It's Monday 1/14! What Are You Reading?

Oh, wow, when I wrote here a week ago that I had a few problems setting up my new laptop, I never imagined that would grow to take over my entire week!! First, though my data transferred to the new MacBook Pro, a bunch of my Mailboxes (folders) in Mail disappeared. Then, I could no longer send any e-mail, and then I kept losing my internet connection (even with my husband and son right next to me having no problems). I spent 3+ hours online with Apple Help (no help), countless hours on my own researching online (when I could get online!) and trying to fix things myself, and finally 90 minutes at the Genius Bar Friday evening. Those guys really earn their moniker of Genius! They kept restoring my Mailboxes and then we'd restart the laptop and they'd be gone again, but they never get frustrated or give up - they love the challenge. Saturday morning, I was totally exhausted, but I had a (mostly) working laptop again - I did discover my Sent folder is now missing from Mail, so I am headed back to the Genius Bar again this week. My younger son went to St. Louis this weekend for a leadership conference for his business fraternity...and turned 21! And my husband headed to Germany for a 2-week business trip. Meanwhile, our older son moved back home for a few weeks while his girlfriend is at her parents' house for winter break. So, it's been a revolving door here!

(P.S. All that computer stuff meant I had neither the access nor the time to visit blogs last week - sorry! Hope to get around to visit this week.)

Of course, through all of this, we love our books, and reading provides a welcome respite from all the craziness. Here's what we've all been reading this past week:

• I finished reading - and absolutely loved! - Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts. It's based on the true story of how Maud, the wife of the late L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, got involved as a consultant (she basically forced her way in!) on the famous movie adaptation in 1939. There are all kinds of entertaining details about the actors and the production, and especially about 15-year old Judy Garland in the lead role, but the novel also goes back to Maud's own childhood in New York State (where I grew up) and recounts her experiences with a strong, suffragette mother (she called Susan B. Anthony "Auntie Susan"), how she met Frank, and her own experiences as a mother. It's a delightful, fascinating book that was great fun to review (it comes out February 12).
• Next, more than a little behind, I started the first of two books for two different book group meetings this week! First up is The Rent Collector by Camron Wright, a novel set in Cambodia. It's based on a true story about a husband, wife, and baby son who live at the largest garbage dump in Phnom Penh (with many other people). The author took this real-life family and imagined what might happen if the wife learned to read, and how that might affect them and the people around them. It's wonderful so far, filled with both sorrow and joy and the light of literature.
• On audio, I finished listening to a middle-grade book, The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson. It's the story of a young girl named Candice in South Carolina whose recently deceased Grandma leaves behind a puzzle for her to solve that could lead to a fortune. Candice befriends the boy across the street who loves to read as much as she does, and the two of them learn about the town's history while following the clues. It's a wonderful mix of mystery and history, and I enjoyed it very much.
• Now, I am listening to a YA novel on audio, The Beautiful Lost by Luanne Rice. It's about a teen girl who's suffered from depression since her mother left and how she connects with a boy in her class who also lost his mother. The two of them go on a road trip from CT to Canada. I didn't realize it was a road trip novel when I started it, so I am enjoying it!
• My husband, Ken, finished one of his Christmas gifts from our son, Past Tense by Lee Child, the latest Jack Reacher novel. This is his favorite series and his favorite author, so he loved it and easily finished it before his trip.
• Now, while he's away, Ken is reading a long but lightweight paperback I put in his stocking, Edge by Jeffrey Deaver. Though we both love Deaver's Lincoln Rhymes series, this is a stand-alone novel, so we were intrigued by it. I suspect he won't have a lot of time to read on this trip, though!
• Our son, Jamie, 24, is now reading the FINAL book 14 of The Wheel of Time series, A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. I was wrong when I said he finished the series with book 13 - there is one more, weighing in at a hefty 1168 pages! He loves this series and has been looking forward to the conclusion.

Blog posts from last week - not much time for blogging, though I am working on my 2018 Best of posts - 

Fiction Review: Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich - a beautiful, warm novel with a bleak dystopian/apocalyptic setting

My Summary of Books Read in December - a good end to a great reading year!

2018 Reading Challenges Wrap-Up - see how I did on my 2018 challenges

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?  

Go, Saints! I think with last night's win, we are headed for the Superbowl!

2018 Reading Challenges Wrap-Up

A Look Back...

I love the start of a new year, with a look back at the past year and a fresh start to a new one! Now that I've caught up on my last 2018 reviews, I can start my wrap-up of last year...and then get started on 2019!

Here are the reading challenges I participated in last year, and how I did in each one. You can see my complete list of books read for each challenge on my 2018 Reading Challenge page.

Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2018 hosted by My Reader's Block.

I always do a TBR Challenge because my TBR bookcases are never-ending! I get new books in faster than I can read them, so it feels like a losing battle. In 2017, I read a total of 28 books from my own shelves, and I was aiming for 36 TBR books in 2018 (the Mount Vancouver level).

I read 33 books from my own shelves in 2018 - so I didn't quite meet my goal, but I got very close AND I beat last year's total, so I'm calling that a success.

2018 Monthly Motif Reading Challenge hosted by Girlxoxo.

I always enjoy this fun annual challenge that features a different theme each month. I managed to read something from the monthly motif 11 months out of the year. I missed May - Read a book that's been made into a movie or TV show (too bad I read Alias Grace back in March). Again, a success and lots of fun!

Back to the Classics hosted by Books and Chocolate.

I always do a Classics Challenge, too, because I enjoy reading classics that I missed (or old favorites), but it is easy to overlook them with so many amazing new books coming out every month! I read 5 classics in 2017 and aimed to read 6 classics in 2018.

Well, I hit 5 again - almost there! I enjoyed all of these (though Macbeth was a tough one) -

1. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
2.  Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
3. Macbeth by William Shakespeare
4. Maurice by E.M. Forster  
5. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

2018 Badass Books Reading Challenge hosted by Melissa Hawkins, Badass by Design.

This was a fun one, with 18 different categories to read from (check out the list and the books I read on my 2018 Reading Challenge page).

I missed just 5 categories, so I filled in the other 13 of them. I enjoyed this challenge!

Travel the World in Books Reading Challenge hosted by Mom's Small Victories, one of my favorite blogs. I signed up for this one back in 2014, so this was a continuation (it's a perpetual challenge). In 2017, I read 27 books set in other countries/cultures (14 different countries/regions), and my goal for 2018 was just to beat that.

And I did! I read 31 different books set in other countries/cultures and visited 30 different countries (well, actually, 28 countries and 2 planets).

2018 Literary Escapes Challenge hosted by Escape with Dollycas Into a Good Book.

This is another one I always enjoy, and in 2017 I read books set in 24 different states for this challenge.

In 2018, I read books set in...25 states!

Better than last year and lots of fun.

Big Book Summer Challenge hosted by Book By Book (me!)

This is my own challenge that I host every summer, to read books with 400 pages or longer, and it always helps me make a dent in the TBR shelves, too.

I read 6 Big Books this summer:

1. The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
2. Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon 
3. Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld 
4. Plus One by Elizabeth Fama
5. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
6. City of Savages by Lee Kelly 

Be sure to sign up for this one at the end of May!

Readers Imbibing Peril (or RIP) Challenge
Read any books in the categories of:

• Mystery.
• Suspense.
• Thriller.
• Dark Fantasy.
• Gothic.
• Horror.
• Supernatural.

This one runs through September and October and I LOVE the opportunity to read some of the creepy or suspenseful books that pile up on my shelves (that's most of what my husband reads).

I read 14 books for RIP Challenge this fall - my best yet!

I also watched 3 TV shows and 3 movies that fit the challenge.

Now, it's time to sign-up for my 2019 Reading Challenges - I'd love to hear about some fun ones that YOU enjoy!

Books Read in December

Winter sky and bare trees in December

I usually focus on my TBR shelves in December (and reading last year's Christmas gifts before I get new ones!), but this December was more of a mixed bag, with a couple of review books thrown in. Here's what I finished reading in December (reviews at links):

• The Lost Girls: Three Friends. Four Continents. One Unconventional Detour Around the World, by Jennifer Baggett, Holly C. Corbett, and Amanda Pressner (Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Kenya, India, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Australia - whew!) - adult memoir
• Release by Patrick Ness (WA) - teen/YA novel on audio
• The Light Years by Chris Rush (NJ, AZ) - adult memoir

• Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich (MN) - adult fiction on audio
• Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen (CA) - adult fiction - review for Shelf Awareness (end of January) 
• American War by Omar El Akkad (MS, GA) - adult novel

So, I finished six books in December, a mix of fiction and nonfiction (memoir) and mostly adult, with one YA novel in the mix. I listened to two books on audio, and the rest were in print. Hard to choose a favorite because I enjoyed all of these very much. Both memoirs were excellent and engrossing. Both American War and Future Home of the Living God were very well-written, powerful, thought-provoking novels, though both were pretty bleak for the holiday season (and I listened/read them at the same time!). So for pure fun and enjoyment, I guess I would choose Here and Now and Then because it was a classic time travel story wrapped up in family drama - as I told my editor, it was pretty much written for me!

Progress in 2018 Reading Challenges:
This is my favorite part of my monthly summary - updating my Reading Challenges:

Mount TBR Reading Challenge - I added just 2, bringing 2018 total to 33. 

Monthly Motif Reading Challenge - December was Wrapping It Up month, with winter/snow/ice themes, but since 3 of my books took place in the future where climate change has made it summer year-round, I went with the alternative option and re-used March's category of Around the World - perfect for The Lost Girls.

Back to the Classics Challenge - no new classics

2018 Badass Books Challenge - nothing new added
  
Travel the World in Books Reading Challenge - I added Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Kenya, India, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Australia - all in one book!

2018 Literary Escapes Challenge, I added 2 more states, NJ and MN.

Finally, Bookish Bingo hosted by Chapter Break - not really a challenge per se, but a fun game that I play each month. I filled in just 18 squares in December - not a lot of holiday stuff in this dystopian/apocalyptic reading month!

Spaces filled in:

The Lost Girls - reminiscing, shelf love
Release - not in a series, breaking rules, favorite author
The Light Years - free book, bad habits, redemption, beard
Future Home of the Living God - audio book, betrayal
Here and Now and Then - read a physical book, fast-paced
American War - justice, brain-washing, sets goals, gift

What was your favorite book read in December?   

Fiction Review: Future Home of the Living God

Louise Erdrich's novel, The Round House, won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2012, and her novel, LaRose, won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2017. I listened to LaRose (my review at the link) on audio last year and loved it, so I was eager to listen to her latest novel, Future Home of the Living God. Like her earlier fiction, this novel again focuses on characters in the Ojibwe tribe, but this novel is a complete departure from her others, setting its story in a bleak apocalyptic world.

Scientists can't explain it, but suddenly, evolution seems to be moving backward, affecting plants, animals, and humans in frightening and unexpected ways. In the midst of this scary new world, Cedar Hawk Songmaker has just found out that she's pregnant. Cedar was adopted by a kind white couple in Minnesota as an infant, though she knows her heritage is Ojibwe. She loves her adoptive parents with all her heart, but now that she will soon be a mother herself, she feels compelled to meet her birth parents and learn more about her culture and family. She drives to the reservation and meets Mary Potts, her birth mother (Cedar was also named Mary Potts at birth). All goes well with their meeting, but things in the outside world are spinning out of control. Babies are being born deformed or stillborn, so pregnant women are being rounded up to "protect" them and their unborn babies. When a kind doctor who does Cedar's ultrasound at the clinic sees that her baby looks healthy, he whispers to her to run and hide. With her adoptive parents missing (somewhere safe, she hopes), Cedar hunkers down to try to keep her baby safe. Outside their home-turned-bunker, things continue to get worse, with a registry of all women of childbearing age, families being torn apart, martial law, and other horror stories.

This very unique novel tells two overlapping stories - the story of Cedar and her unborn child and her family (both adoptive and birth) and the story of a dystopian world intent on controlling women. The larger story of the apocalypse is dark and dismal, but Cedar is a remarkable woman who stays strong and hopeful, even after things turn worse for her. The entire book is set up as a diary that Cedar writes to her unborn baby, and the audio book was wonderful, read by Erdrich herself in her beautiful singsong, lightly-accented voice that really sounds like Cedar talking directly to you. I really liked Cedar and both sides of her loving family, and I enjoyed the close-up exploration of Cedar's feelings and actions in not only protecting her unborn child but looking forward to a future better than the present. However, the forces in the larger story are persistent and unyielding. Though I enjoyed the story overall, and found that Erdrich's characters were just as endearing and funny and real as always, the overall tone was a bit bleak for my taste. So far, LaRose is still my favorite of her novels, though I was intrigued by her foray into dystopian fiction.

288 pages, Harper Perennial
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.

Listen to a sample of the audiobook, read by Louise Erdrich herself.

You can purchase Future Home of the Living God from an independent bookstore, either locally or online, here:

 

Or you can order Future Home of the Living God from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.

It's Monday 1/7! What Are You Reading?

Hello, Monday! I am in the midst of attempting to set up the new laptop I got for Christmas but running into all kinds of problems - first it wouldn't accept my WiFi password, then it wouldn't accept my Apple ID password, then I got the Spinning Beachball of Death (anyone with a Mac knows what I mean!). So, I finally got it to accept my WiFi password, and....yay! I just reset my Apple ID password and got past that hurdle, too. And now it's transferring my data from the old MacBook Pro to the new one - whew! That was much harder than it should have been.

Which pretty much describes last week. Not quite the week I had planned, though I did manage to squeeze in a bit of my annual look back at the old year and begin planning for the new year. My younger son came home on New Year's Eve with a high fever and killer sore throat. Five days and three antibiotics later, and we saw the doctor on Friday, who said it looked like he had strep throat plus tonsillitis plus a very painful abscess on one tonsil, and maybe mono, too! Yikes. I'm happy to report that antibiotic #3 and a short blast of steroids did the trick (and we don't think he has mono), and he is feeling much, much better and packing to move back to his house at school today.

Luckily, my reading week was calming, soothing, and enjoyable! Here's what my family's been reading this week:

• I finished reading - and thoroughly enjoyed - Less by Andrew Sean Greer, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2018. I found that surprising because it's humorous, and I typically think of Pulitzer Prize-winning novels as serious tomes. But it was wonderful, about a middle-aged gay writer who sets off on a round-the world trip for his 50th birthday to avoid attending the wedding of his ex-lover. It's one of those "everything that could go wrong does" stories, though the things that go wrong are often bizarre, unexpected things. It has more emotional depth to it than you'd first think and is thoughtful, but it is also laugh-out-loud funny in every chapter.
• Now, I am reading a review book (due out in February), Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts. It's based on the true story of how Maud, the wife of the late L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, got involved as a consultant (she basically forced her way in!) on the famous movie version of the book in 1939. There are all kinds of entertaining details about the actors and the production, and especially about 15-year old Judy Garland in the lead role, but the novel also goes back to Maud's own childhood in New York State (where I grew up) and recounts her experiences with a strong, suffragette mother (she called Susan B. Anthony "Auntie Susan"), how she met Frank, and her own experiences as a mother. I am loving this book!
• I am still listening to a middle-grade audio book, The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson. I was hoping to squeeze in a short audio by the end of the year, but this is actually a fairly long middle-grade novel...so it is my first audio of 2019! It's the story of a young girl named Candice in South Carolina whose recently deceased Grandma left behind a puzzle for her to solve that could lead to a fortune. Candice befriends the boy across the street who loves to read as much as she does, and the two of them learn about the town's history while following the clues. It's a wonderful mix of mystery and history, and I'm enjoying it.
• My husband, Ken, finished Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen, which I had just finished reading and reviewing. He enjoyed it but didn't love it as much as I did (it is pretty much my ideal novel, and I love time travel plots, so that makes sense).
• Ken needed a quick book to read before he heads off on an extensive trip to Europe, so he is reading one of his Christmas gifts from our son, Past Tense by Lee Child, the latest Jack Reacher novel. This is his favorite series and his favorite author, so he is enjoying it very much!
• I believe our son, Jamie, 24, is now reading the FINAL book 14 of The Wheel of Time series, A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. I was wrong when I said he finished the series with book 13 - there is one more, weighing in at a hefty 1168 pages! He loves this series and has been looking forward to the conclusion.

Blog posts last week:

Movie Monday: Bohemian Rhapsody - SO GREAT!! I laughed, I cried, I sang! Excited it won Best Drama and Best Lead Actor in the Golden Globes last night - well deserved.

Teen/YA Review: Release by Patrick Ness - warm, funny YA novel

Memoir Review: The Light Years by Chris Rush - stunning, powerful, funny memoir os a childhood like no other

Saturday Snapshot: Winter Shapes and Patterns - photos from my neighborhood

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?

Saturday Snapshot: Winter Shapes & Patterns

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Melinda at A Web of Stories (same host as always but with a new blog - check it out!).

After three months of being mostly housebound due to a flare-up of my chronic illnesses, I started to feel better finally on Christmas Day (good timing!), so I was thrilled to start off my New Year able to take walks again! I walked (not far but I got out) each of the last four days, and it feels SO good to be outside in the fresh air and moving again.

I was thinking yesterday that there's nothing interesting to take photos of in winter in my neighborhood, and then I realized that although there's not a lot of color, winter has its own kind of beauty - in stark shapes and patterns in nature. Here are some that I noticed this week:

Bare branches against a gray sky

I love looking up at the shapes of the clouds

This twisty tree is even more interesting in winter!

Even the cracks in the asphalt are patterned!

Rock mulch

Pachysandra creates a canvas of green

Leafless shrub reveals the intricate web of branches

Our Jan 1 walk - Happy New Year!

Hope you are enjoying a wonderful weekend! Dark, wet, and dreary outside here, but we'll be taking down all our Christmas stuff today.

Memoir Review: The Light Years

Back in November, Victor Lodato, author of the wonderful novel, Edgar and Lucy, told me about an amazing memoir that he helped edit. We had met at Booktopia VT two years ago, and he thought I might be interested in reviewing The Light Years by Chris Rush, so he sent me a copy. Everything he told me about this stunning memoir was spot on, and I was very moved by this truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story of a unique childhood. It also made me laugh out loud...a lot!

The memoir opens with a hilarious scene from when Chris was 11-years old in the late 60's, where he and his little brothers and two neighbor kids play Poison, a game Chris invented where they pretend they've been poisoned and then each fall in a dramatic death scene, one at a time. Chris, with his penchant for drama, is the last to die, giving a final speech (in his underwear) beseeching God just as his parents walk in with the local priest. It's a very funny scene, giving a hint of the humor woven throughout the memoir, but it also provides a brief glimpse into his father's violence and his mother's instability (and own sense of drama). Chris' love of dressing flamboyantly plus very high IQ test results both make his father nervous, and he is sent away to a series of boarding schools. By the age of thirteen, though, Chris has given up on school, is into drugs, and heads out West to follow in his older sister's footsteps as a drug dealer and member of the counter-culture. As an impressionable young boy, he is pulled fully into the world of drugs and hippies, coming of age among drug dealers and young adults who protect him but also endanger him. They accept him as he is, though, which is a powerful feeling for a boy who feels like an outcast, who was literally cast out of his own home. His wild life also leads to episodes of violence, loneliness, and disappointment, as he struggles to find love and home.

Chris' story is powerful and moving and sometimes horrifying, but he tells it with a marvelous sense of humor that frequently made me laugh. The short chapters are divided into short sections, so the pacing is just right, and he tells his story very honestly but without self-pity or judgment. Chris suffered a lot of injustices in the world, from his family (especially his father), his peers, and strangers for being different and for being gay. Somehow, miraculously, he came out the other side and seems to have matured and grown up into a normal adult, able to look back on these crazy years of his adolescence with humor rather than bitterness in this stirring and engrossing memoir.

368 pages, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The Light Years is due for release on April 2, 2019. It can be pre-ordered at Amazon.

Teen/YA Review: Release

My husband, son, and I all loved Patrick Ness' stunning dystopian Chaos Walking trilogy that begins with The Knife of Never Letting Go (a movie adaptation is due out in March!), so I jumped at the chance to listen to his latest novel (having missed a couple in-between) on audio. Release is an entirely different kind of novel - realistic fiction - but just as powerful and engrossing.

Seventeen-year old Adam doesn't know it yet but today is going to change his life in ways that he can't even imagine. This summer Saturday starts out like an ordinary day for the gay teen who has compartmentalized his life in order to keep it under control. He has a tight schedule to keep if he wants to make it to the "get-together" (his parents don't like him going to parties) at the lake this evening, a going-away gathering for his ex-boyfriend, Enzo. His dad is an evangelical minister, so his family is deeply religious - and being gay doesn't fit in that narrow mold. His older brother, Marty, is the "good boy," who does everything right, though he just might surprise Adam on this unusual day. Adam's boss at the warehouse store is making Adam more and more uncomfortable with his unwanted advances. And Adam has squeezed into his schedule a short rendezvous with his new boyfriend, Linus, who he thinks he loves, in spite of still thinking about Enzo. At least, he always has Angela, his best friend, to rely on and talk to when things get crazy...and today things will get really crazy.

The story of this one fateful day is told from Adam's perspective, with lots of dialogue and some text messages between him and Angela to keep things interesting. It's a compelling chronicle, right from the start, as Adam sets off on a day where everything seems to go wrong. It's not a depressing novel, though. Adam has Linus and Angela for support, and in some cases, it's good to finally get things out in the open and release some of the constant pressure he is under. Although there are many serious issues dealt with here, the tone is mostly light, and the author has a great sense of humor (also evident in his earlier novels), so the pace moves along quickly and remains engaging. There is a parallel narrative, stuck in bits and pieces in italics among Adam's story, a sort of supernatural afterlife story that is taking place in Adam's town on the same day. It's confusing at first....well, it remained somewhat opaque to me. In any case, I mostly ignored that secondary storyline and focused on Adam's story, which is the main part of the novel. I immediately liked Adam and his friends, and in spite of it being such a difficult day for Adam, was cheered by an appropriate ending that focused on friendship and love and hope.

288 pages, HarperTeen

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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.

Sorry - no audio sample available this time because for some strange reason, Audible has what sounds like the Norwegian (?) version of the audio playing! Go ahead and try it if you want to be amused (or speak Norwegian or Danish or whatever it is).

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You can purchase Release from an independent bookstore, either locally or online, here:

 

Or you can order Release from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.

Movie Monday: Bohemian Rhapsody

I was finally feeling well enough to go out in the evening this weekend, and we enjoyed a nice dinner with friends Friday. I was lamenting that we missed seeing Bohemian Rhapsody on the big screen (because I was sick all fall) when they told me that it was still playing for two more nights in a small theater that usually only shows independent films. I was so excited! So, the next night, my husband and I went out (second night in a row!), grabbed some dinner, and finally got to see this movie about the band Queen that I have been dying to see for months. It lived up to all the hype and my very high expectations - a moving, powerful, joyful (and sometimes sad) story of the band, its unique songs, and its one-of-a-kind lead singer, Freddie Mercury.

Rami Malek (of Mr. Robot fame) takes on the role of flamboyant and larger-than-life Freddie, beginning with his humble beginnings, living with his parents who were Persian and had migrated from India to Zanzibar, where Freddie was born. Brought up in a very traditional household, Freddie - whose real name was Farrokh - wanted to be a musician, though his father wanted him to take a more traditional job, and his mother wanted him to bring home a "nice girl." Watching a local band perform in a pub one night, Freddie sees Mary (played by Lucy Boynton), who quickly becomes his girlfriend and the love of his life. After the show, he approaches the band members with a song he wrote. They laugh at first, but they've just lost their lead singer, and a short sample of Freddie's amazing singing voice convinces them to bring him in. The band soon reforms as Queen, and Freddie's stage presence, singing, and song-writing genius propel them to bigger and bigger venues and finally, an album. The rest is music history, of course. Meanwhile, in Freddie's private life, he marries Mary, but as most fans already know, he eventually realizes he's gay. They break up, and he begins to explore a very different life, though they remain devoted to each other throughout their lives. Freddie lives a hard partying life, like many a rock star, that eventually implodes. The movie ends with the band doing their part of the Live Aid concert, a stunning performance, especially since Freddie had AIDS by then.

I loved every moment of this movie. For much of it - especially the first half - I sat in the theater with a huge smile on my face, trying hard not to belt out each song and disturb my fellow theater-goers! It is pure, joyful fun watching this team of talented musicians come together and become what they were famous for, as they grow closer and also become a family. Some of my favorite parts were those showing behind-the-scenes how they came up with certain very creative songs, like Bohemian Rhapsody and We Will Rock You. Of course, it wasn't all fun and joy; Freddie went through some rough times, too. During those parts of the movie, I cried - and during some of the good parts, too! Any movie that can make you feel lboth joy and sorrow like that is incredible, in my book. Of course, it helps that I am a huge fan of Queen's music, so I thoroughly enjoyed all the music and concert scenes, too. It was an emotional rollercoaster ride that I never wanted to end.

Although it's the tail-end of its theatrical release, check your local listings to see if you can still catch Bohemian Rhapsody  on the big screen through Fandango:  



           

If you missed it in the theater, never fear! It is coming to both streaming and on DVD in January 2019 and can be pre-ordered now.

Just watching the trailer again sends shivers down my spine - check it out: