Where I share my love of books with reviews, features, giveaways and memes. Family and needlepoint are thrown in from time to time.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

It's Monday! What are you reading? (Jan 21, 2014)



It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey

Ok,so it is really Tuesday.  Whenever there is a school holiday on Monday it whacks my schedule on me.  I haven't read much lately as I think I am in need of new glasses.  My eyes are tiring very easily and start to burn when I read more than 20-30 minutes at a time.

Temperature check at 8:30AM: -1/Feels Like -20 degrees.  Good day to stay in and read!


Currently reading: 




Through the Ever Night
by Veronica Rossi

This is book two in the Under the Never Sky series.  We are introduced to some new characters right off the bat and am just starting to get everyone straight. 


Now Aria and Perry are about to be reunited. It's a moment they've been longing for with countless expectations. And it's a moment that lives up to all of them. At least, at first. 

Then it slips away. The Tides don't take kindly to former Dwellers like Aria. And the tribe is swirling out of Perry's control. With the Aether storms worsening every day, the only remaining hope for peace and safety is the Still Blue. But does this haven truly exist?

Threatened by false friends and powerful temptations, Aria and Perry wonder, Can their love survive through the ever night? 

In this second book in her spellbinding Under the Never Sky trilogy, Veronica Rossi combines fantasy and sci-fi elements to create a captivating adventure-and a love story as perilous as it is unforgettable.




The God of Small Things
by Arundhati Roy

"They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much." 

The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, fraternal twins Esthappen and Rahel fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family. Their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu, (who loves by night the man her children love by day), fled an abusive marriage to live with their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), and their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt).

When Chacko's English ex-wife brings their daughter for a Christmas visit, the twins learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river.... 

Bathroom Book:
I had been reading Agent of Influence by David Aaron.  I decided I really didn't like it and didn't want to waste any more time on it, so returned it to the library.  So this is my current read:



The One and Only Ivan
by Katherine Applegate

This one is a lot better suited for the few minutes that I actually get to read - it is a cute, humorous story so far. 

Ivan is an easygoing gorilla. Living at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade, he has grown accustomed to humans watching him through the glass walls of his domain. He rarely misses his life in the jungle. In fact, he hardly ever thinks about it at all.

Instead, Ivan thinks about TV shows he’s seen and about his friends Stella, an elderly elephant, and Bob, a stray dog. But mostly Ivan thinks about art and how to capture the taste of a mango or the sound of leaves with color and a well-placed line.

Then he meets Ruby, a baby elephant taken from her family, and she makes Ivan see their home—and his own art—through new eyes. When Ruby arrives, change comes with her, and it’s up to Ivan to make it a change for the better.

Katherine Applegate blends humor and poignancy to create Ivan’s unforgettable first-person narration in a story of friendship, art, and hope.


E-read:


Last Night at the Blue Angel

by Rebecca Rotert

Random Choice Read.  I have started this one, but my eyes are more irritated when I read online - so not getting far into it at this time. 


Set against the backdrop of the early 1960s Chicago jazz scene, a highly ambitious and stylish literary debut that combines the atmosphere and period detail of Amor Towles' Rules of Civility with the emotional depth and drama of The Memory Keeper's Daughter, about a talented but troubled singer. precocious ten-year-old daughter, and their heartbreaking relationship.

It is the early 1960s, and Chicago is a city of uneasy tensions-segregation, sexual experimentation, free love, the Cold War-but it is also home to one of the country's most vibrant jazz scenes. Naomi Hill, a singer at the Blue Angel club, has been poised on the brink of stardom for nearly ten years. Finally, her big break arrives-the cover of Look magazine. But success has come at enormous personal cost. Beautiful and magnetic, Naomi is a fiercely ambitious yet extremely self-destructive woman whose charms are irresistible and dangerous for those around her. No one knows this better than Sophia, her precocious ten-year-old daughter.

For Sophia, Naomi is the center of her universe. As the only child of a single, unconventional mother, growing up in an adult world, Sophia has seen things beyond her years and her understanding. Unsettled by her uncertain home life, she harbors the terrible fear that the world could end at any moment, so she compulsively keeps a running list of practical objects she will need to reinvent once nuclear catastrophe strikes. Her one constant is Jim, the photographer who is her best friend, surrogate father, and protector. But Jim is deeply in love with Naomi-a situation that adds to Sophia's anxiety.

Told from the alternating perspectives of Sophia and Naomi, their powerful and wrenching story unfolds in layers, revealing Sophia's struggle for her mother's love with Naomi's desperate journey to stardom and the colorful cadre of close friends who shaped her along the way.

Sophisticated yet poignant, Last Night at the Blue Angel is an unforgettable tale about what happens when our passion for the life we want is at sharp odds with the life we have. It is a story ripe with surprising twists and revelations, and an ending that is bound to break your heart.


Books I plan to start this week:

In the last post I had mentioned starting The Shade of the Moon by Susan Beth Pfeffer.  I did start it, and realized that I had forgotten too much from the series so am going to reread them.  I am waiting for Life as We Knew It to be returned to the library so I can start over. 



Life as We Knew It
by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Miranda’s disbelief turns to fear in a split second when a meteor knocks the moon closer to the earth. How should her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis wipe out the coasts, earthquakes rock the continents, and volcanic ash blocks out the sun? As summer turns to Arctic winter, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove.

Told in journal entries, this is the heart-pounding story of Miranda’s struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all--hope--in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world.


Finished:



by Elizabeth George Speare
Reviewing soon. 

Working on:


Still working on my snowman - am making him a little hat now.


I also dug out a needlepoint from last year.  This is called Baltimore Bride: Shimmering Hearts.  Not sure I like the teal colors that were recommended with the purple, but we are going to go with it and hope the overall looks good.

2 comments:

bermudaonion said...

I hope you get a lot of reading done and stay warm!

Olivia's Catastrophe said...

I haven't read any of these books, but I have heard so much about all of them! I hope you enjoy reading them. Right now I'm reading the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and loving it.

Check out my post about jewellery here: http://olivia-savannah.blogspot.nl/2014/01/my-jewellery.html

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