It's Monday 7/15! What Are You Reading?

Book By Book

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Life

Very, very sick today so will keep this post shorter than usual. My 7-month no-crash streak with my chronic illness is over 😪. Apparently, I was exposed to some sort of infection last week because I’ve had a very severe sore throat and swollen glands the past two days. That’s actually quite common in ME/CFS (signs of immune activation), but it hasn’t happened to me in many years. Two negative COVID tests so far, but that seems most likely.

Before this started Saturday night, I had a very nice, quiet week to myself, while my husband was golfing in his hometown in Oklahoma with his two closest friends from high school. I got a lot done at home, finished recording the audio of my book (a LOT of editing left to do!), and saw good friends twice last week. I also ran errands, so there were multiple chances for exposure to something (though I do wear a mask in public). On Saturday, I took several boxes of books to our library’s monthly book drop-off and enjoyed a short walk in a local park before the extreme heat and humidity hit (97 today and tomorrow!).

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On the Blog

Movie Monday: A Quiet Place: Day One – fantastic movie with great character development, just as good as the first two!

Middle-Grade Review: Countdown by Deborah Wiles – Book one in an outstanding historical fiction series, The Sixties Trilogy, that pairs the perspective of a fictional child with real-life documentary-style historical media. 

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1000 Subscribers! Ask Me Anything! - I hit a big milestone with my YouTube channel recently (I’m almost up to 1500 now), with the help of Big Book Summer. As is tradition on Booktube, I’ll do a Q&A video, so get in on the fun and ask me anything!

Friday Reads 7-12-24 – my brief weekly update of what I am reading

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Last week for Big Book Summer, I read The Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley, and it was so amazing!! I should have listened to all the rave reviews a long time ago. Eighteen-year-old Daunis often feels torn between two worlds in her hometown of Sault Saint Marie in northern Michigan on the Canadian border. Her mother’s parents are French and Italian, and her father was Ojibwe, part of the local tribe. Daunis is loved and deeply involved in both families but doesn’t always feel a full part of either. She’s also outstanding at hockey, though she doesn’t play anymore. Her Ojibwe brother is on the area’s premier hockey team, and there’s a new guy on the team, Jamie, who Daunis is instantly attracted to. But she also has a lot of worries. Her best friend, Lily, has a very persistent ex-boyfriend who’s addicted to (and possibly even dealing) meth. Her uncle recently died from an overdose of meth, and Daunis can see the growing effects of the drug throughout her community. I was surprised to find that this novel is a mystery/thriller, but it is also beautifully written, fascinating with lots of details about Ojibwe culture, and has plenty of emotional depth. I even cried! I loved it.

This weekend, I started the biggest of my big books, Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon, book 4 in her fabulous Outlander series. I love this series that combines time travel with historical fiction and an epic love story and have so far read Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, and Voyager (my favorite so far). This one begins in America in 1767, with Jamie and Clare and friends in Charleston, SC. I’m loving it so far, and it’s perfect immersive sick day reading.

On audio, I am listening to Hereafter by Tara Hudson, another book for #BigBookSummer Challenge. This is a YA novel about Amelia, who is dead–well, technically, a ghost. She is in the river, where she has once again had what she thinks of as a nightmare (though, of course, she doesn’t sleep) where she has relived her terrifying death by drowning. Still shaken, she notices a car with its headlights on, slowly sinking, and next to it a boy who is also sinking. Although she can not normally touch or affect living people, she somehow manages to save his life. When he is pulled from the water and is being wheeled into an ambulance, she goes to him to make sure he is OK … and he sees her! This has never happened before, and it affects them both deeply. There is a bit of a love story here (YA, after all), but also some fascinating afterlife details and even a war between good and evil. I enjoy a good ghost story, and this one is excellent so far.

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 had much reading time this week! He should be home in a few hours.

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 text him this weekend but forgot to get a book update. I need to adjust to not being able to text him on Monday mornings! He’s loving his new job so far.

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