📚☕️📔 🛏️🍛😡 Lots of Books! Lots of Thoughts!

 

What a great week of reading about Emma M. Lion. I zipped through Volumes 4, 5, and 6. I am deeply enjoying Beth Brower's wit and the slightly ridiculous situations she creates for Emma. She is plagued by nutty relatives and good friends, as she tries to navigate her distressed financial situation. I wonder if Beth Brower will have her marry one of the many men in her orbit or let her remain single and free. What will be Emma M. Lion's best life? I am curious to find out. 

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Angie Sage's seven-book series, Septimus Heap, was incredible. I found myself wanting more. Luckily, she has another series taking place in the same fantasy world, called TodHunter Moon. This week I read Pathfinder, the first book. I liked it a great deal. It has monsters, mystery, and magic. Sage's plots move swiftly without sacrificing tension or character building. The main character, Tod, is a twelve-year-old girl facing difficult times, but with extraordinary friends (wink) and talents she is just now discovering, there is hope that good will prevail. First, though it will get dark and scary, in the best way.

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    Unless you think I only choose the easy and fun, I read Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life by Tish Harrison Warren. Warren is many things: an Anglican Priest, wife, mother, and friend. Her book is an encouragement to look for God at work in the mundane parts of our lives: making the bed, arguing with your spouse, eating leftovers, and more. A verse I've been considering as I grow older is Matthew 28:20: "I am with you always, to the end of the age." This book helped me understand ways that God is with me as I fulfill the parts of my life that are less glamorous. Tuesday is blog day and also clean the bathrooms day. I can't remember who recommended this book to me. Thank you to that unnamed person. I also recommended it.

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    One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a historical novel about an inmate, a former Russian soldier, in a Siberian labor camp, or Gulag. Solzhenitsyn tells of just one day, a pretty good day, of Ivan Denisovich's 10-year sentence. It's a brutal life. The book could have been a terrible recounting of suffering, but instead it reveals a desire to survive without being crushed by the oppression and misery surrounding a lowly prisoner. Small things, a hot bowl of soup, not getting frostbite, working to help one another, become a path to, strangely, enjoying the life before you. This book is the May book for my book club. 

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💔😢❤️‍🩹🐺🐍🌊Romance, Fiction, Fantasy, and Memoir--a Good Week!

 

    I found Awake, by Jen Hatmaker, in a Little Free Library. I had heard the name and was intrigued to read something by her. Her memoir was emotional and vulnerable as she describes the ending of her 26-year marriage. I don't know what Jen Hatmaker would say, but I understood it to also be a deconstruction of her faith, or more of a church betrayal. She makes a good case. 

I found it sad and incomplete. Jesus loves the widows and orphans, those who have been betrayed, and those who have been broken. I'm glad I read her memoir. She is finding healing and strength from her family, therapy, and friendships. 

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    Oath and Weeping by Elizabeth Wheatley is the second in her Wrath and Weeping series. Wheatley is a seasoned writer, and she knows how to spin a gripping story in the continuing adventures of Brynn, a sorceress who is a descendant of kings, and Cenric, a Viking-like warrior with a foot in two different clashing cultures. Wheatley uses this to create lots of tension and conflict. In this book, the pair must navigate treacherous ties with old friends. Plus, face an ancient evil that has come awake. 

    The hardest thing about this series is that it is still being written! It was going to be three books, but I'm hearing internet rumbles that it has increased to ten. Yikes.

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    Hurray! I am liking The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Vol. 2 and Vol. 3, by Beth Brower. I have only read the first, and now the second and third, but the main character has been dealt some severe blows — an orphan whose fortune has been squandered by her despicable uncle — she has some good friends and her spunky sassiness. The books are short, full of action, and feature quirky characters like her brooding tenant, her pastor known as Young Hawks, her too-beautiful cousins, and her formidable aunt. There is a wait for each book to become available, which builds my anticipation. 

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    I like Katherine Center's Romance books and had been waiting for Get Lucky to become available. After 10 years in New York working at an ad agency, creating an amazing bra campaign that makes her rethink her life, Sarah returns home to regroup. She decides to help her sister, Mackie, who is unable to carry a baby to term, by being her surrogate. It's only nine months, right? What could happen? Many things: inappropriate crushes, your widowed dad remarrying, your hot ex saying you look old. I enjoy that slightly far-fetched fun that Center brings.

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🕍🇮🇹👠🧙‍♀️🐉📚🦌🏔️🫎A Week for Recommendations

A good friend (shout-out to Laurie!) recommended Georgia Hunter's One Good Thing, loaned me a copy, and told me it was about a Jewish woman during World War II. I cringed internally because I've read a lot of WW II books and women in danger. I read it for my friend. It was amazing. All of the books I've read have focused on Germany, the US, Poland, England, China, or Japan. This is the first book I've read about the war in Italy. I gained an understanding of the complex situation that Italy and its people found themselves in. The Jewish population, under Mussolini, faced persecution, imprisonment, and death on the same scale as Jews in Germany. Hitler and Mussolini were allies for a reason. The novel centers around Lili, a Jewish Italian woman. She finds it difficult to believe her beloved country would treat its citizens with such cruelty. Her story arc demonstrates how war changes people, exposing them. Some are brave and sacrificial or greedy and destructive, and some are both. Hunter realizes that there is a spectrum of responses. She has done terrific research, and her descriptions of food, terrain, and culture feel authentic. I recommend it as well!

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    Fyre by Angie Sage is the final book in the Septimus Heap series. Sage lands the series well. Each of the major characters has a credible story arc that shows how they've grown and gives glimpses of who they will become. The threads of plot she has scattered throughout the book are woven together to a satisfying finish. Mysteries are solved, wrongs are righted, dangers are bravely met, and friendships endure. Her target audience is middle grade, but I, for whom middle grade was still called junior high, enjoyed them. Sage writes compelling plots, engaging characters, and sly humor.

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    This has been a week for reading friend recommendations. I had heard of C. J. Box, but hadn't read anything by him until now. Open Season is a mystery novel, with Joe Pickett, the new game warden in Twelve Sleeps, Wyoming, as the mystery solver. Just about everyone hunts in this area, but all game wardens are as incorruptible as Joe. Being honest and upright doesn't make him any friends and earns him some antagonists. One of those antagonists comes to Joe's backyard to die by his woodpile. Joe wants to know why, but everyone is in a hurry to close the case. Unsurprisingly, Joe can't let it go, unknowingly putting himself and his family in danger. Every place has its own complications and problems. Box skillful makes the Mountain West a character in this well-paced, tense mystery. I suspect I will be reading more of C. J. Box.

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