the audio! He's excellent and completely inhabits Steinbeck's voice as he drives cross-country with his pick-up truck camper and his French poodle, Charley. It's interesting and funny, filled with observations of the places he goes and the people he meets. I am especially enjoying his descriptions of places we've been to, like Maine (his narrative about how taciturn Mainers are is hilarious!) and the badlands of North Dakota (now Theodore Roosevelt National Park), where we stopped on our big trip last year. As a lover of road trips, travel, nature, and John Steinbeck, I thoroughly enjoyed this delightful travelogue.
Now, I am listening to A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving on audio. A group on Booktube is doing a group read of this in May. I enjoy John Irving but haven't read any of his novels in years, so I thought I'd join the fun! It's excellent so far, narrated by Owen's best friend, John, as an adult looking back at their eventful childhood together.
My husband, Ken, is still reading The List by Steve Berry, a book I put in his Easter basket. He is struggling a bit with the premise so far: an evil corporation that kills off its older retirees to save money! But he's still reading it.
Ken's daytime "slow read" is Moby Dick by Herman Melville, a classic we've both been meaning to read for years. He says he's enjoying it, and he's amazed by how witty and relevant the writing is, given how long ago it was written.
Our son, 31, is re-reading Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson, book 4 of his famed Stormlight Archive series, in preparation for reading book 5, which he got for Christmas. Sanderson is one of his favorite authors!
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