It's Monday 2/13! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

Happy Superbowl, Valentine's Day, and Mardi Gras! Wow, there's a lot going on this week. We are big into small celebrations, so this is a fun-filled week for us! We had two friends over last night for Superbowl, and our son stayed home with us, too (his friends were all in Philly, and he had no interest in being there--win or lose, Eagles fans can get crazy). We enjoyed yummy snacks, and the game was exciting right up until the end. My favorite part of Superbowl is the ads! Some of my favorites from last night include Hamm and Brie (very clever), the EV one with scenes from all the TV shows, the babies at the wedding (though I don't remember what product it was selling!), and Tubi's rabbit hole ad was very clever and certainly got our attention. The one that stole my heart, though, was one of the last ads, with John Travolta in the T-Mobile ad; as a long-time Grease superfan since age 13, I loved that one! I just wish Olivia Newton John could have been there to accompany him.

Superbowl snacks!

We'll probably just do takeout or an easy home meal tomorrow night for Valentine's Day, but we used to go all out when our sons were little, with the house decorated, hearts hanging from their doorways, treat bags, and chocolate fondue for dessert. I have treat bags ready for my husband and son, and my husband bought a fabulous sea salt-chocolate chess pie for us.

This is what our sons woke to every Valentine's Day!

We celebrate love with treats for all!

 

All of this celebration is nice after one of "those" weeks. You know when you plan to do some small task, and one thing after another goes wrong? Yeah, it was like that. I sat down to edit a video Tuesday afternoon and ended up spending two hours on the phone with Apple help, having to update the system on my laptop, update all my software, and then buy, download, and install new Microsoft Office. I finally got that video edited on Friday! Not much else got done last week. So, I'm hoping for a more productive week with fewer issues!

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On the Blog

Movie Monday: A Man Called Otto - excellent adaptation of the book that we both enjoyed.

 Fiction Review: A Serpent's Tooth by Matty Dalrymple - book 5 in my favorite series, about a woman who solves mysteries by talking to the dead.

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On Video

Here's that video that took all week to edit and upload!

January Reading Wrap-Up - overview of the 6 books I read/listened to last month

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What We're Reading

 

 I finished reading Dead of Winter by Stephen Mack Jones, book 3 in his August Snow series. I first met Stephen at Booktopia 2019, and I enjoyed his first two novels, August Snow and Lives Laid Down (which was featured at Booktopia). Snow is a half-Black, half-Mexican ex-cop who made a lot of money in a lawsuit that took down dirty cops in Detroit, where he lives. This makes him unpopular among most of the police force. In each book, Snow takes on some sort of mystery in his hometown, usually focused on cleaning up the city. These are action-packed thrillers with a great sense of humor, and my husband enjoys them, too. They tend to be a bit more violent for my taste, but the story, characters, and suspense are great.

 

Today, I will start my next book group selection, Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger. Last year, Krueger's This Tender Land was our All-County Reads book, and all of us loved it (it was my #2 book of the year!), so we're excited to read this one. All I know about it is that it won the 2014 Edgar Award (so it must be a mystery), and it's a stand-alone, not part of his Cork O'Connor series. He's an excellent writer, so I'm excited to dive into this one today!

 On audio, I'm still listening to Anywhere You Run by Wanda M. Morris, historical fiction that is also a mystery/thriller, and a good fit for Black History Month. It's set in 1964, and begins in Jackson, Mississippi, during Freedom Summer. Two sisters each decide to flee town for different reasons: one killed a white man who raped her, and the other is single and pregnant. One ends up in a small town in Georgia, and the other heads north, but they don't realize that a man is tracking both of them. It's great so far!

 

My husband, Ken, is reading book 3 in the Ann Kinnear series, The Falcon and the Owl by Matty Dalrymple. He enjoys this series, too (my favorite). This one takes place near us, in southeastern PA, at a small airport where Ann is taking flying lessons. Murder, ghosts, and mystery ensue! I read this one last fall (my review at the link).

 

Our son, 28, is still reading The White Tower by Michael Wisehart, book 1 in The Aldoran Chronicles, in preparation for book 2, which he just bought with a Christmas gift card. He's discovered new updates to an old favorite video game that is taking up some of his reading time!

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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: A Serpent's Tooth

I don't read many series completely, but I absolutely love the Ann Kinnear series by Matty Dalyrmple. I always enjoy her mysteries about a woman who can sense spirits and communicate with the dead and have previously reviewed The Sense of Death, The Sense of Reckoning, The Falcon and the Owl (which my husband is reading now), and A Furnace for Your Foe. I just finished book five in the series, A Serpent's Tooth; I loved every minute of it and was sorry when it ended.

Ann is living with her brother and brother-in-law in southeastern Pennsylvania (coincidentally, just a short drive from my home!), and they enjoy visiting a local winery, Lynch and Son. Her brother, Mike, is friends with the winemaker there, a man named Del who is married to the owner's daughter, Rowan. Rowan also works at the family winery, as the vineyard manager, and loves the family business. Rowan's older brother, Harkin, lives in Hawaii and has never had any interest in the winery. Their father, Niall, is dying, and in spite of Harkin's clear dislike of the family business, Niall is still torn over which of his children should inherit the winery. He's pretty old-school, and the winery is, after all, named Lynch and Son because his own father started it and passed it down to him. His greatest wish is to pass it on to his own son, in spite of Harkin's animosity toward both his father and the business. Soon, Niall dies and leaves behind two wills, one leaving the winery to each child, though neither will can be found. He was hoping in his last weeks to convince Harkin, who is visiting, to take over. Ann has recently moved into the guest house at the winery, and Rowan and Del hire her to try to find and communicate with Niall, to find out what happened to the two wills he told them about and what his wishes were when he died. Without either of those two recent wills, the entire business and property would go to Harkin, who plans to sell immediately.

As always with these mysteries, the situation starts out seeming fairly simple, but the more Ann learns, the more complicated things become. In addition to the mystery of the wills, there is soon another death on site (possibly murder?), a mysterious location in downtown Philadelphia, and two potential ghosts for Ann to talk to. As always, the suspense builds to an action-packed climax. Besides Dalrymple's talent for suspenseful mystery/thrillers, my husband and I both agree she's an excellent writer. When I'm in the middle of one of her novels, I can barely stand to set it aside at night to go to sleep! I also love her richly-drawn characters, both the recurring characters like Ann and Mike, and the new characters introduced in each novel. Dalrymple also has a talent for making the location of each novel come alive, including lots of great local details and lush descriptions. Both my husband and I enjoy this engrossing series of supernatural mysteries. And book 6, Be with the Dead, was just released, so I have another book to look forward to!

370 pages, William Kingsfield Publishers

This book fits in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

 

Alphabet Soup Challenge - S

Diversity Challenge

Literary Escapes Challenge - Pennsylvania

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

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 here and/or download it from Audible.

 

You can buy all the books in the series 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! Book one:

   

 

Or you can order A Serpent's Tooth from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.

Movie Monday: A Man Called Otto

This weekend, my husband and I enjoyed a staycation, including a rare trip to the movie theater! We saw A Man Called Otto, based on the novel A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman. I read (and loved) the novel, my husband didn't read it, and we both thoroughly enjoyed this warm, poignant, very funny movie adaptation.

Otto, played by Tom Hanks, is a grumpy older man who lives in a townhouse community, located in Pennsylvania. He's been forced to retire from a job he loved, and Otto is someone who needs to feel useful. Each morning, he "does his rounds" of the neighborhood, checking that everyone is parked where they should be, that the recyclables are properly sorted, and that everyone is following the rules. But Otto has a secret. With his wife and his job both gone now, Otto has no reason to keep living. He's determined to end his life on his own terms. Early in the movie, he calls to cancel his electric, gas, and phone services to leave no loose ends. But life has other plans. New neighbors move into the neighborhood, a Mexican-American family. Marisol, played by Mariana Travino, is hugely pregnant; her husband, Tommy (played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), is a nitwit in Otto's eyes. And they have two adorable little girls. This family plies Otto with kindness, requests for help, and delicious food. Throughout the movie, flashbacks in Otto's memory help to fill in the blanks about how he came to be where he is now. With the help of several crises, Otto's icy exterior gradually thaws a bit, and he finds a reason to live.

Like the novel it's adapted from, this movie is hilariously funny, while also including some dark, difficult emotions (it does, after all, include several suicide attempts). Tom Hanks, of course, does a wonderful job of bringing the curmudgeonly Otto to life on screen, and Mariana Travino is excellent as the warm, persistent Marisol. It's a faithful adaptation of the book, following the plot pretty closely, with the exception of Ove becoming Otto and being located in the US instead of Sweden (though there's a nod to Otto's Swedish heritage in the movie). My husband and I both laughed a lot and teared up at the end and had a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon at the movies.

It's Monday 2/6! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

I'm pleased to say that my health has gradually improved this past week. For much of the week, I was feeling better but still sleeping a LOT (10-11 hours at night plus a nap), but I got managed to get up at a semi-normal time yesterday and today - yay!  I think the new thyroid meds are finally stabilizing things and bringing an end to my 6-month-long relapse. 

On Friday, I was even able to meet up with my two closest local friends for a short walk and lunch. Our three sons, all named James, have been best friends since Kindergarten (they're now 28), so we've been friends for decades. But it had been a very long time since the three of us had all gotten together. We talked for three straight hours!

 

COLD but sunshine and blue skies!

Together again!

This weekend, I wasn't sure enough of my health situation to book a weekend getaway like I wanted to, so my husband and I enjoyed a staycation Friday night through Sunday morning! I declared it a no-work zone (more for me than for him, as I tend to pick up the laptop and squeeze work into every moment). We enjoyed Reubens for dinner Friday night (a real treat for me--bread, cheese, AND a half beer!), went to a Saturday matinee at the theater, got takeout Chinese Saturday night, and had fires in our fireplace all weekend (and extra reading time, of course). Our son was home much of the weekend, too, instead of out with friends, so it was nice to have extra time with him, too.

TGIF - Reubens!

In the theater - with popcorn!

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On the Blog

In keeping with my new goal to put less pressure on myself, I did not review every book I read in January (6 total), but I did enjoy writing reviews of two novels that both blew me away:

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus - thoughtful and laugh-out-loud funny.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver - one of her best! Outstanding coming-of-age story set in 90's Appalachia, told with a unique voice.

And here's my Reading Challenges Update for January:

(Details on my 2023 Reading Challenges page) 

Mount TBR Challenge - 3 so far!

Monthly Motif Challenge (a book with a directional word in the title) - just barely squeaked by with Lessons in Chemistry 

Classics Challenge - book by a female author - The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck 

Alphabet Soup Challenge - D, G, L (I can't believe I already had 3 repeats so early in the year!)

Diversity Reading Challenge - 4 and January's mini-challenge of Non-Western Setting

Travel the World in Books - Canada (Ontario), China, Mexico

Literary Escapes Challenge - California, Maine, Virginia

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On Video

Best YA and Middle-Grade Books Read in 2023  - last of my Best of 2023 videos

Friday Reads 2-3-23 - my quick recap of what I was reading this weekend

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What We're Reading

 

 

I finished reading A Serpent's Tooth by Matty Dalrymple. This is book 5 in her Ann Kinnear series, about a women who can sense and communicate with spirits. Each book has a mystery at its heart and thriller-type action, but with a supernatural twist that I love. This one takes place at a family-run winery located in southeastern Pennsylvania (about 15 minutes from where I live!). I love her writing, the characters, the suspense, and how she makes each location an integral part of the story. Book 6 was just released, and I have that one, too, to look forward to now!

 

 

Yesterday, I started reading Dead of Winter by Stephen Mack Jones, book 3 in his August Snow series. I first met Stephen at Booktopia 2019, and I enjoyed his first two novels, August Snow and Lives Laid Down (which was featured at Booktopia). Snow is a half-Black, half-Mexican ex-cop who made a lot of money in a lawsuit that took down dirty cops in Detroit, where he lives. This makes him unpopular among most of the police force. In each book, Snow takes on some sort of mystery in his hometown, usually focused on cleaning up the city. These are action-packed thrillers with a great sense of humor, and my husband enjoys them, too.

 On audio, I started listening to Anywhere You Run by Wanda M. Morris, historical fiction that is also a mystery/thriller, and a good fit for Black History Month. It's set in 1964, and begins in Jackson, Mississippi, during Freedom Summer. Two sisters each decide to flee town for different reasons: one killed a white man who raped her, and the other is single and pregnant. One ends up in a small town in Georgia, and the other heads north, but they don't realize that a man is tracking both of them. It's great so far!

 

My husband, Ken, is reading book 3 in the Ann Kinnear series, The Falcon and the Owl by Matty Dalrymple. We had a mysterious, spirit-sensing Ann Kinnear weekend! He enjoys this series, too. This one also takes place near us, in southeastern PA, at a small airport where Ann is taking flying lessons. Murder, ghosts, and mystery ensue! I read this one last fall (my review at the link).

 

Our son, 28, is still reading The White Tower by Michael Wisehart, book 1 in The Aldoran Chronicles, in preparation for book 2, which he just bought with a Christmas gift card. He's discovered new updates to an old favorite video game that is taking up some of his reading time!

 __________

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: Demon Copperhead

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver was my first audio book of 2023, and I can already tell that it will be one of my top reads of the year! I'm a huge Kingsolver fan, and her early novels The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees have permanent spots in my mental Best Books of All Time list. I've enjoyed her more recent novels, as well, but now she has published another book on a par with those early hits. In Demon Copperhead, she uses the inspiration and basic outline of the classic novel David Copperfield by Charles Dickens to write an epic and original coming-of-age novel set in modern-day Appalachia.

Young Damon is nicknamed Demon from a young age, as nicknames are common in the hills and hollers of his home in southwestern Virginia. He narrates this story of his life (at least the young years), beginning at the beginning, when he was born in a single-wide trailer to an addicted young single mother. His father, whose green eyes, red hair, and Copperhead moniker he inherited, died before he was born at a local waterfall area called Devil's Bathtub, leaving poor Demon fatherless and afraid of bathtubs. Mrs. Peggot, the next-door neighbor, was there for Demon's birth and was an important part of his life afterward, as a surrogate grandmother. She was also raising her grandson, Maggot (aka Matt Peggot), who was Demon's best friend, since his own mother was in prison. Demon and Maggot's best years of their youth were spent together running through the woods behind their homes and playing superheroes. Demon not only liked to play superheros, but he loved to draw them--and make up his own--from a young age. As the boys grow up, though, Demon faces a nonstop parade of calamities and challenges, from an abusive stepfather to the wild vagaries of the foster care system and worse. But he tells his story with wit and wisdom.

That is only the very tip of the iceberg of Demon's remarkable story. He endures horrifying and heartbreaking trials as he grows from a child into a teenager and eventually a young man. But, this is not only the story of this one remarkable and remarkably unlucky boy. It's also the story of a whole population, as Kingsolver delves into the real-life issues in Appalachia and America's poor, rural communities, including the foster care system, addiction (particularly opoid addiction), the lack of jobs, and more. You might expect this to be a depressing novel, but it's not. Yes, sometimes, the turns that Demon's young life takes are heartbreaking, but his narrative is also hilarious. Kingsolver is an extremely talented storyteller, and this is one of her best tales, told in a wholly unique voice I came to adore:

"First I got myself born. A decent crowd was on hand to watch, and they've always given me that much: the worst of the job was up to me, my mother being let's just say out of it.

On any other day, they'd have seen her outside on the deck of her trailer home, good neighbors taking notice, pestering the tit of trouble as they will. All through the dog-breath air of late summer and fall, cast an eye up the mountain and there she'd be, little bleach-blonde smoking her Pall Malls, hanging on that railing like she's captain of her ship up there, and now might be the hour it's going down. This is an eighteen-year-old girl we're discussing, all on her own and as pregnant as it gets. The day she failed to show, it fell to Nance Peggot to go bang on the door, barge inside, and find her passed out on the bathroom floor with her junk all over the place and me already coming out. A slick fish-colored hostage picking up grit from the vinyl tile, worming and shoving around because I'm still inside the sack that babies float in, pre-real-life."

The colorful language that Demon uses--and especially the hilarious similes and metaphors--make every page of this book an absolute delight to read. Demon is a wonderful character, but he is also surrounded by fully fleshed-out, real-feeling people, both good and bad.

As I said, Kingsolver has based her modern-day story on the basic framework of David Copperfield, which I read a few years ago for Big Book Summer, but you do not need to be familiar with that classic to enjoy this new novel. It absolutely stands on its own. However, if you have read David Copperfield, you are in for an extra helping of pleasure. The parallels between the stories and between the character names are like Easter eggs for readers who've also enjoyed that classic. I listened to Demon Copperhead on audio, and the narrator, Charlie Thurston, fully inhabits Demon's character and voice (listen to a sample). It's a long book that took me almost all of January to finish listening to it, but I was still sorry when it ended because I hated to leave Demon and his friends. This is a spectacular, epic story told by a consummate storyteller. Just reading those first paragraphs that I excerpted up above makes me want to start back at the beginning and read it all again.

560 pages, Harper

HarperAudio

This book fits in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

 

Literary Escapes Challenge - Virginia

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the outstanding audiobook here 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 Demon Copperhead from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.

Fiction Review: Lessons in Chemistry

I decided this year to only going to write a full-length review if a book was really great. Well, my very first book read in 2023, Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, met that criteria. I already know this thoughtful, laugh-out-loud funny book will be among my top reads for the year because I had an absolute blast reading it!

The novel begins with a brief set of scenes in 1961, where Elizabeth Zott, an out-of-work chemist and single mother of a brilliant five-year-old daughter named Madeleine, heads off to her new career, as the television star of a cooking show called Supper at Six. Then the narrative moves back to 1951 to provide the backstory of how all that happened. Elizabeth started out working as a chemist at a local research laboratory. Her male colleagues--and boss--were all less intelligent but (probably because they knew how smart she was) treated her horribly. She wanted to work on a ground-breaking idea of her own but was usually assigned to scut work and treated like an assistant. Then she met Calvin Evans, the tall, handsome, brilliant chemist who had his own fully-equipped lab to himself because he'd won a Nobel Prize. Like Elizabeth, Calvin wasn't very good with people. He was known for holding a grudge and being a loner at work. But once the two of them got to know each other, it was ... well, chemistry. She moves in with him, he invites her to do her work in his lab, and the two of them are fabulously happy together. Somehow, though, we know from the start that their wonderful relationship can't last because we know where Elizabeth is ten years later.

Most of the novel is about those ten years, from awkward chemist Elizabeth first meeting Calvin to her somehow transforming into a huge TV star, with flashbacks to Elizabeth's and Calvin's earlier lives. The plot is intriguing, but this novel is about so much more than what happens. It's about love, women in the workplace, parenting, and finding happiness. Don't forget that it's historical fiction, too, and paints a complex (and horrifying) picture of the expectations and treatment of women in the 1950's and 60's. But it's the writing that really makes this unique novel shine. Garmus has created characters that you want to spend time with, not just Elizabeth but also Calvin, Madeleine, their neighbor, Harriett, and more. And I haven't mentioned the best part yet ... this book is hilarious! Even though it deals with some very serious issues of sexual assault, mistreatment of women, and more, this novel made me laugh out loud repeatedly, often taking me by surprise with its sudden wit. One of my favorite characters is Six-Thirty, Calvin and Elizabeth's dog, who is incredibly smart as well and takes it upon himself to protect the family. I know that sounds gimicky, but it isn't ... it's hysterically funny to hear Six-Thirty's very astute observations (thoughts--of course he doesn't speak) about the world around him and his role in it. I wanted to include some quotes, but you should experience it for yourself. It's best when the humor takes you by surprise. I loved every moment of this novel, and I never wanted it to end. It was the perfect book to kick off the new year, and it left me smiling and feeling satisfied.

390 pages, Doubleday

This book fits in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

Mount TBR Challenge

Monthly Motif Challenge - New Year, New Direction (direction in the title - I know "in" is a stretch, but it's the best I did last month)

Alphabet Soup Challenge - L

Literary Escapes Challenge - California

 

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. I've heard the audio is great!

 

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 Lessons in Chemistry from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.