It's Monday 7/3! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

Happy 4th of July weekend!

 I had a sort of frustrating week last week, just working hard and feeling overwhelmed. As always, I know I am trying to do too much, but there's so much I want to do! On top of that, though, I kept getting urgent messages to upgrade to Google Analytics 4 for my two blogs before July 1. So, rule-follower that I am, I spent days struggling through awful behind-the-scenes tech stuff--not my forte! I have blogs because I'm a writer, not a coder. Google's instructions didn't even work for Blogger (which is owned by Google!), so I had to look for instructional videos, which still did not quite match up to what I was seeing on my own screens (of which I had about 10 browser windows open by then). I'm not sure I completed it correctly, but--even worse--after all that, I'm not sure I actually had to do any of it! I realized (too far into the process) that I don't actually use Google Analytics most of the time; I just use the simple statistics Blogger provides within the platform.

By Friday evening, I was feeling frustrated, overwhelmed, and grumpy. So, I took Saturday off and enjoyed a wonderful day with my husband. We went to a morning matinee of the new Indiana Jones movie, which was excellent! It was old-style movie fun, with plenty of suspense, action, and humor. After the movie, we went to a restaurant for lunch and sat out on their patio, with a lovely view of our favorite local creek. Take-out Thai food for dinner rounded out our day. And Sunday night, we watched the last-ever Ted Lasso episode - wah!! So sorry to see it end. If you haven't tried it yet, it's a must-see, full of humor and heart. We will definitely miss it. And tonight, we're looking forward to a picnic barbecue dinner with friends.

Movie in the morning - a treat!

Lunch al fresco

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On the Blog

More frustration from Blogger: last week, I wrote a review of The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara, and Blogger immediately tagged it as "not meeting community standards." They've been doing this a lot lately. In this case, they say it looks like spam (it's a book review exactly like the other thousands of book reviews on my blog!). I am still waiting for them to review it--I suspect the holiday weekend interfered with them doing it quickly--so I can't share that with you yet. They did let this one go through:

TV Tuesday: Silo - we are enjoying the TV adaptation of one of our favorite book series! 

And, remember, there is still plenty of time to sign up for the Big Book Summer Reading Challenge! It runs until early September, and you only need to plan to read one 400+ page book between now and then to participate. There's a whole community in our Goodreads group with fun Big Book chat all summer long. 

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On Video

Friday Reads 6-30-23 - my brief weekly reading update

Rootin' Tootin' June on the Range Tag - this was a fun one! All about books, TV, movies, and travel in the American West. I included some photos of our many trips out West.

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 What We're Reading 

 

Guess what? Yup, I'm still reading my biggest book of the summer, Voyager by Diana Gabaldon, book 3 of the Outlander series. At over 800 (large) pages, this is an intimidating Big Book, and it's been on my shelf for two years and was in my Big Book Summer stack last year! But as soon as I started reading it, I thought, "why did I wait so long?" She writes such fascinating, detailed historical fiction, with a touch of time travel and an epic love story at the center of it. The series is about a British woman in 1945 who goes back in time to 1700's Scotland. This book is no exception and was completely engrossing from the very first pages: action-packed, suspenseful, and filled with fascinating historical details. I'm over 600 pages in and still can't wait to pick it up again every day! I should finish it this week.

 

 

I finished my second audio book for #BigBookSummer Challenge, The Strangers, book one in the Greystone Secrets series by Margaret Peterson Haddix, one of my favorite middle-grade authors. Her books are always engrossing, with twisty plots and in-depth characters. This one focuses on three siblings: sixth-grader Chess (short for Rochester), fourth-grader Emma, and second-grader Finn. They are shocked to come home from school one day and hear on the news their mom is watching that three kids--with their same names, ages, and birthdays!--have been kidnapped from another state. Then their mom takes off urgently on a business trip, and nothing seems right. The kids, along with an older friend, begin to investigate. The secret here is a good one! I really enjoyed it and now want to read book two.

 

 

 

My husband, Ken, is reading one of his Father's Day gifts from me (and another Big Book, though just barely), The Quiet Boy by Ben H. Winters. He and I are both fans of Winters' The Last Policeman trilogy, but he says this novel is entirely different, a legal thriller with two trials woven together, one in the past and one in the present, involving malpractice and murder. He's enjoying it.

 

 

 Our son, 28, is now onto book nine, Shadowmage, of the Spellmonger series by Terry Mancour. This one is only about 800 pages long, a shortie for him! He loves this series.

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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: The House of Impossible Beauties

My first audio book for Big Book Summer was The House of Impossible Beauties, a novel by Joseph Cassara, a book that's been sitting in my audio backlog for far too long. I'm so glad I finally listened to this heartbreakingly beautiful story of a group of gay and transgender young people who become a family in 1980's New York City.

The novel begins by peeking into the childhoods of each of the main characters. Angel is an older Puerto Rican teen who has always felt female and finally begins to dress the way she feels outside of her home. She takes a big chance one morning when she comes home to the apartment she shares with her mother and brother, Miguel, still dressed in her gown from the night before. Thomas is only eight years old as his story begins, living in a small apartment with his mother and Italian grandmother. He spends a lot of time with his grandma while his mother is out, and he loves dressing up in her clothes. When he's just a teen, both his mother and grandmother are arrested, and Thomas sets out on his own, fully inhabiting his new female persona of Venus, as he tries to earn a living on the streets. Juanito lives with his mother and secretly adores the old Barbie doll he found. At just eight years old, he finally gets to spend a summer with his father in Puerto Rico, but when his father sees the Barbie doll, he takes out his rage on little Juanito in horrific ways. Angel eventually falls in love with Hector, and the two dream of starting their own house, as a part of the Harlem ball circuit. After Hector dies of AIDS, Angel continues their House of Xtravanganza, fulfilling her dream of being a Mother. She recruits Venus from the streets and gives her a home. Juanito and a butch queen named Daniel follow. The close-knit group forms a loving family and supports each other in beautiful ways, but the pressures of street life, addiction, and AIDS provide devastating challenges.

This is a completely immersive novel that pulled me into this world I was unfamiliar with, with trans balls, Houses, and lives made more difficult by addiction and often-necessary prostitution to make a living. Each of the characters is carefully drawn, and by starting in childhood, the reader really gets to know each of them as an individual. All of them suffered lives touched by poverty, abuse, and/or crime as very young children, and many of them were also rejected by their families. The way they form their own inclusive, loving family is heartwarming, but their lives are still marred by heartbreaking circumstances, including abuse, AIDS, addiction, and death. I was stunned to learn after I finished it that the novel is based on the real-life Angie (Angel) and her House of Xtravaganza, and that many of the characters in the book are based on real-life people. It's a very powerful novel that had me laughing out loud at times and tearing up at others. The audio production was wonderful and part of what made the story feel so real and compelling to me. This moving, tragic story about finding community and family covers it all: joy and sorrow, love and life.

416 pages, Ecco

HarperAudio

NOTE: Paris Is Burning is a documentary film chronicling the 1980's NY ball culture and featuring Venus as one of its storylines.

This book fits in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

 

Alphabet Soup Challenge - H

Diversity Challenge + June mini-challenge: LGBT+

Big Book Summer Challenge

 

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 and/or download it from Audible (or Amazon).

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm (currently on sale for just $4.99) and support local bookstores.

 

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!

  

TV Tuesday: Silo

The trend of making excellent television adaptations from best-selling books continues, with Silo from Apple TV, based on the outstanding Silo trilogy by author Hugh Howey, including Wool, Shift, and Dust, a favorite series of mine and my husband.

In the first episode, we see that the world depicted in Silo all takes place underground, in a giant silo 200 stories deep. In the lowest floors, Mechanical keeps everything running, with enormous generators and other machines to make the space livable. In this society, every person has a purpose, and birth rates are carefully regulated so that the silo can continue to meet the needs of all of its citizens. Some floors contain huge farms that grow the food for everyone living there; others have schools or clothing looms or medical facilities. Sheriff Holsten's (played by David Oyelowo) office is way up on the top floor. The outside air is toxic, so giant screens in each regional cafeteria provide a depressing look at the outside world, with its gray skies and dead trees. As the first episode opens, Sheriff Holsten is being "sent out to clean," the silo's horrifying way of dealing with rebellion. Both Deputy Marnes, played by Will Patton, and Mayor Jahns, played by Geraldine James, are grieving this unexpected turn of events. Sheriff Holsten is a good man, but he has said he wants to go outside, and the punishment for that is banishment. As with everyone sent out before him including his wife, he first cleans the camera lenses for the people still inside and then collapses in a heap after just a few steps away from the silo. Much to everyone's shock, Holsten has named Juliette Nichols, played by Rebecca Ferguson, an unknown but talented mechanic from the down deep, to be his replacement. Underlying all of this are small glimpses, by both Holston and Juliette, that perhaps everything they've been told about the silo is not strictly true.

And those are the mysteries at the heart of this show (and its originating trilogy): how did the silo come to be, what happened to the outside world, and why are things inside the silo (by necessity, run under strict rules) the way they are? In flashbacks, we see first Holsten and then later in the present, Juliette, begin to dig into these questions that are dangerous to even think about. The sheriff's department is also kept busy investigating an ever-increasing spate of violence and unusual deaths that the Justice department (some scary guys on a middle floor) would like to sweep under the rug. Through all of that, we see the fascinating inner workings of this unique world: children playing, festivals and celebrations, births and funerals, and all the minutiae of daily life, lived within this limited space. As with the novels, this story is filled with suspense and lots of unexpected twists, but it also focuses in on humanity, characters, and relationships. So far (we are five episodes in), they've done a remarkable job of visually recreating this very unusual setting, and the acting and writing are excellent. This unique, gripping science fiction drama has already been approved for a second season, and we are thoroughly enjoying season one.

Silo is an Apple TV original show.

And if you have not yet read the trilogy, it's maybe the best series I have ever read! Start with Wool.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

Last week, I ... did nothing! ha ha It was my recovery/catch-up week after our lovely vacation. I actually worked a lot and got a lot done, both for work (writing) and for home, but I only left the house once, for massage therapy on Monday, and the only photos I took all week were of the sky for my #sky365 project. It was cloudy and rainy almost every day! Kind of boring, but I enjoy looking at the clouds--every day is different.

We did do something fun (and long overdue) on Friday evening, though I still didn't leave the house! Since my chronic illness was worse than usual the past few years, our good friends have hosted us for dinner--oh, probably 12 or 15 times in a row--without any reciprocation (they're those kind of amazing friends). Since I've been feeling a bit better recently, we were finally able to host them at our house! It was wonderful, and we had a fun evening together, with good food, my husband's signature cocktail, and lots of conversation, catching up, and laughs.

I might actually leave the house this week.

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On the Blog

Fiction Review: The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams - I loved this poignant, emotionally complex novel about how books can help people connect and build community.

Fiction Review: Billy Summers by Stephen King - my first #BigBookSummer read was outstanding, an intricate, gripping character study of a hit man with a moral code, on his last job. 

And, remember, there is still plenty of time to sign up for the Big Book Summer Reading Challenge! It runs until early September, and you only need to read one 400+ page book between now and then to participate. There's a whole community in our Goodreads group with fun Big Book chat all summer long.

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On Video

Catskills Travel Vlog: Camping, Kayaking, Local Towns, Food and Drink, Books and a Bookstore! - come along with us on our recent vacation to enjoy the natural beauty and fun of this wonderful region, with lots of video clips and photos.

Friday Reads 6-23-23 - brief update on what I have been reading

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 What We're Reading

 

I am still reading my biggest book of the summer, Voyager by Diana Gabaldon, book 3 of the Outlander series. At over 800 (large) pages, this is an intimidating Big Book, and it's been on my shelf for two years and was in my Big Book Summer stack last year! But as soon as I started reading it, I thought, "why did I wait so long?" She writes such fascinating, detailed historical fiction, with a touch of time travel and an epic love story at the center of it. The series is about a British woman in 1945 who goes back in time to 1700's Scotland. This book is no exception and was completely engrossing from the very first pages. I'm past the halfway point now, but I'll be reading this one for a while yet!

 

I've started my second audio book for #BigBookSummer Challenge, The Strangers, book one in the Greystone Secrets series by Margaret Peterson Haddix, one of my favorite middle-grade authors. Her books are always engrossing, with twisty plots and in-depth characters. This one focuses on three siblings: sixth-grader Chess (short for Rochester), fourth-grader Emma, and second-grader Finn. They are shocked to come home from school one day and see their mom watching the news, which is reporting that three kids--with their same names, ages, and birthdays!--have been kidnapped from another state. Then their mom takes off urgently on a business trip, and nothing seems right. It's excellent so far and already gripping.

 

My husband, Ken, is also enjoying Big Book Summer. He finished one of his biggest books, Matterhorn, a novel about the Vietnam War by decorated Marine Karl Marlantes. He said it was, of course, pretty grim, but an excellent, well-written book. 

 

Now, Ken has started one of his Father's Day gifts from me (and another Big Book, though just barely), The Quiet Boy by Ben H. Winters. He and I are both fans of Winters' The Last Policeman trilogy, but he says this novel is entirely different, a legal thriller with two trials woven together, one in the past and one in the present, involving malpractice and murder.

 

 Our son, 28, just finished the 1200-page book eight, Court Wizard, of the Spellmonger series by Terry Mancour.  He loves this series so much that he's diving right into book nine, Shadowmage, tonight. This one is only about 800 pages long!

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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: Billy Summers

My first book for the 2023 Big Book Summer Challenge was Billy Summers by Stephen King. I always like to kick off my summer reading with a compelling quick-read Big Book, and wow, did this one fit the bill! While the last third is certainly thriller-like, much of this unique novel about a hit man on his last job is an in-depth, riveting character study.

Billy Summers was a Marine sniper in Afghanistan, and he's been working for many years now as a hired killer. He's not only an excellent shot but is very good at disappearing afterward. And he has a moral code: he will only agree to kill really bad guys. Now, a Vegas crime boss named Nick whom he's worked with before wants to hire Billy for a big job. The pay-off for this one is so huge that Billy decides it will be his last job, and he will retire afterward. The more Billy learns about this job, though, the more nervous it makes him (and he is not a nervous man). The job requires him to move into a small southern city and become a part of the community, blending in so that his presence there seems normal. He'll be waiting until his target, who is currently imprisoned in California for a lesser charge, is extradited back to be tried for murder. The cover story concocted for Billy is that he's a first-time novelist who wasn't meeting his deadlines, so his agent (the cover for another man he's worked with before) moves him to this city and sets him up in an office in a half-empty building (his office window conveniently looks out over the courthouse across the street). Billy moves into a decent neighborhood, goes to the office every day, and begins to get to know his neighbors at home and at work. As long as he's pretending to be a writer, he decides to really attempt to write, something he's always wanted to do. Billy is very smart and an avid reader, but as a hit man, he adopts what he thinks of as the "dumb self" in front of those who hire him. As time moves forward and Billy waits for his target, he gets more and more concerned about this whole situation.

As you might expect, things go wrong! This is a very twisty, suspenseful novel, especially in the second half, but the beginning is focused on Billy himself. In the present day, he settles into this new place, but he's writing about his past, starting with a horrific childhood. Billy's writings are a book-within-the-book, providing background and understanding of Billy for the reader, as Billy himself slowly lets himself remember everything he's been through. The novel is aptly titled, as it is an in-depth look at the complexities of Billy Summers: who he is, what he's experienced, and how that all affects him. And, of course, it's written by Stephen King, who is supremely talented at creating intricate, real-feeling characters. In fact, I liked Billy right from the start and was rooting for him (yes, for the hit man) and have missed him since I finished the book. As things go wrong after the hit, the action and suspense ramp up with lots of surprises in store, but the entire book, right from the first pages, is thoughtful, compelling, and engrossing. Billy Summers has taken its place among my favorite Stephen King novels (including 11/22/63 and Hearts in Atlantis).

514 pages, Scribner

Simon & Schuster Audio

This book fits in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

 Mount TBR Challenge

Literary Escapes Challenge - Arkansas (my best guess) 

Big Book Summer Challenge

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here, as Billy meets with Nick to discuss the hit, and/or download it from Audible.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores.

 

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!

    
  

Fiction Review: The Reading List

I love listening to the Book Cougars podcast, and their second quarter read-along choice was The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams (this year's theme for their read-alongs is books about books). This warm, moving novel about the power of books to connect people came to me at just the right time.

Seventeen-year-old Aleisha is reluctantly working at her local library in Wembley, London, for the summer. She's not much of a reader, but she took the job at the urging of her older brother, Aidan; the library is a special place to him that he has loved since he was a young child. The siblings now work together to care for their mother, who is confined to the house due to mental illness. It's a difficult life for both of them.

One day, a widower named Mukesh comes to the library for the first time and timidly approaches the desk to ask Aleisha to recommend a book. His wife died a year ago, and his three adult daughters worry about him but have busy lives of their own. His wife was an avid reader and always had a stack of books from the library on her nightstand. Their granddaughter, Priya, is just like her grandma, and Mukesh thinks that perhaps reading will help him to become closer to Priya and to his late wife, whom he misses so much. He found a library copy of The Time Traveler's Wife under their bed and read it. The novel opened a whole new world for him, helped him better understand his own loss, and gave him a glimpse of what his wife and Priya love so much about books. But he has no idea what to read next. When he asks Aleisha, she doesn't know what to say, but she found a list of books inside a book she was shelving earlier, so she suggests the first one from the list, To Kill a Mockingbird, and checks it out for him. Knowing the lonely man will return and want to talk to her about the book, Aleisha begins reading it also. That begins their own private book club, and the two isolated, struggling people both begin to reach out and connect, with each other and with their community.

The list Aleisha finds:

Just in case you need it:

To Kill a Mockingbird

Rebecca

The Kite Runner

Life of Pi

Pride and Prejudice

Little Women

Beloved

A Suitable Boy

(links to my own reviews, where available)

While Aleisha and Mukesh are at the heart of this story, that list makes the rounds of the community, and short, interstitial chapters provide a quick glimpse into the lives of other people who find the list of books in various places. In all, the novel weaves together the story of a community and of people coming together via the books they read. Mukesh and Aleisha are both suffering, and their healing journeys are highlighted here. It's a beautiful, heartwarming story, but it doesn't shy away from difficult topics like death, mental illness, and suicide. I read this novel during a difficult time in my own life, grieving the loss of our 13-year-old grand-nephew, and like the characters, the gentle but honest tones of the novel helped me to cope. It's all about people and connections, but it is also a love letter to books (I've read all but two of the books on the list). I greatly enjoyed experiencing these books (many of them my own favorites) through the eyes of these characters just discovering the power of reading for the first time.

400 pages, William Morrow

HarperAudio

This book fits in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

 

Alphabet Soup Challenge - R

Diversity Challenge (and East Asian mini challenge)

Travel the World in Books - UK

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 and/or download it from Audible. It sounds like a wonderful audio production, with multiple narrators.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores.

 

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!