It's Monday 6/15! What Are You Reading?

Book By Book

Hosted by The Book Date

Last week was a fairly quiet post-vacation catch-up week, with a busy weekend. I felt mostly good much of the week, until I crashed badly on Sunday (my own fault for indulging in a big serving a fresh, local strawberries–I usually avoid all sugar). I’m better today, after a rest day: the chronic illness rollercoaster!

I got out of the house to run errands Wednesday, which was a big thrill (no, seriously!). Just driving around our little town in my convertible and chatting with local shopkeepers (including the bookstore owner) gave me a good lift.

We cooked a big meal Friday evening (pulled pork, homemade coleslaw, collard greens, and corn on the cob) for our son and daughter-in-law-to-be. Their adorable puppy, Chester, was here, too. He’s getting bigger but still has those cute floppy ears! Our son and Chester came back on Saturday and Sunday. While our son helped his dad with some stuff, I watched Chester. He is just as exuberant and good-natured as ever!

Chester likes car rides!

Enjoying some time outside

Such a cutie!

And Saturday evening, we invited good friends (36 years of friendship!) over for take-out. It was wonderful to see them and catch up! Nothing like old friends.  

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Just a reminder that with Big Book Summer in full swing, lots of people have been leaving links to their blogs or videos for Big Book Summer, including their reading plans and some reviews, too. You can see the links list on the Big Book Summer page.  

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Laurel Highlands: Ohiopyle and Laurel Hill State Parks - In this 15-minute video, you can come along with us on our recent trip, to see roaring rivers, gorgeous waterfalls, a peaceful lake, mountain views, and the Frank Lloyd Wright house, Fallingwater. 

 Weekly Reading Update: A Great Start to Big Book Summer! - I’ve already read some outstanding novels for this annual event.

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While we were camping recently, we finally finished our “camping TV series,”12 Monkeys. We often don’t have cell service while camping, so we bring an old laptop with a DVD drive and a TV series on DVD. Back in 2015, we both very much enjoyed the movie 12 Monkeys (my review at the link), starring Bruce Willis. We both wanted to see the TV adaptation, but it was a SyFy show and not available to us (it is now available on Amazon Prime), so I bought the DVD set for camping. The TV series differed in some ways from the movie, but it was just as good. In a post-apocalyptic future in 2043, a group of scientists develop a way to travel through time. Their mission is to stop the global pandemic in 2016 that killed almost 94% of the human population. A man named James Cole turns out to have a talent for time travel (earlier subjects didn’t always survive!) and he goes back to 2014 to talk to Cassandra Railly, a virologist who will be important in the coming crisis. That is just the start of this action-packed, suspenseful, and very twisty sci fi thriller. James and Cassie (and others) travel back to different time periods in their quest to save the world. It has all the mind-bending twists I love in a time travel story, where cause and effect are often convoluted, plus an outstanding cast, drama, romance, and a great sense of humor, too. We especially enjoyed episodes where they traveled back to periods of time we’ve lived in, like the 60′s. We watched all four seasons and thoroughly enjoyed it. 

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I finished reading Dead Man’s Walk by Larry McMurtry, the first prequel (book 1 in the quartet) of Lonesome Dove, which I read for Big Book Summer and June on the Range in 2024. It was one of the best novels I’ve ever read, so last summer I read the sequel, Streets of Laredo. In this prequel, the main characters of Lonesome Dove, Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call, are very young men (boys, really) who have just joined the Texas Rangers. Their first two expeditions as Rangers are extremely dangerous and violent and leave Call angry and confused that their leaders weren’t better prepared. There is just as much action, adventure, and plot twists as in the other two books of the series (which he wrote first), and it’s fascinating to see Gus and Call gradually develop the skills, knowledge, and characteristics that define them in later adventures. McMurtry is a talented writer, and this novel once again includes humor, great dialogue, and some in-depth female characters. I loved it, and my husband will be reading it next.

I am now reading another selection for Big Book Summer, The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher. For years, other readers have been recommending this book to me, so I’m glad to finally be reading it. It’s a family drama, set in the UK in the 1980′s, with flashbacks to earlier periods. Penelope Keeling is the matriarch of her family. Her father was a famous Victorian painter whose works are still in demand, and Penelope is very much an artist’s daughter, a free spirit who loves to garden and cook for friends and family. At 64, she recently had a minor health scare, so her three adult children are worried about her living alone. Nancy is the oldest and is married with two children, trying to keep up appearances and thus struggling with finances. Noel, her brother, has always sort of slid by in life. He also likes to live a life of luxury among the wealthy but approaches it differently, using his charm to gain access to wealthy friends and friends-of-friends. Olivia is the youngest sibling and the most successful, editor of a major women’s magazine in London. Gradually, the reader learns more about each character and their past and present-day lives, as well as others: Penelope’s parents, an old lover of Olivia’s, Penelope’s now-deceased husband, and more. I’m enjoying this engrossing family saga so far. 

I finished listening to A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (my first Big Book on audio this summer); it’s a long one! This was an outstanding coming-of-age novel. It’s narrated by Owen’s best friend, John, as an adult looking back at their eventful childhood together. It’s warm, moving, funny, and completely engaging, as John recounts his adventures with Owen, a very unique boy, and the joys and tragedies that they shared together. Skillful foreshadowing makes it a very compelling narrative, in spite of its size, It’s also a very thoughtful novel, delving into topics of religion, politics, world events, and literature, both when the boys were young and from John’s persective as an adult. It’s a beautifully-written novel that brought tears to my eyes and also made me laugh, and it was excellent on audio. 

My husband, Ken, finished reading his first book of Big Book Summer, The Devil’s Bed by William Kent Krueger. We are both big fans of Krueger’s novels, and a friend on Booktube recommended this one, an earlier novel of his. It’s a political thriller so a bit different from his later novels. Ken enjoyed it very much.

He was about to read Dead Man’s Walk for his next big book, but I asked him to read The Testaments by Margaret Atwood first because he said he wanted to read it before watching the new TV adaptation, and I’m dying to watch it after finishing the novel! 

Our daughter-in-law-to-be is enjoying Shift by High Howey, book two in his Silo series that began with Wool (my reviews at the links). I’m happy she’s enjoying this series as much as we did, and she was excited to hear there’s an excellent TV adaptation (we’re about to start season 3).  

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   What are you and your family reading this week?