It's Monday! What are You Reading?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

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.

Recently I implemented something I've seen on other blogs and found recommended during Blogiesta:  I've created a template for this meme post so that in the future I can more quickly put together my posts and readers can know what to expect and where to find the things they are most interested in.

The sections of this template:

Intro (here)
My Week in Review (list of books finished and links to bookish posts in the previous week)
Reading Now (my current reading list broken up into NF and Fiction)
Upcoming (scheduled reviews and blog tours and list of finished books awaiting reviews)
Recently (links to bookish posts in the last few weeks)
New Arrivals: (lists of recently acquired ARC broken up into snail mail, email and Net Gallery)
ARC in waiting (a list that is getting shamefully long)

My Week in Review:

LOLz @cheezeburger.com: vote, caption LOLlygag

 I didn't finish anything new since last Monday nor have I posted any bookish posts.  This past week was all about preparing for the trip home from Mom's, the trip, stuff that happened once home and NaNo.  Because of the trip, and stuff that happened before, during and after I've had next to zero time for reading.

There was the audio book we listened to in the car on the trip last Wednesday but it was one my Mom and sister had been listening to when in the car for months and it was more than three quarters in when I started listening and then it didn't finish before we reached my house that night in spite of the drive lasting nearly twice the expect five hours.

The Walking Stick by Winston Graham was the book and my sister emailed me after they reached Gerber CA on Friday to say it had ended 'stupid.'  I was privately predicting that it would not have a happy ending.  It reminded me of those 1970s anti-hero movies where the main character has a major flaw that ends up turning them to the dark side and fate is usually unkind.

This is quite unlike my Mom's or my sister's taste so I suspect it was the blurb in the talking books catalog that hooked Mom into thinking she was getting a story of courageous living with disability as the story is about a woman who limps due to having had polio as a child and she uses a walking stick.  Then this shy, low-self-esteem young lady is charmed by a man whose affection, attention and appreciation become all important to her and she allows herself to be talked into helping with a jewelry heist at the place she is employed.

I'm still trying to decide how bad I need to know how it ends and if I need to know at all will it suffice to have my sister give me a shorthand version by email.  Or do I need to hunt it down in one of the libraries here or up there eventually and start it from the beginning.  I learned in my online search that they did make a movie of this story in the 1970s.  Maybe it will be on Net Flix.

I hope to get some reading in this week.  But I am behind on NaNo and on my Secret Santa crochet project and still have much unpacking to do and cleaning up after a husband who batched for a month during his busy season at work so I will have to squeeze it into the cracks.  Possibly I will get to listen more to the audio book A Discovery of Witches I started during the read-a-thon in October.

But A History of the Present Illness by Lousie Aronson one of my Net Gallery ebooks is going to time out on Dec 3 so I do hope to get some reading in it done this week so I'm not rushing through it next weekend.  And of course there is the NF that is part of my ROW80 goals that I would be plugging away at for a minimum of 30 minutes per day for the reading writing craft/publishing related books and articles.

Finished reading:

NADA

Reading Now:

Non-Fiction:

Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Go by Les Edgerton (Part of my ROW80 reading in craft list)
Get Your Loved One Sober by Robert Meyers (Research for a fiction WIP)
What to Do When There's Too Much to Do by Laura Stack (Part of my attempt to organize my life around my priorities. So part of my ROW80 reading list)

And So It Goes by Charles J. Sheilds a bio of Kurt Vonnegut.  (I've posted about this biography of Kurt Vonnegut several time in a kind of reading journal. It is past time for another.  Part of the fun I'm having reading this is in stopping to read the stories he wrote as the narrative reaches the point where he writes them.)
This Mobius Strip of Ifs by Mathias Freese (I've posted a reading journal post for this collection of personal essays also.  It is past time for another.)

What Matters in Jane Austen? by John Muller
Trust the Process: An Artist's Guide to Letting Go by Shaun McNiff
Jung and the Tarot: An Archetypal Journey by Sallie Nichols

Most of these I plug way in at a snail's pace--a couple chapters per week as that is my preferred way to read non-fic.  It sticks with me longer. I'm closing in on the finish line for several but as I get close on one I tend to add two or three more. There are some not listed here because I don't read in them weekly.

Fiction:

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness  (audio from library)
A History of the Present Illness by Lousie Aronson (Net Galley. This was in the NF previously because I was confused.  It reads like literary NF a bit like Oliver Sacks but Net Galley lists it as Fiction)

Upcoming:


Blog Tours:

My Journey As a Combat Medic by Patrick Thibeault --memoir--January--Review and Author Interview
Flesh by Khanha --a novel--January.  Review & Author Guest Post

Books I've Finished Awaiting Reviews:

At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon  (the ebook I was reading aloud to my Mom while staying there in March and April. These short little lighthearted chapters are almost like stand-alone short stories with beloved characters and make great bedtime reading for adults wanting pleasant dreams)

The Land of Decoration by Grace McClean
Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Leher.
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg   Part of my attempt to organize my life around my priorities. So part of my ROW80 reading list.   I discussed this in such detail in my mid-week ROW80 check-in post it was practically a review and I'll probably copy/paste much of what I said there into the review.

Recently:

Finished reading:

The Adventures of Tilda Pinkerton by Angela Shelton
One Moment in Time by Glenn Snyde
Curiosity Killed the Kat by Elizabeth Nelson
At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon 


Reviews & Bookish Posts:

The Adventures of Tilda Pinkerton by Angela Shelton

If Dr. Seuss had written a novel it would be just like this--whimsical, charming, colorful as an artist's palette, with moral values wrapped in parables like peaches in whipped cream, with epic struggles of good against evil and full of the wonder and wisdom only ever comprehended by the heart of a child.  This story will speak to every child heart aged 8 to 88.

One Moment in Time by Glenn Snyder

This story was written to encourage thoughtful reflection but it does not stint on entertainment.  The author has woven a message into the story but is never preachy and always keeps the focus on the story.  The main characters are fully drawn and worth caring about, drawing us in and keeping us engaged.

Curiosity Killed the Kat by Elizabeth Nelson


Tho disturbing it is entertaining in the way we expect our thrillers to be with pulsing action and dialog that practically turns the pages for you.








The World Without You by Joshua Henkin (I reviewed this in June but had not quite finished it yet and only discovered that while shuffling around my ARCs in preparation for the read-a-thon last month.  Had to back up a couple chapters and then proceed. I would like to either post another review or update the one I posted in June but  I'm not sure where the time for it will come from before the end of November after NaNo and travel and family commitments are done.  I will say read this book.  It was one of the best of the ARC I read this whole year.)

New Arrivals:

By Snail Mail:

Detroit City Is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis by Mark Binelli  Non-fiction expose.  This was waiting for me when I got home last week.

By email:  NADA

From Net Galley:

A History of This Present Illness by Loren Aronson
A Thousand Pardons by Jonathan Dee
What Matters in Jane Austen? by John Muller
Never Give in to Fear by Marti MacGibbon
The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
Unloched by Candace Lemon-Scott
Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy 
by Emily Bazelon
Ignorance by Michèle Roberts
The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Snead
LULU a novella by Nancy Friday
The Tragedy Paper by Elizabeth LaBan

ARC in waiting:

The Civilized World by Susi Wyss (another ARC that got lost in the mix before I'd finished it.  Have not posted a review for this one either and can't remember when I received it but it had to be at least a year ago before I started packing for our move and likely before NaNo when I typically stop reading fiction while I'm so intensely writing it.  This is a collection of interlocking short stories set in South Africa and I remember I was quite enjoying it.  I've had to start it over.-- And then forgot to bring it with me to Mom's so I hope to get back to it again as soon as NaNo is over)

The Variations by John Donatich
The Inquisitor by Mark Allen Smith   My husband read this and loved it and is after me to read it so he can talk about it.
The Hunger Angel by Herta Muller  Nobel winner!!
Skios by Michael Frayn
How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti
The Sadness of the Samurai by Victor del Arbo
Me, Who Dove into the Heart of the World by Sabina Berman
Winter Journal by Paul Auster a memoir from an American literary figure that really excites me.
We Sinners by Hanna Pylvaine.   It's another story exploring the impact on family life of a fundamentalist religion.  One of the themes I'm drawn to like Pooh to honey.
Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers' Testimonies from the Occupied Territories, 2000-2010 compiled by The Organization Breaking the Silence

If anyone reading this states a preference I may let it weigh my decision as to what I begin next from the above list.