It's Monday! What Are You Reading?
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| It's Monday! What Are You Reading? |
I've been home a full week now and just today finally finished unpacking from the three month visit at my mom's. That took so long partly because it was mixed in with unpacking from the December move, cleaning up after a husband who'd batched it for three months (Not so bad really. I'd imagined worse based on the past but the kitchen only looked like it had seen couple day's use and the bed was even made!) and catching up on sleep.
That last surprised me. I am notorious for insomnia. But I guess I had logged such a sleep deficit while at Mom's that even my insomnia bit the dust. I had three 10 plus hour sleeps and have been finding myself needing a nap after dinner most evenings. But it seems to be having a good effect as my energy, ambition and creativity are returning.
So it is time to get with the program again.
This Mobius Strip of Ifs by Mathias Freese a collection of essays with which the author jousts with American culture with often acerbic and occasionally comedic tones. One of his major themes is the necessity of the artist to escape the conditioning of society to work with integrity.
The Land of Decoration by Grace McCleen a novel featuring an unforgettable heroine in ten-year-old Judith McPherson. Judith, persecuted at school for her beliefs and struggling with her distant, devout father at home, finds solace and connection in a model in miniature of the Promised Land that she has constructed in her room from collected discarded scraps.
For obvious reasons, I expect to identify with this young protagonist. Switch out the miniature model with stories both read and made up and that's me.
I expect to pick this up next.
The Variations by John Donatich a novel about a priest who has lost his church, his mentor and his ability to pray
The Inquisitor by Mark Allen Smith a thriller featuring a torturer for hire with ethics
And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life by Charles Shields -- which I've been reading for some time now and been posting on my adventures with it, the latest being last Friday
A few days later another arrived:
The World Without You by Joshua Henkin a novel about the aftermath of a family tragedy in which siblings gather in the family home for the first time in years on the occasion of a memorial service for their son and brother who died in Iraq
That's besides these ebooks for review:
Written in the Ashes by K. Hollan Van Zandt a novel set in ancient Alexandria featuring the famous library burned by the Christians in the fifth century. I have read this already but the blog tour is in May. My review will go up on May 3rd.
The Concubine Saga by Lloyd Lofthouse a combining of what was originally two novels covering the life of a British expat in China in the late 1800s and his relationship with a Chinese woman.
I'm also expecting any day now:
Sparticus: The Gladiator by Ben Kane. a novel set in ancient Rome obviously.
Meanwhile I am currently reading (not a review copy) The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown a novel of three sisters who return home in their thirties to care for their mother who has cancer. Each sister is in a crisis of her own. They're father is a Shakespeare professor who communicates with quotes from the bard and the sisters having been raised with that often include quotes in their own dialog. Anyone who has med my character Estelle would know why this intrigues me.
In the last month to six weeks I read and have yet to review:
The Red Church by Scott Nicholson
1Q84 by Haruki Murikami
The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins
House Rules by Jodi Picoult
Written in the Wind by K. Hollan Van Zandt
Except for that last one which is for a blog tour in May, does anyone have a preference for which one(s) I post in the next week? I'd like to do at least two with The Hunger Games as a trilogy counted as one.
OK I was going to include cover images to most or all of these books but I've already but over two hours into this post and I need to let it go.
1 tell me a story:
I listened to House Rules and loved it - it was narrated by a cast of 5 and was very well done.
Hope you get all unpacked and settled in again soon.
Kristin @ Always With a Book
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