It's Monday! What Are You Reading #33

Share what you (are, have been, are about to, hope to be) reading or reviewing this week. Sign Mr Linky at Book Journey and visit other Monday reading roundups.

Still similar to two weeks ago as was last week's IMWAYR. There are, as always, many more books I'll be dipping into, referencing, reading a chapter or two (NF) and so forth but I'm featuring here only the ones I am most focused on this week.


The Civilized World: A Novel in Stories by Susi Wyss

This is a review copy.

Still taking my time with this one as I would with the entree of an award winning chef as Wyss uses metaphor, image and language as would a master chef use herbs and spices and since it is not a library book and thus can go with me when I leave Sunday I confess I've backed off a bit.

I'll be putting up a review eventually, hopefully while I'm up in Longview but if not by the end of August. Meanwhile read more about it and Susi Wyss on her web site.

Chocolat by Joanne Harris

I am sooooo close to finished now but I was too slow about it to get to its sequel before it had to go back to the library:

The Girl With No Shadow by Joanee Harris

I thot to go pull it off the shelf again after a few days but then discovered they had the audio which I could listen to as I crochet and pack and...

I got the audio today and it has the same gorgeous cover so i used the same image.

The DVD of the movie Chocolat was among my library haul today. So excited. It's a rewatch but its been a decade or more and I really want to watch it while the novel is still fresh. I'm becoming more and more convinced that I never actually read the book as I thought and am now glad that I sent for it after discovering the sequel on the shelf a little over two months ago.

If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland.

Graywolf pbk. ed.
Pub/Date St. Paul Graywolf Press, c1987.
xii, 179 p. 21 cm.

I really need to get my own copy of this again. It is going to be hard to send it back to the library this weekend after only two weeks to browse in it. As I mentioned in last week's Library Loot, I once had a copy and read some passages so often I nearly memorized them but that was over eleven years ago. It is time for a refresh.

Summary: In her 93 remarkable years, veteran freelance writer, memoirist, and writing teacher Brenda Ueland published some six million words. She once said there were two simple rules that she followed absolutely: to tell the truth, and not do anything she didn't want to do. Such integrity both distinguishes and defines If You Want to Write, her bestselling classic that first appeared in the late 1930s and has inspired thousands to find their own creative center. As Carl Sandburg once remarked, Ueland's primer is "the best book ever written on how to write."

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown.

Large print ed.

Publisher/Date: Waterville, Me. Thorndike/Windsor/Paragon, 2011.

Description: 527 p. 22 cm.

Summary: Unwillingly brought together to care for their ailing mother, three sisters who were named after famous Shakespearean characters discover that everything they have been avoiding may prove more worthwhile than expected.

What the summary I copy/pasted from the catalog doesn't say is that this family is a bookish family. The father is a prof of literature and of Shakespeare in particular and does most of his communicating in Shakespeare quotes and occasionally the ladies of the family do as well.

The chances of getting to this before I leave now are looking grim. If I don'g finish Chocolate very soon I might as well not start this and it will be hard to get it back again for months.

It crossed my mind this evening that if I can get mostly packed, that is all but the very last minutes stuff, and have finished Chocolate by Friday I could dedicate Friday night through Sunday morning to reading this and possibly extend that to the three hour drive to meet my sister in Rice Hill. But the risk is that I will end up having to send it back with Ed to be returned to the library having not finished. I swore I would not let that happen again as it has on nearly every trip to Longview since we started doing this relay ride, meeting my sister half way instead of me alone on the bus, in 2006.

Blogging for Dummies

I just got this back today for the first time since February. The system's two copies have been in high demand. I seriously need my own copy of this.

It came so late I'm not going to get to spend much time with it before I leave but I hope to get some info I can use while I'm gone.