It's Monday 11/18! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

 Things are a bit chaotic here this morning! I got behind on my e-mail last week (oops), so I didn’t realize that the company we hired to remove some dead trees and trim other trees was coming this morning … at 7 am! I heard the heavy equipment, looked out my bathroom window and thought, “Someone must be having some work done today.” Then I put on my glasses and realized it was us! We also had new gutters installed on the house Friday, and since it got dark so early, they had to come back this morning to finish cleaning up. Plus, our monthly cleaning service was scheduled for today. Kind of a three-ring circus here!

Not much to report from last week. I’m still stuck in this relapse of my chronic illness, with flu-like aches every day. I’m still not entirely sure why, which drives me crazy. The changes in diet and medication I mentioned last week helped a little bit but not as much as I’d hoped. I spent a lot of time on the couch and got my dose of nature from our back deck, in my lounge chair!

My favorite spot in my reclining chair on our back deck

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Though I wasn’t planning to write any more TV or movie reviews this year, I was moved to review this one because it was so good!

Movie Review: My Old Ass – Featuring our tiny state’s hottest star, Aubrey Plaza, this unique movie about an 18-year-old talking to her 39-year-old self was funny, heartwarming, and poignant, leaving my husband and I both in tears! Plus it’s in a gorgeous setting. Highly recommended, with a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes.

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Travel and Outdoor Vlog: Trap Pond State Park – beautiful fall scenery, brilliant colors, and peaceful nature in videos and photos from our last camping trip of the season.

Friday Reads 11-15-24 – my brief weekly update on what I am reading and listening to for Nonfiction November.

Chronic Illness Vlog: A Week in My Life During a Relapse, Plus Time in Nature - Just posted this morning, video clips from my daily life last week, focused on my chronic illness.

We’re both enjoying Nonfiction November:

I finished reading Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park by Conor Knighton and loved it! The author, a freelance contractor for CBS Sunday Morning, decided to visit every one of the then-59 U.S. National Parks in one year. He created some pieces for the show throughout that year, but the journey was also a personal one. This isn’t a typical travel guide. While Knighton does sometimes focus on interesting geography, flora, or fauna, he also digs into history and focuses heavily on people: those who lived in the areas before the parks, those who created the parks, and those currently live, work, or visit them. He tackles subjects like borders, diversity, God, and love, as well as more traditional nature themes. It’s a fascinating, engrossing set of stories, made even better by the author’s wonderful sense of humor. My husband and I both enjoyed it so much that this weekend, we watched some of his CBS Sunday Morning national park pieces on YouTube. I’m ready to hit the road!

In between my longer nonfiction books, I squeezed in a fabulous graphic memoir, Sunshine by Jarrett J. Krosoczka. This is a follow-up to his earlier graphic memoir, Hey, Kiddo, about being raised by his grandparents after his father left when he was a baby and his mother struggled with addiction. Here, he recounts his experiences as a high school senior volunteering at a camp for kids with serious illnesses and how that changed his life. He and a few classmates and adult chaperones spend a week at the camp in Maine, working with kids of all ages and their families. Many of those kids had cancer, so yes, there is sorrow here (I was crying toward the end), but this is a book about life, love, and hope, about giving these suffering kids and their families some simple joy and making a difference in their difficult lives. This was a hug-it-to-my-chest book. I talk more about it and share some of the drawings inside in this video (at 6:51).

Next, I started Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson, a book that’s been in my November stack for several years! I haven’t had a lot of reading time (I want to go camping again!), so I’m only 86 pages into it so far. It’s the story of a German submarine sinking a huge passenger ship during WWI, but as always, Larson digs deep into the story to bring us details and aspects that we never learned in history class. We not only get to know some of the passengers and crew of the Lusitania on that fateful voyage but also the captain and crew of the German U-boat. Larson’s books are always fascinating and informative, and this one is no different.

My first nonfiction audio book is Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times by Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran. It’s structured as a series of letters to her father in Iran from her home in Washington, DC. It was written in 2019-21 and reflects on the “post-Trump” era (I know) and the parallels between the reign of the Islamic Republic in Iran and what she sees happening in her adopted country more recently. As she writes to her father, she discusses many classic and modern works of literature, as they were accustomed to doing together in earlier years, and how these books relate to events in both Iran and the U.S.: The Satanic Verses, Fahrenheit 451, The Bluest Eye, Their Eyes Were Watching God, A Handmaid’s Tale, and more. It’s thoughtful, thought-provoking, and powerful, and this seems like exactly the right time to be reading it.

My husband, Ken, finished reading his first book for Nonfiction November, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann, a gift from me. He enjoyed it and said it was interesting (though a bit gruesome at times).

Ken is now reading another gift from me, Burn by Peter Heller, one of our favorite authors of outdoor thrillers. This novel is a bit of a departure for Heller, as it’s post-apocaylptic. Two lifelong friends meet up in the backwoods of Maine for their annual hunting/camping trip. Weeks later, when they leave the woods, they find a devastated world filled with destruction. They begin the long walk home, dragging a wagon, as they try to figure out what’s happened. According to the description, it’s about male friendship and filled with Heller’s usual beautiful nature writing, but also “a blistering warning about a divided country’s political strife and an ode to the salvation found in our chosen families.” Sounds great!

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