It's Monday 7/8! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

Last week was a busy catch-up week after our week spent camping and traveling--and even busier since it was such a short week, with the holiday!

Tuesday, I took my elderly Book Buddy (library program, though we've become good friends) out to lunch and the library. She always enjoys riding in my convertible! And I got an overdue haircut Wednesday. 

 

Since Thursday, our weather has been intolerably hot and humid (temps in the high 90's), so we enjoyed the 4th of July in an air-conditioned movie theater, with meal service and recliner seats! We saw A Quiet Place: Day One, which was just as wonderful as the first two Quiet Place movies. I'll try to write a review later today.

 

On Friday, we attended the retirement party of one of our oldest and dearest friends. We've known her and her husband since our days together in New Orleans in the 80's and have been together through every stage of life, so we enjoyed celebrating this latest milestone with her. 

Very early Saturday morning, my husband left on his annual road trip to his hometown in Oklahoma to play golf with his two closest high school friends for a week. He's really been looking forward to this (arrived last night--a much faster rate of travel than we can manage when I'm along!). As for me, I am thoroughly enjoying some quiet solitude. I got a lot done this weekend, cleared some clutter, and enjoyed some downtime. I have plans with several friends this week, and our son will be home (at least briefly) tonight.

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On the Blog

Fiction Review: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry - I loved this incredible epic adventure novel with so much emotional depth--I laughed, I cried, I thoroughly enjoyed every one of its 850 pages!

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On Video

Travel & Camping Vlog - Hickory Run State Park and Jim Thorpe, PA - photos and videos from our recent 5-day camping trip to this beautiful state park, including a visit to the historic town of Jim Thorpe and a ride on a scenic railroad.

Friday Reads 7-5-24 - my brief weekly update of what I am reading and listening to - a catch-up on 4 excellent books this week for #BigBookSummer Challenge.

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 What We're Reading

After finally finishing Lonesome Dove, I moved onto a "smaller" #BigBookSummer selection, The Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley. This is another book I've been wanting to read, after hearing so many rave reviews. Eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in Sault Saint Marie and has always felt pulled between two different worlds: her mother's white family with French origins and her father's indigenous family and community, which is a large part of the local region. She and her best friend, Lily, have just graduated from high school and are looking forward to starting at the local college in the fall. Daunis is also an outstanding hockey player, playing on the boys' team in high school, in this Canadian border town where hockey is king. However, all is not right in Daunis' world. Her uncle recently died, her grandmother had a stroke and is in a nursing home, and there is evidence all around that drugs--particularly meth--are having a devastating effect on her community. While Daunis and the local native culture are at the center of this novel, it also has mystery/thriller elements. I'm loving it so far.

 

Just last night, I finished my latest Big Book on audio, Mr. Nice Guy by Jennifer Miller and Jason Feifer, a wife-husband writing team. Lucas gave up law school, a fiancee (though technically, she gave him up), and his small southern town to chase his dream of living in the Big Apple. He got a job as a fact-checker at Empire, the glossy magazine that has long fed his visions of an exciting life in New York. One night, he meets an attractive woman named Carmen and goes home with her, feeling like his big city life is finally starting. But the next week, he discovers--as does the rest of the city--that he has actually slept with the Carmen Kelly, his own magazine's sex columnist, and she has written a scathing review of their night together that's gone viral, referring to him as Mr. Nice Guy and emphasizing his inexperience. Lucas writes a furious (and anonymous) rebuttal that the magazine also publishes, and suddenly, all anyone is talking about is their budding (and doomed?) relationship. It's fun and smart, with a he said-she said approach (in the audio, the authors each read their own character's columns), but it also had surprising emotional depth, addressed some difficult topics, and was about much more than sex. I really enjoyed it. Now I need to pick my next audio!

 

When my husband, Ken, left, he was reading Big Time by Ben H. Winters, one of our favorite authors who wrote The Last Policeman trilogy. This is a sci fi thriller about a dark conspiracy to harvest and sell people's time, extracted like organs for transplant. Sounds like an intriguing concept, and I know it must be gripping and fast-paced because Ken was already two-thirds of the way through the novel in less than a week. I doubt if he'll have much reading time this week!

 

Our son, 29, might be still reading book 2 of the Licanius Trilogy by James Islington, An Echo of Things to Come since he started a new job two weeks ago! He's enjoying this one, but he won't have a lot of reading time now. And I need to adjust to the fact that I can't text him for a reading update on Monday morning anymore because he's at work! I did talk to him several times last week but forgot to get a book update. He's loving the new job so far.

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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: Lonesome Dove

Ever since I started my YouTube channel in 2021 and heard about the annual June on the Range reading event there, I've heard people raving about how amazing the novel Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry is. I remember all the hype over the TV mini-series in the 80's (though I didn't watch it), and lots of friends with similar reading tastes said the novel was excellent. But I'm not a huge fan of westerns generally, so I put off reading it. I decided this would be the year, and I read it in June for both June on the Range and my own Big Book Summer Challenge. Wow. Why did I wait? This beautifully written, moving novel blew me away and left me sobbing (three separate times!) and often laughing out loud. It was everything I'd heard and more.

In 1873, Augustus McCrae and Captain Woodrow Call are retired Texas Rangers, living a quiet life on the Texas/Mexico border along the Rio Grande, in the tiny, dusty town of Lonesome Dove. A couple of their ex-Ranger fellows, Pea Eye and a Black man named Deets, along with a teen boy named Newt make up the rest of their Hat Creek Cattle Company, which doesn't get a whole lot of business there in the desolate, tiny town. Both Call, often just called Captain, and Pea Eye are both reticent men, but Gus talks enough for the whole outfit. He can--and often does--talk about absolutely nothing for hours. The town mostly consists of a few meager farms and ranches, a general store, and a saloon, featuring a beautiful whore named Lorena. The few travelers that come to Lonesome Dove often come just for Lorena, though there is also a lot of drinking and card playing in the saloon, as a man named Lippy plays the piano. Into this quiet life on the edge of nowhere, another ex-Ranger named Jake stops by the Hat Creek outfit to visit his old friends. He regales them with tales of his recent trip to Montana, which is still a vast wilderness. He emphasizes that it is excellent cattle country (as opposed to Lonesome Dove, where grass for grazing is nearly non-existent), and Call is unusually moved from their typical routine to suggest a cattle drive all the way to Montana. First, they round up thousands of cattle from Mexico and a few more men, including a couple of experienced cowhands, two lost Irishmen they rescued from Mexico, and some teen boys from town. The expanded though ragtag Hat Creek outfit sets off, leaving behind their quiet existence, for the unknown wilderness ahead and untold dangers on the way, from Indians, horse thieves, and nature. Along the way, they meet many other people, whose paths they may cross for just a day or for much longer, following Call's unusual and emphatic need to drive their new herd of cattle all the way to the unknown territory of Montana.

This novel surprised me so many times and in so many ways. Yes, it's a western adventure with plenty of action. But McMurtry has also created fully-drawn, three-dimensional characters that soon feel like old friends. I expected an all-male cast in this cowboy novel, but he's included many fascinating, well-developed female characters, too. The writing is beautiful, but the novel is also plot-driven, with so many unexpected twists and turns that I never for a moment got bored through its gripping 850 pages. I was also surprised by the emotional depth and intensity of this story that had me sobbing, hard, three different times and also often laughing out loud (the first, wonderful instance of this is in chapter 8, about the origins and details of the sign for the Hat Creek outfit that Gus created). Here's another fun moment, as two people ride into camp:

 "The most surprising thing was that [she] was wearing pants. So far as [Gus] could remember, he had never seen a woman in pants, and he considered himself a man of experience. Call had his back turned and hadn't seen them, but some of the cowboys had. The sight of a woman in pants scared them so bad they didn't know where to put their eyes. Most of them began to concentrate heavily on the beans in their plate. Dish Boggett turned white as a sheet, got up without a word to anybody, got his night horse and started for the herd, which was strung out up the valley."

There is violence and tragedy, yes, but also friendship, love, honor, and commitment. It's an epic story that kept me engrossed for a full month and then feeling like it ended too soon. I will definitely be reading its sequel, The Streets of Laredo (and there are also two prequels).

NOTE: Do NOT read the Preface, written by the author, as it contains spoilers--of this book and the sequel.

858 pages, Simon & Schuster

Phoenix Books, Inc (audio)

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge

Monthly Motif - "Comedy Club" - while not strictly a comedy, it did make me laugh a lot!

Diversity Challenge

Big Book Summer Challenge
 

 

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/ordownload it from Audible. The sample sounds great - I bet it's excellent on audio.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

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!

   
  

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

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

July 1? Yikes, the year is half over! How did that happen? I reviewed my annual goals this morning, and I'm behind on a lot of work/writing things. But, it's been a good year so far for my health, family, and travel!

Speaking of travel, we just returned on Friday from a 5-day camping trip to try out our new-to-us camper at Hickory Run State Park in Pennsylvania (about three hours from here), and we had a wonderful time! We love the new camper! It's a 2017 Jayco 17-foot hybrid (meaning it's a hard-sided trailer but the beds come out like in our old pop-up). The previous owners took amazing care of it, so it looks brand-new, and everything worked well. The addition of our own bathroom, air-conditioning, and other amenities (a microwave!) is wonderful, and it was very comfortable, even through a big thunderstorm.

Nice and lightweight & easy to tow

But roomy when it's opened up!

My husband relaxing on the couch

Me relaxing on my bed - perfect weather!

We hadn't been to Hickory Run since 2007, and we thoroughly enjoyed the park. It has 25 hiking trails, lots of beautiful waterfalls, a few small lakes, and a really cool 16-acre boulder field that's a National Natural Landmark. 

Really enjoyed the Shades of Death trail!

Gorgeous waterfalls!

Such a beautiful trail along the water

Biggest waterfall over a dam spillway

 

Boulder field was so cool!

I liked these little tree islands.

 

We had a great time there!

One day, we drove into the town of Jim Thorpe, which has a great historic area (though a bizarre history), and enjoyed a train ride along the Lehigh River, with beautiful scenery (including a bear!). I'll be posting a travel vlog tomorrow on my YouTube channel--I took a lot of videos, so check it out!

We enjoyed the Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway

Beautiful views of the Lehigh River

Fun train ride - and we saw a bear!!

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On the Blog

Movie Monday: Hit Man - my husband and I both enjoyed this very entertaining, twisty thriller/rom-com!

Fiction Review: The Women by Kristin Hannah - wow, this was a stunning, powerful novel about the experiences of nurses during the Vietnam War. A must-read!

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On Video

Friday Reads 6-21-24 - my brief weekly update on what I am reading and listening to

The "It's Not That Bad" Book Tag - a fun, short video about "bad" reading habits that maybe aren't so bad! Do YOU do any of these?

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 What We're Reading

Yesterday, I finally finished reading my first print book for the #BigBookSummer Challenge, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. WOW! This is an epic novel, with a rollercoaster of emotions. It's set in 1870 with two older men, Augustus McCrae and Captain Woodrow Call, who are ex-Texas Rangers. They now own a small livery business in the tiny town of Lonesome Dove on the Mexico border, a desolate place. A small group of men live there and help them. Early in the novel, another ex-Ranger named Jake comes to visit, fresh from Montana, and Call gets the idea to put together a herd of cattle and drive them all the way to Montana. What an amazing novel! So much happens, with so many plot twists, but it also features in-depth characters and a great sense of humor (always a plus for me). I cried (hard!) three times and was often laughing out loud. My recent Friday Reads video includes a more in-depth discussion of what I was enjoying about it. So many other people participating in Big Book Summer were also reading this book that I made it our official readalong book, and I'm enjoying the discussions in the group on Goodreads. As soon as I finished the last page, I immediately logged into the group because I HAD to talk about it!

 

I finished another Big Book audio, Countdown by Deborah Wiles, middle-grade historical fiction and book one in her Sixties trilogy. In 2015, I read book 2, Revolution, which takes place in 1964 and is about the Freedom Summer in Mississippi. Countdown is set in 1962 and focuses on what was going on at that time: the Cold War, McCarthyism, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and fear of a nuclear bomb. The novel begins with 11-year-old Franny and her classmates enduring a terrifying "duck and cover" drill when the town's warning siren goes off during school. As with Revolution, Wiles has melded together real-life news reports, ads from the early 60's, radio broadcasts, and other documentary-style media with fictional kids experiencing it all. It's a very effective, powerful approach that shows Franny worrying about typical kid stuff while also afraid of being bombed at any moment. I read Revolution in print, which included all the real-life information in print (see my review at the link) in a scrapbook-like format. It's different on audio but equally engrossing and informative. She's a talented writer, and I definitely want to read the third book in the trilogy. 

 

I just yesterday started my next Big Book on audio, Mr. Nice Guy by Jennifer Miller and Jason Feifer, a wife-husband writing team. Lucas gave up law school, a fiancee (though technically, she gave him up), and his small southern town to chase his dream of living in the Big Apple. He got a job as a fact-checker at Empire, the glossy magazine that has long fed his visions of an exciting life in New York. One night, he meets an attractive woman named Carmen and goes home with her, feeling like his big city life is finally starting. But on Monday, he discovers--as does the rest of the city--that he has actually slept with the Carmen Kelly, his own magazine's sex columnist, and she has written a scathing review of their night together that's gone viral, referring to him as Mr. Nice Guy. Lucas writes a furious rebuttal that the magazine also publishes, and suddenly, all anyone is talking about is their budding (and doomed?) relationship. It's early in the novel so far, but it's fun, smart, and witty. I'm enjoying it.

 

My husband finished his first Big Book for the summer (yes, he joins the challenge, too!), The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, one of my favorites from last summer (my review at the link). He enjoyed this suspenseful, funny, heartbreaking classic, and it's fun to be able to talk about it with him. We keep repeating lines and phrases to each other (there was a lot of talk about "side meat" while we were camping - lol). 

 

Next, in only a week, he finished another Big Book, Code to Zero by Ken Follett, one of his older thrillers (and one of the books we inherited from my dad). He said this Cold War thriller was fast-paced and suspenseful. He was surprised how fast he read it, though we always enjoy more reading time while camping. Long before Follett began publishing his monster historical novels, he was famous for his gripping thrillers.

 

Our son, 29, is probably still reading book 2 of the Licanius Trilogy by James Islington, An Echo of Things to Come since he started a new job last week! I saw the book while he was here, and it is definitely a Big Book. But my son thinks Big Book Summer is funny because all he reads are enormous epic fantasies anyway. He's enjoying this one, but he won't have a lot of reading time now.

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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 Women

My first audio book for this year's Big Book Summer Challenge was The Women by Kristin Hannah. I always enjoy her novels and had heard good things about this one, but this book astounded me. It was an absolutely stunning novel that will stick with me for a long time.

Frances "Frankie"  McGrath is just twenty years old in 1965 when she graduates from nursing school and decides to follow in her brother's footsteps. He's in the Air Force and has been sent to Vietnam, so Frankie signs up for the Army Nurse Corps. Her father is always talking about their family's proud history of service to the country (he even has a family "hero wall" in their house), but when Frankie announces her decision, he's not proud of her; he's angry. Both of her parents feel that Frankie should stay home, get married, and have children like a respectable woman, but Frankie heads to boot camp. A year later, she is shipped out to Vietnam. Frankie has almost no nursing experience, and in boot camp, the nurses were mostly taught how to roll bandages and change bed pans. But this is real life and real war. Frankie meets her new roommates, Barb and Ethel, and that very first day, she's thrown into the deep end when helicopters with wounded soldiers begin to arrive. She's immediately surrounded by blood, missing limbs, and dying boys. Though ill-equipped at first, Frankie soon becomes a surgical nurse and is eventually one of the most skilled nurses there. 

The three women finally return home, with their minds filled with the horrors of war, and try to go back to their lives. They return to a changed America, where veterans are no longer revered but reviled, and war protestors scream terrible things at them. Frankie's father will barely speak to her, and her mother expects her to settle down and get married. But Frankie suffers from horrible nightmares and crippling flashbacks (what would later be known as PTSD). Worst of all, when she says she was in Vietnam--even at the VA--people tell her over and over that there were no women in Vietnam. Her life is a mess, and she doesn't know where to turn,. She, Barb, and Ethel have become lifelong friends, and they're the only ones who truly understand. Frankie's path to normalcy and health is a long, slow, twisting one, but by the time the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial is dedicated in 1982, both she and the nation have begun to heal.

Where to start? Everything about this novel is completely engrossing and powerful. It's clear the author did a lot of research for this novel, including first-person accounts by women nurses who went to Vietnam and returned home, as well as details about the time periods. In an author's note, she explains that she's wanted to write this novel for a long time but felt she wasn't a good enough writer to do the story justice until now. It was worth the wait. The details--both during the war and of Frankie's experiences afterward--are vivid, horrifying, and realistic. I was very young during the war, but I remember my cousin and uncle being drafted and going to Vietnam, an experience that changed their lives forever. In fact, my uncle died from cancer (and suffered lots of other health problems) caused by Agent Orange. 

But this novel isn't just about the horrors of war. The reader experiences everything along with Frankie: the comradery among the troops, the need to let go and have fun once in a while even in the midst of war, the fierce friendships formed, and even the passion and love that develop between people put in such pressure-cooker situations. The audio was very well done, narrated by the talented Julia Whelan, and completely immersive; I couldn't bring myself to start another audio for a week after finishing it because it was still living in my head. This was an amazing, epic novel I won't forget that brings to light the contributions (and heavy price paid) of these brave women whose role and impact was mostly overlooked. It's a stunning, powerful story and so important to tell.

480 pages, St. Martin's Press

Macmillan Audio

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.

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

Diversity Challenge

Travel the World in Books - Vietnam

Literary Escapes Challenge - California

Big Book Summer Challenge

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. The sample is from an early chapter, at Frankie's brother's going-away party.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

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!

     
  

Movie Monday: Hit Man

In our hotel in Virginia this weekend (we were there for a wedding the next day), we only had access to Netflix and aren't currently watching any TV shows on it, so we chose a new movie I'd heard about: Hit Man. This fun, twisty thriller/rom-com turned out to be very entertaining!

Glen Powell stars as Gary Johnson, a classic mild-mannered professor who lives alone with his two cats, Id and Ego. He teaches philosophy at the University of New Orleans. As a hobby, he has a talent for electronics, so he works part-time for the NOPD, helping them with electronic surveillance. Undercover cop Jasper, played by Austin Amelio, pretends to be a hit man, someone tries to hire him, the police get him on audio (and often, video) with Gary's help, and they arrest the person. One day, Jasper gets suspended from the force just before one of these fake hit man appointments is to occur, and Detective Claudette, played by Retta, asks Gary to come out of the surveillance van and instead take Jasper's place and pretend to be the killer-for-hire. It turns out that quiet, introverted Gary does a great job in the role, and he becomes the new fake hit man for future sting operations. Gary, teaching philosophy to uninterested undergrads in his day job, gets really into making up a different persona to fit each new prospective "client," based on what he thinks they'll expect. He uses wigs, facial hair, different clothes, and even fake teeth, and fully inhabits the character he's pretending to be. His arrest rate speaks for itself. Then, a beautiful woman named Madison, played by Adria Arjona, tries to hire him to kill her husband. It's clear he's been controlling and abusive and Madison is scared, so Gary goes off-script. Instead of letting her clearly state that she wants to pay him to kill her husband (thus ensuring a conviction), Gary talks her out of it and convinces her to run away from him instead. His team is not happy with the outcome. When he met Madison, Gary was pretending to be Ron, an ultra-cool, handsome guy. They meet up again and are very attracted to each other. Though Gary knows it's wrong, he really likes Madison, and they begin seeing each other. Besides, he kind of likes being Ron. How can this relationship end well, when it's based on a lie? And how long can Gary keep his colleagues from finding out?

Crazy as it sounds, this movie is based on a real-life man named Gary Johnson who helped Houston police convict many people of hiring a contract killer over more than a decade. Of course, writer and director Richard Linklater (of Boyhood and the Before trilogy) gave the underlying story the Hollywood treatment here, with a lot of laughs, a hot romance, and some unexpected twists that didn't happen in real life. It's an intriguing premise for a movie, and Glen Powell is outstanding in the leading role, somehow easily transforming from nerdy teacher to slick criminal with dozens of different personas. This movie is filled with humor, from Gary's many disguises to his wide range of clients (including a teen boy who wants to pay him in video games--really happened!) to the sting operations. It's also very sexy, with Gary fully coming into his own as Ron, with Madison's help. But there is also plenty of suspense and lots of surprising twists, especially after Gary and Madison get involved and are in danger of being found out. It was highly entertaining, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Lots of fun!

Hit Man is a Netflix original movie and is currently available there.