Happy Monday!
It is a happy Monday for me, as I am finally feeling better after being sick for over two weeks. I turned the corner last week just in time to go to my neighborhood book group's 125th book celebration! It was so good to be out among friends - and talking about books, too! So, today feels like a fresh start, with a new week ahead and feeling like my old self again.
With all that time spent sick, I've had plenty of reading time:
- I finished City of Women by David Gillham in time for my book group discussion/dinner. It's an emotionally powerful, raw story of women living in Berlin during World War II - ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, as the author says. I really enjoyed it, as did most of the others in my group.
- I also finished my audio book, a teen/YA novel called In the After by Demitria Lunetta, part of my Dangerous Reads Month. It's a post-apocalyptic story about a teen girl and a toddler trying to survive an invasion of flesh-eating monsters, but the second half is also dystopian. I enjoyed the original story and the suspense.
- I started another teen/YA dystopian novel for Dangerous Reads Month, Unwholly by Neal Schusterman. This is the sequel to Unwind, Schusterman's novel about a future world where abortion is illegal but parents can choose to "unwind" unruly teens between their 13th and 18th birthdays. All parts are used and implanted into other people, so the theory is that the child is still technically alive. Oh, yeah...super creepy stuff! The sequel is just as good as the first book - I can't wait to read book 3 which was just recently released.
- I also started another teen/YA audio book, Rotters. Like Unwholly, this one has been sitting on my shelf for a long time. I was hoping my teen sons would agree to listen to it with me during our road trip this summer, but they say they are done with that (sniff, sniff). It won an Odyssey award for audio book excellence and is very good so far. It also fits in with Dangerous Reads Month, as the story includes grave-robbing (though I haven't gotten to that part yet).
- My husband, Ken, just finished NOS4A2 by Joe Hill last night and said it was very good and very Stephen King-ish (Hill is King's son)...i.e. super creepy! I'm not sure what he's going to read next - like me, he has a big stack of books waiting to be read.
- It's mid-term time in college, so Jamie, 19, hasn't had much time for reading, though he did start Shadows Edge by Brent Weeks, book 2 of the Night Angel trilogy.
- And Craig, 15, is still reading Beowulf for British Lit class.
BookPage's list of 13 Creepiest Books for October - if you want to get into the spirit of the season, this list is a great place to start!
Review of City of Women by David Gillham, historical fiction set in Berlin in 1943.
Review of A Matter of Days by Amber Kizer, a teen/YA post-apocalyptic audio book.
What are you and your family reading this week?
(What are you reading Monday is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey, with a kid/teen version hosted by Unleashing Readers.)
And, remember, Book By Book is now on Facebook, so you can get updates and join in some fun bookish conversations there.
4 comments:
Wow looks like you have an awesome week ahead of you. Happy reading! :)
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Andy @ Owl Always Be Reading
A book that my daughter and I both thoroughly enjoyed recently is "The Riddle of Prague" by author Laura DeBruce (http://theriddleofprague.com/about/). I think this book is appropriate for teens and for the most experienced of readers. It has an exciting plot line following young Hana Silva on her adventure in Prague and her search for the elixir of immortality. The author keeps the reader entertained as well as giving beautiful and accurate descriptions of Prague and it's people. The main character Hana is a smart spunky teenager who my daughter could relate to (as I'm sure other teenage girls can!) and root for throughout the novel. There is mystery, suspense, romance, travel and much more. I hope your readers will share this book with their families :)
My kids have stopped listening to books in the car with me as well. And the ultimate happened this semester--my youngest dd is done with reading aloud books on the couch. She is 15, so I'm lucky she lasted that long. But still, I'm going to miss it.
Hi,
We stuck with reading aloud with our two boys, last thing at night, until the youngest went to uni at the beginning of this month (October 2013). I wish I'd seen your blog earlier! We are not very adventurous, and kept falling back on Terry Pratchett and Moomintroll, though there were some other memorable books. I kept meaning to write/blog about it. And when they are back, we still like that quiet together time.
Lindy
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