It's Monday 4/21! What Are You Reading?

Book By Book

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

Last week was a bit hectic because we left on another trip Friday morning! This was just a quickie, to my hometown of Rochester, NY, and back for Easter weekend. My family usually celebrates the holiday Saturday–most of the “adults” are now retired, but the “kids” (ranging from 19 to 30) have to travel home to be back at work/school Monday morning. Our youngest son and his girlfriend drove up after arriving home from an incredible two-week trip to Italy with her family, and they picked up our nephew at his college on the way up. Our oldest son couldn’t make it, but we’ll see him this weekend. It’s always wonderful to be together and catch up with everyone.

Great to be together!

 This Easter celebration was extra-special because my uncle invited some new neighbors who recently arrived from Ukraine. My great-grandparents came here from Ukraine in the 1910′s, and Easter is the holiday when we make (or buy) all the traditional foods and have a big Ukrainian feast. It was a delight to meet these lovely people who have recently fled the terrible violence in Ukraine. The son has been here for about a year (after living in Germany for 10 years), but his parents just arrived recently when the bombing began to hit their hometown, in a rural part of central Ukraine. The son, Andriy, was an excellent translator for his parents, but my mom remembered a fair amount of Ukrainian from her grandparents (I can remember her speaking Ukrainian with my great-grandfather when I was a kid). They were lovely people, and I was so grateful we could share familiar foods, conversation, and kindness with them. Andriy said it was the first time he’d seen his mom smile in a long time. 

Love my uncle’s new parking sign!

Our holubtsi (cabbage rolls) got a thumbs up from the Ukrainian family!

Pierogies (pedaheh) – potato and sauerkraut

So great to make new friends!

My uncle printed our name tags in English & Ukrainian!

 

While in Rochester, we stayed with my step-mom, as we always do. She has a lovely home, and we enjoy her company. I know she was happy to have her grandchildren there!

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On Video

Fiction Self-Help Book Tag (11 min) – this quick tag is all about picking fictional characters to teach you something! I had fun with this one.

 Friday Reads 4-18-25: Getting Ready for Booktopia (16 min) – some of the great books I am reading to prepare for Booktopia (in less than two weeks!), plus some good audios, and the books my husband read on our big trip.

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 What We’re Watching

  

Bosch: Legacy – My husband and I are both big fans of Michael Connelly’s thriller novels, and the TV adaptations are always outstanding. We enjoy watching The Lincoln Lawyer and loved Bosch, which wrapped up a few years ago. Bosch: Legacy (on Amazon Prime) is a sequel to Bosch, as his daughter joins the LAPD and Bosch himself retires (but is still doing private PI work). This is the fourth and final season of Bosch: Legacy, but I was SO excited to hear that a new TV series will premier this summer, Ballard, which is an adaptation of Connelly’s newest series featuring female LAPD detective Rene Ballard, as she teams up with Bosch to solve cold cases. ALL of these shows are worth watching! (links go to my reviews of the TV shows/books).

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 I finished reading Rabbit Moon by Jennifer Haigh, for Booktopia. I was thrilled to see Jennifer’s name on the author list for the event because I am a longtime fan of her novels. I loved Baker Towers (and read it twice) and also enjoyed Mrs. Kimble, The Condition, Faith, and Mercy Street. And now I get to meet her in person! Her latest novel, Rabbit Moon, instantly pulled me into the story and kept me engrossed right to the end. Twenty-two-year-old Lindsey is a six-foot American with long red hair who lives in China. Early one morning, she’s hit by a car in Shanghai and ends up in a coma in the hospital. Her parents in the U.S. are shocked by the news and rush to China to be by her side. But what was she doing in Shanghai? She told them she was living in Beijing with a job teaching English. As they wait for Lindsey to recover and look into her life in China, more secrets emerge. A shocking incident when she was 17 fractured Lindsey’s family, and she has only remained close to her little sister, Grace, who was adopted from China as an infant. This novel was incredibly compelling–maybe my new favorite of her books! I can’t wait to meet the author and talk to her about the book.

I am now onto another Booktopia selection, Optional Practical Training by Shubha Sunder. The title refers to an extra year of work experience that can be tacked onto a student visa in the U.S., which is what Pavitra is doing as the novel opens. She is just starting her first job, teaching physics at a private high school in Cambridge, Mass. But America high school students expect very different things from their teachers than what Pavitra experienced herself as a student in India. And Pavitra’s real goal is to finish writing her novel, something her white-collar parents don’t approve of as a career. The novel is written as a series of conversations, with family, friends, her fellow teachers, students, students’ parents, and more. I’m enjoying it so far and want to find out how Pavitra will get through this difficult year.

This weekend in the car, my husband and I finished  listening to Pitch Dark by Paul Doiron, book 15 in his Mike Bowditch series about a Maine Game Warden Investigator. We enjoy this series because they’re outdoor thrillers, with plenty of nature intertwined with the suspense, action, and adventure. Here, Mike investigated the disappearance of a man who was searching for a father and daughter living off the grid in the woods. As usual, the story was action-packed and fast-paced, with surprises around every corner and plenty of peril for Mike! We both enjoyed it, and it helps the long hours in the car pass more quickly.

On my own, I am still listening to The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny (#19 in her Inspector Gamache series). I read book 1 in the series, Still Life, then skipped ahead to book 15, A Better Man, and have read every book since. As it typical of these later books, this is a complex mystery, here kicked off by an odd series of unusual events in Gamache’s personal and professional lives. Gamache and his team soon find themselves looking into a possible terrorist plot that could have disastrous effects for all of Quebec. His core team of himself, son-in-law Jean-Guy, and fellow inspector Isabelle feels that they can only trust each other, which makes their investigation even more difficult … though no less urgent. The three of them split up and travel near and far, from remote parts of Quebec to Washington, DC to the Vatican in their search for answers and a way to stop this horrific thing from happening. Loaded with suspense, the audio is keeping me riveted.

My husband, Ken, is reading Just Watch Me by Jeff Lindsay, the author of Darkly Dreaming Dexter, which was the basis for the Dexter TV series that we both love. But I think this is the first book either of us has read by Lindsay. This is book 1 in his Riley Wolfe series, about a master thief who targets the wealthiest 0.1% and doesn’t hesitate to kill if someone gets in his way. Ken says it’s interesting so far, but the main character is extremely arrogant, which is annoying him! He hasn’t read very far yet, so I’ll let you know how it goes. I put The Hunter by Tana French in his Easter basket, which he’s very eager to read!

I have no idea what our son, 30, has been reading! I’ll catch up with him this weekend.

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