It's Monday 2/14! What Are You Reading?

Organizer Book Date:

💜 HAPPY BIRTHDAY! 💜

I hope everyone had a great time watching last night's Super Bowl (or watching the commercials and eating like me) and having a great Valentine's Day today. I love all these little holidays and activities this time of year, as I explained in a recent video. Celebrate everyone, young and old.

Last night we made our favorite snacks from the Super Bowl and watched the game and commercials. Our son joined us for the first part and it was fun.

Lots of Super Bowl giveaways!

We used our new Buffalo Chicken Fryer.

Today I wore red, heart and ear socks. We give each other cards and candy on Valentine's Day, and my husband and I are celebrating tonight with food (and dessert) to take out to our favorite restaurant.

It was a very hard and full week. My 96-year-old stepfather returned to the hospital. At 4 am on Thursday we got a call from the nursing home that an ambulance was going to be called. I'll keep you posted on the details, but after a few days, the hospital doctors concluded that she was severely dehydrated. It was frustrating because we had already been talking to the nursing home staff for a month. We don't know yet if she went back to a nursing home or hospice. Whether he can eat and drink on his own, but the past few months have been very devastating to see him so weak and weak.

Last week I was able to upload two new videos to my YouTube channel .

• Celebrate all things young and old. Although this video was created for my chronic illness channel, I think this video was interesting for everyone. They found a few book bloggers/booksellers over the weekend and were just as excited to introduce themselves. See how we celebrate the little things that bring joy to our lives.
• Summary of January readings. I no longer post monthly book reviews here on my blog (it's part of my effort to simplify and streamline this year), but you can see all about January's reads in this video. Reading was a good month.

This is what we all read last week. I re-read Black History for Monther.

I finished reading Harlem Shuffle by Coulson Whitehead , a novel my husband gave me for Christmas, and I was so excited to read it. Set in the early 1960s, it follows a man named Ray Carney who set up a legitimate furniture business between his wife and children and wanted to earn extra money through crime like the rest of his family. It was wonderful and really brought the time, place and characters to life.

 

This weekend I was all set to start Octavia Butler's Kindred for an upcoming reading group...until I realized I thought it was n't on my Kindle. (It was another Butler novel.) So I needed something real before I could get a copy. I took Shannon Hitchcock 's bourgeois novel "Ruby Lee and I" off the shelf. Now I'm almost done and I really like it. It's a sweet story about 12-year-old Sarah, who seriously injures her little sister in a car accident that Sarah blames herself for. Sarah lives on her grandparents' farm while her sister is in the hospital and has always been best friends with Ruby, a black girl who lives next door. But the upcoming integration of the local school worries the whole town and comes between Sarah and Ruby. It is a warm and touching novel that honestly addresses serious issues.

I still hear Richard Wright's The Black Boy on tape, perfect for Black History Month, published in 1945. The author talks about Jim Crow childhood in rural south Mississippi, poverty, hunger, racism, abuse and fear. The audio is excellent and hearing the author's words in the first person is especially impressive and powerful.

My husband , Ken, has been enjoying a fun break with his favorite Jack Reacher series , reading the latest book Better Off Dead (#26) by Lee Child and Andrew Child, Brother Lee. I gave him this for Christmas (every year!) and he was ecstatic! He and I just started watching the new season of Reacher on Amazon Prime , and we're still enjoying it (one is a book and the other has never been read).

 

Ken is reading Countdown City by Ben Wintersen, the second book in the Last Cop series. I gave him the series last year and gave him this book for Christmas. The series follows Detective Hank Pallas, a dedicated police officer who always does his job despite the threat of disaster. In 77 days, an asteroid will hit Earth and end our world, but Hank investigates a missing person (now in a world where many people have disappeared). It is very good! He likes it.

 

Our 27-year-old son continues to read The Black Squad Chronicles by Glenn Cook, one of the books in the series of the same name. He says it's a series he's wanted to read for years and found it last year at an antique store in our town. He appreciates it!

Just an additional blog post from last month.

Art review. The Illustrated Man is an excellent collection of Ray Bradbury's creative, intelligent and engaging musings.

What You Read Monday is curated by Catherine for Book Day , so check out her blog and join in the Monday fun. You can also join the Kids/Teen/Boys version hosted by Unleashing Readers .

Follow me on Twitter @SueBookByBook or on Facebook on my blog page.

What are you and your family reading this week?