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

Book By Book

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Life

I had another week of ups and downs with my health last week, battling the lingering effects of a respiratory virus and sinus infection. I was still confined to the couch most of the week, though I left the house for the first time in weeks for a doctor’s appointment. It seems like every good day is followed by a bad one again, but I do think I am past the worst of the effects of the infections. I actually felt great yesterday, the best I’ve been since this started a month ago, but I’m pretty run-down again today. I’m hoping I just did too much yesterday. We have a big road trip coming up very soon, so I need to be well enough to manage that (and prepare for it!). 

Got the camper out of winter storage – so much to do!

I did manage some very short walks last week on my good days, trying to work my stamina back up. Our weather has also been very up and down as well, with one day last week in the 60′s but then back down into the teens and 20′s this weekend. This was the very last tiny bit of snow in our yard at the beginning of last week–it’s really rare for snow to last so long around here, and all of our spring blooms are late.

And I managed a very low-key Mardi Gras celebration Saturday, with some fabulous takeout from a local restaurant whose husband-wife chefs both worked in New Orleans for famous chefs there. We’ve had a lot of fake “Cajun” restaurants around here, but this is the real thing and very authentic. Our son and our best friends (who also lived in New Orleans when we did) came over for dinner. Our friend is going through some difficult health problems, and I was still pretty run-down, but we couldn’t skip our annual celebration! We will be going to their house (and our son and his girlfriend, too) on Tuesday–Mardi Gras Day–for our annual Popeye’s dinner. We used to get Popeye’s at 9 am on Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans, while we waited for the parades to start, so this is a long-standing tradition! (though we eat our chicken for dinner instead of breakfast now). If YOU want to join the fun, check out my Celebrate Mardi Gras at Home post, which includes great book, movie, and TV recommendations, as well my own recipes for some classic New Orleans dishes.

This will be my last Monday post for a while, but don’t worry–I’ll be back! In the meantime, I will be posting vlogs from the road, on our journey to Texas and back, so watch my YouTube channel for updates. You can subscribe to my channel with the Subscribe button below any of my videos, and after subscribing, there is a pull-down menu at that subscribed button with options for notifications.

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I’m trying to catch up before my trip, so I posted some extras last week (most recorded during a good day the previous week!).

The Audiobook Tag – All about my audiobook habits and some of my favorite books on audio!

 The Bookish Elements Tag – Fun questions about reading accessories, cover art, foreshadowing, reading habits, and more!

My March Reading Plans and TBR – My reading plans for March, including Booktopia prep, Middle-Grade March, and March Mystery Madness … and juggling all that while traveling!

Great Book to Kick Off Middle-Grade March and March Mystery Madness - a 1-minute short about my first book for these two reading challenges

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 Tracker – Another of our favorite shows returned for a new season recently (season 2)! We are loving this suspenseful show with plenty of heart about a man, played by Justin Hartley, who earns a living finding missing people. We love the mystery and suspense, as well as seeing all the great places he travels to with his beautiful Airstream trailer. My review and a trailer for season 1 are at the link. It’s a great show – check it out!

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I finished reading Sweetland by Michael Crummey, which won several literary awards, and ended up loving it. Set on a small island in Newfoundland, it’s a wonderful story of a man named Moses Sweetland and the isolated island that is named after his family. The close-knit community on the island is being pulled apart by a government push to move everyone off the island (apparently these resettlement programs really occur). There are only a few hold-outs in accepting the government’s offer, and then, finally, it’s just Sweetland himself, with increasing pressure to agree to leave. Besides this central plotline, we get the history of the island and its community, through memories and flashbacks, and see how close and insular they are. It’s a difficult life out there, especially after the government put a fishing ban in place due to overfishing. The story is full of interesting characters and the sorrows and joys of a small community over time. It was a moving, suspenseful, funny story, filled with tragedy but also family, friendship, and community. And the setting and history were fascinating. I should mention, though, that only one other person in my book group liked the book! She and I gave it 8 out of 10 (I increased my rating to 9 after finishing it), but the average rating was only about 6. I wasn’t well enough to go for the discussion, so I’m not sure what the others disliked so much–perhaps the language (lots of f-bombs, which I found funny!), the writing style, or that it was a fairly dark story (I laughed enough to offset the dark stuff). 

I read the first story in The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories, edited by Michael Newton. This is a year-long read-along with the Book Cougars podcast, whose theme for this year is ghost stories (they’ll have a quarterly book read-along, in addition to the short stories). I’m going to try to keep up with their schedule and read a story in between books. So, I started with the first one, The Old Nurse’s Story by Elizabeth Gaskell. I’ve never read any of Gaskell’s acclaimed novels before so was glad to dip my toe into her work. This was a spooky one, about a nurse (nanny) and a little girl she cares for staying in a creepy old house that seems to be haunted. I really enjoyed it and am looking forward to reading more of the stories in this collection. I love ghost stories!

And now, I am reading Pieces and Players by Blue Balliet to kick off both Middle-Grade March and March Mystery Madness (both events are hosted on Booktube, but anyone can join the fun – details at the links). I previously enjoyed Balliet’s novels Hold Fast and The Danger Box.  Here, much to my delight, she has brought together characters from her other mystery novels, including the two I read, to work together to solve their biggest mystery yet: the theft of 13 valuable pieces of art from a Chicago museum. So far, I am loving how this wonderful group of brainy misfits is coming together to solve this complex puzzle.

My last audiobook for Black History Month was another outstanding one: Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America, a YA book edited by Ibi Zoboi. This is a collection of short stories that show a wide diversity of experiences of Black youth (mostly middle- and upper-class) in our country today. Zoboi herself is a talented YA author, and she’s brought together some of the top YA voices, including Varian Johnson, Jason Reynolds, Renee Watson, and many more. The stories cover a wide range of topics, from blended families to identity issues to learning to stand up for yourself, and more. Every story in this collection was a hit for me! Highly recommended.

My husband, Ken, finished Lightless by C.A. Higgins, a sci fi novel that came in a fantasy/sci fi subscription box our son and his girlfriend gave him for Christmas. He’s received about 6 books already, with one more box to come, so he has lots of new books to read! He says this one was classic sci fi (and book one of a trilogy), about a crew aboard a military spaceship on a mission. One crew member, Althea, forms an emotional bond with the ship’s controlling AI, which may be their only hope when terrorists take over their ship. He enjoyed it. Now, he has started reading The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family by Ron Howard and Clint Howard, a memoir I gave him for Christmas. He and Ron Howard were born the same year, and he grew up watching Opie on The Andy Griffith Show, so I knew he’d enjoy this one!

 Our son, 30, has been rereading the Night Angel trilogy by Brent Weeks, an old favorite of his, in preparation for the latest book (Beyond the Shadows). So, he’s rereading book 1, The Way of Shadows, and book 2, The Shadow’s Way.

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