It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

As the summer morphs into back to school season, are you motivated to learn something new from your reading? Check out the Back to School Reading Challenge!

Read

It’s been a long time since I wrote a Monday post, but I have a whole stack of books that probably won’t get reviews so I wanted to get them mentioned on my blog.

First, though, here are the books that I have reviewed recently:

Zarafa by Michael Allin with photos of the Rotunda

Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss (Part 3)

The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

Paris (DK Eyewitness Travel)

The Serpent and the Moon by Princess Michael of Kent

Paris, My Sweet by Amy Thomas

Ula of Blog of Erisid wrote a guest post for Girlxoxo on dystopian books for summer reading: Bloggers Recommend Summer Reads {The Dystopian Edition}. From that list, I picked the series by Beth Revis and read Across the Universe and A Million Suns back to back. I liked the first one better, but I always seem to have a problem with the middle books in series. This second book had the Spiderman II problem. The effort to make the characters more nuanced and layered made them insufferable teenagers. But they got better toward the end and I’ve requested the third book, Shades of Earth, from the library since it’s not out in paperback yet.

I’ve read a couple of mass market paperback romances recently. The Proposal by Mary Balogh begins a new series by one of my favorite romance authors. This looks like a winning premise — it features a group of people who were damaged in some way by Napoleonic Wars and have come together to form the Survivor’s Club. The first book matches Hugo who would really be left alone on his farm with Gwendoline who has her own demons to slay, domestic though they may be.

Leopard’s Prey by Christine Feehan is the latest in her Leopard Novel series. This was a fun addition with a rock star heroine and a detective hero set in New Orleans and the surrounding swamps. I guessed the “who done it” aspect of the ending, but was surprised by who rescued who.

Reading

I’m reading Cooked by Michael Pollan and enjoying it very much.

Will Read

I have no clue what’s next but there’s a big stack of library books to choose from. I need to sign up for my own challenge, the Back to School Reading Challenge, so that will probably effect what I select.

It’s Monday! What Are Your Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila of Book Journey. Be sure to check out her post today to see her selections and the list of links to all the other participating bloggers.