It's Monday 12/20! What Are You Reading?

Another hectic week here last week, as we quickly roll toward Christmas and the end of the year! I'm still not sure where the last twelve months went. 

The highlight of our week was taking a break from all the stress of caring for my father-in-law and getting ready for the holidays. We spent 24 hours down at the beach (about two hours from here) and really enjoyed the brief getaway! The weather wasn't great (though on Saturday it was about ten degrees warmer than at home), but we enjoyed a walk on the beach, some shopping for stocking stuffers, and lots of great food. 

On Sunday I had my book signing at Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach, which is an amazing indie bookstore that sells a wide selection of books, plus gifts, local stuff, and even has a cafe with coffee and baked goods. I really enjoyed being there and chatting with customers. There's a wonderful community  at the beach; people are very kind and friendly. So, I met some nice people, talked with others about their chronic illness experiences, and sold some books, too! A few of my friends and family stopped by, too, so all in all, it was a fun day.

I did manage to catch up a bit on my videos last week and edited and posted two new ones:

• November Reading Wrap-Up - I talk about each of the 8 books I read/listened to last month.
• Friday Reads 12-17-21 - my usual weekly update, with a little extra about our Christmas tree and Connie Willis' books, which are amazing!

And here's what we've all been reading this past week:

I am still reading All Clear by Connie Willis, which is book two of the two-book series that started with Blackout. THESE ARE AMAZING BOOKS! (There, I feel better.) I read that first one for #BigBookSummer this year and was disappointed to find that it ended in a cliff-hanger! But now I am fully immersed back into this world and so enjoying it. Both books are part of Willis' Oxford Time Travel series (hear more about it in this video), about a group of historians--grad students at Oxford--in 2060 who travel back in time in order to witness historical events firsthand. In this one, many historians have all been sent back to World War II in England, each with his or her own assignment in different parts of England and at different times. But the time travel technology starts to glitch, and some of them are unable to return home. All of her books feature amazing historical detail and the mind-bending fun of time travel, but this one is also super suspenseful, as the 2060 historians are not only in personal danger, being stuck in WWII, but are also worried about unintentionally changing history, given their long stays in the past--perhaps even changing the outcome of the war. There is a lot at stake, and with Willis' stunning way of capturing history, plus her talent with creating tension, the suspense is keeping me up late at night reading! It's a long book, but I am loving every minute of it.

I forgot to mention last week that I have also been reading (in small bits of time) a middle-grade/teen graphic memoir, Friends Forever by Shannon Hale, with illustrations by LuUyen Pham. This is the third book in their trilogy of graphic memoirs that started with Real Friends and Best Friends. All three books are based on Shannon's real-life childhood and adolescence. In this third book, Shannon is now in eighth grade. She expected this to be a great year, but she doesn't feel great. All of her friends are interested in boys (and vice-versa), but no boys seem to be interested in her. She wants to be perfect: successful and pretty and maybe even famous someday! But, instead she feels insecure and out of place and unsure of what she actually wants. Meanwhile, her Mormon upbringing (not mentioned by name in this book) keeps emphasizing that her only role as a woman is to get married and be a good wife and mother, but Shannon learns about the Equal Rights Amendment and thinks she might want more out of life. It's excellent so far, with full-color drawings bringing Shannon and her friends to life on the pages.

I am still listening to--almost finished with--Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune. I’ve been hearing a lot of great reviews of both this novel and Klune’s first one, The House in the Cerulean Sea, so I wanted to find out for myself. This is an unusual novel about the afterlife, described by one reviewer as “A Man Called Ove meets The Good Place”—sold! Wallace is a buttoned-up lawyer with no compassion who suddenly dies of a heart attack. He is sitting in the church, watching his own funeral—dressed embarrassingly in flip-flops, sweat pants, and an old Rolling Stones t-shirt—when a young woman joins him and explains that she is a reaper, there to guide him after his death. It takes Wallace a while to even believe he is dead, but meeting Hugo, the ferryman, begins to convince him. Wallace takes his time in this in-between place, but I won't spoil all that happens. I've really been enjoying this unusual book because it is fun and very funny but also has tremendous emotional depth and is very moving.

My husband, Ken, is still reading Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson, book one of The Malazan Book of the Fallen series. Our son picked this out for him; it is one of his favorite fantasy novels, and he wanted his dad to try it. The description says, “Vast legions of gods, mages, humans, dragons and all manner of creatures play out the fate of the Malazan Empire in this first book in a major epic fantasy series.” Ken isn’t nearly as big a fan of epic fantasy as our son is, but he’s always willing to try a book our son thinks he’ll enjoy. He says it's complicated so far, as he's trying to keep straight not only the characters but the types of magic and other characteristics of this world, but our son assures him it will all come together! Neither of us had a lot of reading time this past week.

Last I heard, our son, 27, was reading Spinning Silver by Naomi Novak, which was a finalist for both the Nebula and Hugo awards and on many Top Ten lists. I don't know if it is technically a sequel, but it is set in the same fairy tale world as Uprooted, another book he enjoyed reading. I just picked up a big stack of fantasy novels for him at the bookstore this morning--I can't wait for Christmas! Both to see our son and to give him gifts I know he will love.

 

 

Blog posts from last week:

Nonfiction Review: An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives by Matt Richtel - excellent book that is informative and also engrossing.

Nonfiction Review: No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) by Kate Bowler - this author and podcaster is my personal hero, and her book (much like her podcast) made me laugh and cry and tab dozens of passages.

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?

Nonfiction Review: No Cure for Being Human

In case you somehow missed my gushing (in videos and blog posts) about how much I love author Kate Bowler, let me fill you in. Kate hosts a podcast called Everything Happens that has quickly become my all-time favorite podcast. Every episode makes me both laugh out loud and tear up. Listening to one recent episode, she said something so hilarious and unexpected that I almost spit my tea across the room and immediately made my husband listen, too (he agreed). You can read more about her podcast in this post I wrote on my chronic illness blog. So, when I heard Kate had a new book coming out, I knew I wanted to read it. I picked it up at a local indie bookstore this fall, and it was my first book read for Nonfiction November. My review is so late because I wanted to wait until I had the time to do this wonderful book justice. No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) by Kate Bowler was just as moving as I'd expected and, like her podcast, made me both laugh and cry.

Kate is living with incurable cancer. She has gone through every kind of treatment and surgery you can imagine and is OK for now, but she still has to endure periodic treatments and live with the shadow of cancer hanging over every moment. This has made her incredibly honest and open and helped her to reevaluate what's important in life. Both her podcast (see the logo above) and this book are based on the idea that when something bad happens to you--cancer, like Kate, or living with chronic illness, like me, or divorce or any other kind of loss or chronic struggle--well-meaning people jump in with all sorts of unhelpful comments and advice. Much of this derives from our entire society's focus on a culture of "toxic positivity," which includes harmful beliefs along the lines of "if you just try hard enough, you can overcome anything," which those of us who've dealt with loss or chronic issues know is not really true. All the positivity in the world won't cure Kate's cancer or my immune disorder. In the book, Kate shares the details of her journey with cancer while including some of these myths she's run into versus the honest truths of real life. Chapters include classic feel-good lines like Best Life Ever, Bucket Lists, YOLO (You Only Live Once), and more. She debunks each of these in turn while sharing her intimate story of struggle and survival. Here, she tackles the ever-popular Bucket Lists:

" ... We have made bucket lists into a new form of experiential capitalism. Hang gliding. Snorkeling. Times Square on New Year's Eve and Paris in the spring. A successful life is one that can be completed.

The problem with aspirational lists, of course, is that they often skip the point entirely. Instead of helping us grapple with our finitude, they have approximated infinity. With unlimited time and resources, we could do anything, be anyone. We could become more adventurous by jumping out of airplanes, more traveled by visiting every continent, or more cultured by reading the most famous books of all time. With the right list, we would never starve with the hunger of want.

But it is much easier to count items than to know what counts."

That was one of dozens of passages I tabbed in my book because Kate has such a way with words and an ability to get to the heart of the truth that I always feel like she is talking directly to me. And her amazing sense of humor keeps popping up in unexpected places and surprising me, like this excerpt from a chart at the back of the books of "Cliches We Hear and Truths We Need":

"Things People Say                            A More Complicated Truth

Carpe Diem                                        I mean, yes, unless you need a nap.

Let go and let God.                            God loves you, but he won't do your taxes."

You might be thinking that a book about someone's cancer journey (with such an uncertain future) would be depressing, but it's not. Kate has such an amazing ability to crystallize her experiences and thoughts into universal truths. And she is very much an optimist ... but an optimist who has had the ice cold, bracing truth of real life thrown in her face. The result is raw emotion, honesty, and openness, all tempered by a wonderful sense of humor just when you need it. The book had very much the same effect on me that her podcast does: laughter, tears, and wanting to write down half of what she says to remember. She has an amazing talent for saying just what I need to hear. I find listening to her or reading her book to be a very comforting and reassuring experience, as she makes me realize I am not alone and I can have a happy life without embracing all the go-go-go/do-do-do pop culture positivity we see every day online. This is my life, limits and all, and Kate helps me to accept that and find joy in it. If you have not yet discovered Kate, this book is a great place to start.

202 pages, Random House

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.

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here, with Kate's soothing voice narrating her own words, and/or download it from Audible - listen to get an idea of her honesty and humor, even in the face of horrible circumstances.

 

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!

  
  

Or you can order No Cure for Being Human from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.

Nonfiction Review: An Elegant Defense

One of my audiobook picks for Nonfiction November was An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives by Matt Richtel. This book caught my eye when it was released in 2019, in part because I have a chronic illness that is an immune disorder, but it became even more relevant--for everyone--when the COVID-19 pandemic began. I learned a lot listening to this book and found it very engaging.

As the sub-subtitle indicates, this book explains the complexities of the immune system in part by looking at its role in the lives of four real-life patients: one man with cancer undergoing immunotherapy, one man who's been living with AIDS since the 80's, and two women with different types of autoimmune conditions. The author also plays a personal role in the narrative, as the cancer patient is his childhood friend, Jason, and the reason he began researching the immune system in the first place. He not only explains his disease (and that of the other three patients) but tells us about each of them personally and what their lives are like so that we care about them. In addition to telling the stories of these four patients as a framework for the book, Richtel also reviews the history of immune medicine and interviews the top doctors and researchers in the field, including one immune expert at the top of his career, Dr. Anthony Fauci (who no one in the general public had ever heard of when this book was published!). If you've ever wondered if Dr. Fauci was properly qualified to lead our fight against the pandemic, this book will unintentionally answer that question with a resounding yes. In fact, much of the book is extra-interesting in light of the public health crisis of the past two years. The author explains the complexities of the immune system in easy-to-understand ways and directly applies the science to real people through his case studies. He describes the amazing advances in medical science and the study of the immune system in the past 100 years or so, but also acknowledges the limits of our current knowledge.

One thing I really liked about this book was that the author is not a medical doctor or scientist. He is a reporter, someone who became interested in the immune system because of his friend's cancer battle, so he approaches the topic from a layperson's perspective. This is probably why he does such a great job of describing this complicated system in simple terms. He doesn't oversimplify, either, and gets into some of the nitty-gritty of different kinds of cells within the immune system. I thought I already knew a lot about the immune system, but I learned plenty while listening to this book. My only disappointment was that there are no easy answers for those of us suffering from dysfunctional immune systems! It's one of the last frontiers of medical science. For as much as we've learned about how the immune system works, we still don't know how to fine-tune it or normalize a malfunctioning immune system. As he explains, even the best immune treatments still have significant downsides: immunotherapy can cure cancer but cause an autoimmune condition, where the immune system attacks itself, and suppressing the immune system can feel miraculous to someone with an autoimmune disease at first but that suppressed immune system can cause its own problems. Though I had a personal interest in the topic of this book, everyone can learn something from this fascinating and easy-to-read investigation of the immune system, especially in our current pandemic environment. It's not only informative but engrossing; listen to the audio sample below to see what I mean.

448 pages, William Morrow

HarperAudio

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.

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here, with the narrator describing Jason and his cancer diagnosis, and/or download it from Audible.

 

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!

   

 

Or you can order An Elegant Defense from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.

It's Monday 12/13! What Are You Reading?

How can it possibly be December 13 already? How can it even be December? As usual, I am way behind with ... well, everything! This time of year tends to be really overwhelming for me, but I am making progress, bit by bit, in getting ready for the holidays. I finished and submitted my article last week - yay! So, now I can focus on holiday prep.

We're still struggling with my father-in-law's dementia, but we did have some good times last week, too. I managed a short walk at our local nature center last Tuesday (which now seems like weeks ago!) on a gorgeous fall day. 

Our iconic local covered bridge on a lovely fall day

And last night, we decorated our Christmas tree, which is one of our favorite holiday traditions! Our ornaments all represent memories--of the kids as they grew up, many family vacations, places we visited, etc--so it's always fun to get them out and reminisce while we put them on the tree, with holiday music playing. We may be getting to the point where we have too many ornaments to fit on the tree! But many of them belong to our sons and will go with them when they permanently move out. Each year, on Christmas Eve, they each open one gift, a new ornament, with the idea being that their first own Christmas tree won't be bare like mine was! One son wasn't able to be home last night, and we missed him very much, but the other son was here and his girlfriend (and my father-in-law, too).

My husband, son, and I next to our finished tree!

This week, the big event is my book signing on Sunday (9-11 am) at Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach! We love this awesome indie bookstore that is a couple of hours from our home in Delaware. So, this also means a quick road trip! We'll be going down Saturday and spending the night; my husband and I can both use a little getaway. So, if you live in the area, stop by to say hello!

I didn't have much time last week, so I just got one new video up, my usual Friday Reads update, where you can watch me gush about how much I love the books I am currently reading/listening to!

Speaking of books, here's what we have all been reading this past week:

I finished reading Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce and discussed it with my neighborhood book group. We absolutely loved Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and its companion novel, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, so when this latest novel was suggested, it was a shoe-in! Margery Benson is a large woman in her 40’s in England in 1950 who feels at loose ends, having lost all of her family and working in an unsatisfying job as a Home Ec teacher. On impulse, she does something reckless and then decides to embark on an expedition to a remote island in the Pacific to look for a never-before-seen (perhaps mythical?) golden beetle. Accompanying her, by some strange twists of fate, is Enid Pretty, a wild young woman in a bright pink suit who is Margery’s complete opposite. It has the same sense of warmth, absurdity, and humor as her other novels, as Margery and Enid find themselves while searching for the beetle. I loved the combination of moving moments and laugh-out-loud moments, and most of my book group agreed.

Now, I am back to the book I had to set aside to get ready for book group, All Clear by Connie Willis, which is book two of the two-book series that started with Blackout. I read that first one for #BigBookSummer this year and was disappointed to find that it ended in a cliff-hanger! But now I am fully immersed back into this world and so enjoying it. Both books are part of Willis' Oxford Time Travel series, about a group of historians (grad students at Oxford) in 2060 who travel back in time in order to witness historical events firsthand. In this one, many historians have all been sent back to World War II in England, each with his or her own assignment in different parts of England and at different times. But the time travel technology starts to glitch, and some of them are unable to return home. All of her books feature amazing historical detail and the mind-bending fun of time travel, but this one is also super suspenseful, as the 2060 historians are not only in personal danger, being stuck in WWII, but are also worried about unintentionally changing history, given their long stays in the past. It's compelling and engrossing and is keeping me reading too late each night!

On audio, I am still listening to Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune. I’ve been hearing a lot of great reviews of both this novel and Klune’s first one, The House in the Cerulean Sea, so I wanted to find out for myself. This is an unusual novel about the afterlife, described by one reviewer as “A Man Called Ove meets The Good Place”—sold! Wallace is a buttoned-up lawyer with no compassion who suddenly dies of a heart attack. He is sitting in the church, watching his own funeral—dressed embarrassingly in flip-flops, sweat pants, and an old Rolling Stones t-shirt—when a young woman joins him and explains that she is a reaper, there to guide him after his death. It takes Wallace a while to even believe he is dead, but meeting Hugo, the ferryman, begins to convince him. It’s great so far, with a mix of emotional depth and humor that I’m enjoying.

My husband, Ken, is still reading Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson, book one of The Malazan Book of the Fallen series. Our son picked this out for him; it is one of his favorite fantasy novels, and he wanted his dad to try it. The description says, “Vast legions of gods, mages, humans, dragons and all manner of creatures play out the fate of the Malazan Empire in this first book in a major epic fantasy series.” Ken isn’t nearly as big a fan of epic fantasy as our son is, but he’s always willing to try a book our son thinks he’ll enjoy. He says it's complicated so far, as he's trying to keep straight not only the characters but the types of magic and other characteristics of this world, but our son assures him it will all come together!

Our son, 27, finished reading Shadowcaster, book one of the Shattered Realms series by Cinda Williams Chima, one of his favorite authors. This is a spin-off of her acclaimed Seven Realms series, which he loved, set in the same world. Now, he is reading Spinning Silver by Naomi Novak, which was a finalist for both the Nebula and Hugo awards and on many Top Ten lists. I don't know if it is technically a sequel, but it is set in the same fairy tale world as Uprooted, another book he enjoyed reading.

 

 

My blog posts last week:

 TV Tuesday: Maid - I loved this moving, uplifting real-life story!

Nonfiction Review: I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara - this stunning story is part true crime and part memoir

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?

 

Nonfiction Review: I'll Be Gone in the Dark

For my birthday this summer, my son's girlfriend gave me I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara. She loves true crime and knew of this story--and she knows I love to read! This was a perfect choice for Nonfiction November, and it kept me riveted from start to finish.

The author combines true crime writing with memoir. The prologue describes her own growing obsession with this case, as she researches deep into the night from her daughter's playroom. It's easy to see how she became so fixated on this case. Starting in the 1970's, there was a string of unusual and brutal rapes in the Sacramento area. After creating widespread panic in the community (and too much attention), the perpetrator moved onto other areas and eventually, in the 80's, escalated to murder as well. Each cluster of rapes and murders, though, occurred in its own area, with its own police force, so it was decades before investigators finally began to link all of these cases that stretched across California. In fact, that didn't happen until DNA science became prevalent and forensic specialists began testing cold case evidence. Fast-forward to the 2000's, when investigators across the state now recognized that the rapes and murders in the 70's and 80's were all carried out by the same man ... but they didn't know who that was. Michelle, the author, hosted a true crime website, so when she noticed a discussion thread on her website about this case, she soon became enmeshed in it herself. She interviewed the main detectives and forensic experts still working the cases after all these years, she pored over thousands of pages of crime reports, evidence, and suspect interviews, and she did her own investigating. She even coined the serial killer's name, The Golden State Killer, in an article she wrote for the Los Angeles Times. Unfortunately, she died suddenly, before all her hard work came to fruition. Her editors, her assistant, and one of the main contributors to the true crime website finished her book, along with her husband, actor Patton Oswalt. In an appendix, the reader does find out that investigators finally identified and captured the killer, and those most closely involved with the case who had worked with Michelle said that her investigative work and publicity helped.

The unique make-up of this book makes it engrossing and compulsively readable. Some sections are memoir, as Michelle describes her own efforts to investigate the case and her growing obsession with finding this monster of a man. Other sections read like the crime reporting Michelle did in the articles she wrote for California newspapers on the case, providing an in-depth description of the crimes and the ensuing investigations. As you might imagine, the sections describing the crimes are difficult to read and disturbing, but it is all set in this framework of a wide web of people trying to solve the case and find the perpetrator. Some sections were drafted by Michelle but finished by an editor, and others were fully completed before her death. Part Three was entirely written after her death, by her assistant and someone from the true crime website who was helping her, but this section directly incorporates her notes, interviews, and investigative files from her computer. The book begins with an Introduction by thriller/crime writer Gillian Flynn and ends with a moving Afterword  by her husband. Appendices include articles she wrote and a final conclusion to the case, after the monster was finally arrested. All in all, it is a chilling but captivating story, more twisty and unbelievable than any fictional thriller and told in a gripping, fascinating way.

344 pages, Harper Perennial

 

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.

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here, read mainly by narrator Gabra Zackman with Gillian Flynn and Patton Oswalt reading their own sections, and/or download it from Audible. The sample is Gillian Flynn reading her Introduction to the book, which gives you a good overview.

 

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!

 

 

Or you can order I'll Be Home in the Dark from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.

 

TV Tuesday: Maid

My husband went on a rare business trip last month, so I started a just-for-me show I'd been dying to watch: Maid on Netflix, a limited series based on the best-selling memoir of the same name by Stephanie Land. It more than lived up to the rave reviews I've been hearing. I finished it today with tears in my eyes and a smile on my face.

Twenty-eight-year-old Alex is smart and has a bright future ahead: she's been accepted to the writing program at University of Montana at Missoula. But a casual relationship turns into an unplanned pregnancy, and soon Alex finds herself trapped in a trailer with Sean and their young daughter, Maddy. Alex loves Maddy with all her heart and loves being her mother, but Sean drinks heavily every night and often loses his temper. He's never actually hurt Alex or Maddy, but the night that he throws a glass bowl and narrowly misses Alex's head, she realizes they are in danger. She and Maddy leave in the middle of the night, and Alex is determined not to return. She soon finds, though, that life is extremely difficult for a young single mother on her own. She enters the impossibly complex web of government programs that sound good in theory but don't work in practice. She needs a job to qualify for aid, but she can't get a job without an address. A home for victims of domestic violence is their saving grace, run by a kind, older woman named Denise, though they spend some nights in their car and one awful night on the floor of the ferry terminal. Alex is determined to find a job and gets hired by a cleaning service but must provide her own cleaning supplies, which uses up every penny of the meager cash she has. She also needs to find care for Maddy while she works. She spends her days cleaning the homes of wealthy couples and families who treat her like a non-person. In addition, Alex is estranged from her father, and her mother has untreated bipolar disorder; Alex has been taking care of her since she was six years old. Alex endures challenge after challenge, and just when things seem stable, something else happens to pull the rug out from under her. But she is determined to not only make a life for her herself but to protect her beloved daughter, too.

Wow. This show is so wonderful. It's a moving, powerful story made all the more impactful by the fact that it's based on a true story. The casting is perfect, with Margaret Qualley playing Alex, and Andie MacDowell (her real-life mother) as her unstable mother, Paula. Those two, and the rest of the cast, are outstanding in their roles, as is little Rylea Nevaeh Whittet as Maddy. The relationship between Alex and Maddy is heart-warming and feels authentic. The gorgeous setting, on the Washington coast and nearby islands, provides a beautiful backdrop for this often raw story of survival. There are moments of despair, countered by moments of victory, and I was rooting for Alex every step of the way. Alex and Paula and Maddy feel real to me, and their story is poignant, heart-breaking, and ultimately triumphant. It's made all the more powerful by the understanding that Alex's story is the story of so many other abused women and single mothers struggling to survive.

Maid is a Netflix exclusive.

It's Monday 12/6! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn of The Book Date blog. Check out her blog and join in the Monday fun!

 

My confession: I have mixed feelings about this time of year and the holiday season. Of course, there are traditions I love, and I enjoy the time with my family. But, there’s just so much to do!! Plus, after pitching article ideas to a particular magazine all year, I finally heard back with a “yes” from the editor, and it’s due this week! I’m thrilled for the opportunity to be writing the article, but it’s really bad timing. I'm really not a Scrooge--just feeling overwhelmed.

 

I just realized I wasn’t able to post last Monday, so this is a two-week catch-up. So, a quick summary of the past two weeks in my life:

 

We drove to Buffalo, NY (8 hours each way), for a family funeral. A sad occasion, but it was wonderful to see family members we hadn’t seen in three years!

 

Typical Buffalo/Rochester scene in mid-November!

The next week was Thanksgiving, and we again drove to western NY, this time to my hometown of Rochester. Both of our sons were with us, and we again saw family members we hadn’t seen in at least 2 ½ years, so there were some very happy reunions. 

 

Nice to have all four of us together!

Two of our four cars broke down last week! One totally died while our son was driving home, stranding him on the NJ Turnpike, making for a frantic day before our Thanksgiving trip. That one’s in a NJ auto shop, awaiting a new engine (!). Our SUV started acting up on the way home from Rochester and is going to the shop tomorrow. That leaves us with my 30-year-old VW convertible and my father-in-law’s bright purple Dodge Challenger!

 

We went to get our Christmas tree this weekend. Sadly, the tree farm we have gone to for 20 years ran out of trees, so we tried a new farm. It was huge and had a great selection, though we missed the hayride, live reindeer, and free kettle corn. We cut down a lovely Douglas fir and will put it up next weekend.

 

My husband and son with our just-cut tree!

 

It's been busy for me, so I just posted two new book videos to my YouTube channel the past two weeks:

• 20 Book Questions to Get to Know Me - a fun one!
  
• Friday Reads 12-3-21
  

 

And here’s the important part: what we’ve all been reading the past two weeks!

 

My reading time was curtailed with all that time in the car and visiting family, but I did finally finish reading I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara for Nonfiction November. It was an outstanding book, immersive, engrossing, and suspenseful. I don’t normally read much true crime, but this account of the Golden State Killer combines both true crime and memoir, as McNamara documents her own growing obsession with finding this serial rapist and murderer who got away with his crimes for decades. As a true crime writer, McNamara began looking into a series of unsolved rapes and murders that occurred across the state in the 1970’s and 80’s. She ended up working with detectives and forensic specialists who had worked the case in the past (and were equally fixated on finding the perp). He was eventually found, but unfortunately, Michelle died before that victorious event, so the book was finished by her editor, her assistant, and her husband, Patton Oswald, the actor. It's a fascinating story, and I had trouble putting this one down!

 

It took me so long to finish that book with everything going on that I only had two days left of Nonfiction November! I made the most of it by squeezing in one last short memoir, Lift by Kelly Corrigan. I’ve never read anything by Corrigan before, but I certainly knew of her. For years, I have heard rave reviews of her collections of personal essays, and I have listened to interviews with her on podcasts. So, I was excited to finally read one of her books. It lived up to my expectations. This one is just a brief memoir, written as a letter to her two young daughters. She writes about the experience of being a parent, with a focus on three different events: the tragic death of the eighteen-year-old son of her aunt, her own terrifying experience when one of her daughters was hospitalized with meningitis as a baby, and a dear friend who very much wanted to be a mother but, in her 40’s, hadn’t found the right life partner. She captures the exquisite joys and pains of parenting. As I expected from her wonderful interviews, it was beautifully written, powerful, moving, and injected with her signature humor. (full review with excerpts at the link).

 

Next, I started a novel, but within 24 hours, I remembered I have book group coming up! So, I quickly downloaded Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce onto my Kindle and switched to reading that instead. My neighborhood book group absolutely loved Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and its companion novel, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, so when this latest novel was suggested, it was a shoe-in! Margery Benson is a large woman in her 40’s in England in 1950 who feels at loose ends, having lost all of her family and working an unsatisfying job as a Home Ec teacher. On impulse, she does something reckless and then decides to embark on an expedition to a remote island in the Pacific to look for a never-before-seen (perhaps mythical?) golden beetle. Accompanying her, by some strange twists of fate, is Enid Pretty, a wild young woman in a bright pink suit who is Margery’s complete opposite. It has the same sense of warmth, absurdity, and humor as her other novels, as Margery and Enid find themselves while searching for the beetle.

 

It’s been more than two years since we’ve been able to take a long road trip, so I had lots of suspense and thriller audiobooks saved up for my husband and I. On the long drive to and from Buffalo for the funeral, we listened to Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson. This was a creepy and suspenseful one! Malcolm, a quiet bookstore owner, is visited by FBI Special Agent Mulvey at his store in Boston. She is beginning to suspect there is an unusual serial killer at work. Years earlier, Malcolm published a list of “Eight Perfect Murders” on the store’s blog, recounting eight different classic murder mysteries that might be considered unsolvable. Now, Agent Mulvey thinks someone is using his list to actually commit murders. The two begin to work together, though Mal has secrets he is trying to protect. This was excellent suspense and perfect for our long, snowy car trip. Our only complaint was that eight classic murder novels have now been spoiled for us!

 

On my own, I finished my last audiobook for Nonfiction November, The Sisters of Auschwitz: The True Story of Two Jewish Sisters' Resistance in the Heart of Nazi Territory by Roxane van Iperen. This nonfiction history describes the lives of two Dutch Jewish sisters, Janny and Lien, from their peaceful childhoods growing up in Amsterdam with their parents to the Nazi occupation of their beloved country when they are young women and new parents to their large roles in helping the Resistance and finally to their time spent in concentration camps. Wow. I’ve read a lot of books about the Holocaust, but this one surprised me by its visceral power to convey some amazing—and horrifying—experiences. It was outstanding.

 

Now, I have transitioned back to fiction, listening to Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune. I’ve been hearing a lot of great reviews of both this novel and Klune’s first one, The House in the Cerulean Sea, so I wanted to find out for myself. This is an unusual novel about the afterlife, described by one reviewer as “A Man Called Ove meets The Good Place”—sold! Wallace is a buttoned-up lawyer with no compassion who suddenly dies of a heart attack. He is sitting in the church, watching his own funeral—dressed embarrassingly in flip-flops, sweat pants, and an old Rolling Stones t-shirt—when a young woman joins him and explains that she is a reaper, there to guide him after his death. It takes Wallace a while to even believe he is dead, but meeting Hugo, the ferryman, begins to convince him. It’s great so far, with a mix of depth and humor that I’m enjoying.

 

My husband, Ken, just finished reading a birthday gift I gave him, The Guide by Peter Heller. He and I both thoroughly enjoyed the first book in this loose series, The River, about a canoe trip in Canada gone very, very wrong. Like that one, this is also a wilderness thriller. Jack, one of the main characters from The River, is now working at an expensive fishing lodge in Colorado, taking wealthy clients out fishing. In a post-COVID world, the resort offers the wealthy a respite from the dangerous world. Jack is assigned to guide a big-deal singing celebrity and figures it’ll be an easy job with her. But when the two are out in the wilderness, they hear a scream in the night. Sounds like a great set-up, and Ken enjoyed it.

 

Now, Ken’s reading Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson, book one of The Malazan Book of the Fallen series. Our son picked this out for him; it is one of his favorite fantasy novels, and he wanted his dad to try it. The description says, “Vast legions of gods, mages, humans, dragons and all manner of creatures play out the fate of the Malazan Empire in this first book in a major epic fantasy series.” Ken isn’t nearly as big a fan of epic fantasy as our son is, but he’s always willing to try a book our son thinks he’ll enjoy.

 

And our son, 27, has been reading a lot! Lucky guy—he can read in the car without getting sick. He finished The Magic Engineer, book three of the Saga of Recluce by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. He’s enjoying this series and asked for book four for Christmas. Next he moved onto Shattered Realms series by Cinda Williams Chima. He explained to me that this is a spin-off series of her acclaimed Seven Realms series, set in the same world. He read book one, Flamecaster, and when he was with us last week for Thanksgiving, he was almost finished with book two, Shadowcaster. I know he loves this author and this world she has created.

 

 

Blog posts from the past two weeks:

 

Nonfiction Review: Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner - excellent memoir about Korean food and culture ans a rocky mother-daughter relationship 

Graphic Memoir Review: Other Boys by Damian Alexander - excellent middle-grade/teen coming-of-age story

Nonfiction Review: Lift by Kelly Corrigan - brief but powerful memoir of parenthood

 

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?