It's Monday 6/7! What Are You Reading?

Well, it's actually Tuesday now, but I still wanted to post my weekly update because we leave on vacation soon, so I won't be around the blogosphere for a while.

I missed Monday because my mother-in-law passed away on Thursday morning after a 30-year battle with Parkinson's disease.  We scrambled to get flights out to Oklahoma as soon as we could, but my youngest son and I still missed the funeral service.  Our later flight on Friday was delayed for four hours, then finally cancelled.  We spent the night in a hotel near the airport and got up at 4 am the next morning, but we still arrived a couple of hours too late.  We were horribly disappointed, but at least we arrived in time to see some of our family before they returned home and to spend several days with my father-in law and our nephew and his family.

So, it's been a long, rough week for us.  We did have lots and lots of reading time, though, on planes and in airports, waiting and waiting and waiting...

• Jamie, 15, finished The Game of Sunken Places by M.T. Anderson last week and enjoyed the middle-grade fantasy adventure very much.  He's looking forward to the sequel.  I think I'll take this one on vacation with me.
• Jamie wanted to bring our hardback edition of Stephen King's The Stand with him to Oklahoma.  Though I know he'll love it and I've been wanting him to read it, I talked him out of carrying the heaviest book in our house through all those airports!  Instead, I set him up with a nice lightweight paperback of Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Supremacy.  He recently enjoyed the movie version of The Bourne Identity, so I thought he'd like this.  It kept him well distracted during our long flight last night (we didn't get home until 2:30 am!)
• Craig has been working hard to read Charlie Bone and the Red Knight by Jenny Nimmo before school ends this week, so he can meet his Accelerated Reader goals.  He's really impressed me, reading more in one week than I've ever seen him read before.  He's only 40 pages away from the end of this 600-page book.  Of course, again, all those hours in planes and airports helped (though he slept all the way home last night - lucky!)
• I finished and absolutely loved D.J. MacHale's new Morpheus Road: The Light.  Scary, suspenseful, great characters, and lots of surprises!  I hoped to post a review last week, but now I may not have time before vacation - we'll see.
• I started How To Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers by Toni Bernhard, a good online friend of mine who has the same immune system disorder I have (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome).  I love her book so far and am finding it very inspirational, but I knew I needed some gripping fiction for the trip, so I had to set it aside temporarily.
• During our trip, I read What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell, a recent teen/YA release that won the National Book Award.  It was definitely award-worthy, a mix of a coming-of-age story, history (set after World War II), romance, suspense, and even a possible murder mystery.  It easily held my interest during those long waits and flights.
• On last night's flight, I started The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.  It pulled me right in - I barely noticed when our plane returned to the gate to straighten out some sort of passenger mix-up (after an hour on the runway).  I'm about halfway through it now and am thoroughly entranced by the unique post-World War II story told through a series of letters.  Hmmm...I just noticed I read two books set in the same time period this week, but the first was set in the U.S., and this one is set in England.
• Finally, I've been slowly working my way through a middle-grade audio book, Keeper by Kathi Appelt, about a ten-year old girl who sets off in a small rowboat to find her missing mother, who she believes is a mermaid.  It's very good so far.

So, that was our very long week.  Thank goodness for good books to distract us from all of life's craziness.

What are you and your family reading?

(What are you reading Mondays is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey).