Happy Sunday everyone!
One holiday down and one to go. It’s amazing how much these holidays are anticipated (or dreaded!) and then just like that they’re gone. I spent a wonderful day hanging out with my family. I love that we all got up around the same time and basically just ate all day. Things needed to be tasted, and I was always on hand to help out in that department.
I really didn’t get much reading done while I was hanging with the fam. This was as I suspected despite the fact that I had weighted myself down with books. I did play the longest game of Uno ever. Everyone was relieved when my mom finally won, though I also suspect that we were playing all wrong. We just had the cards and not the box with the rules. So we were playing from vague recollections and questionable memories. Oh well. It was fun.
Saturday, I spent most of the day curled up with a book. I started and finished Blood of My Brother by James LePore. I intended to read the first few pages to get a feel for the story but found it extremely hard to put down for any length of time. I kept going back to read just a little bit more until finally I was at the last fifty pages, and I couldn’t leave them unfinished.
I also finished up with The Monstrumologist, by Rick Yancey. This was definitely a horror story, and the monsters were probably the least scary thing about the book. The relationship between Will Henry and Dr. Warthrop is fascinating and the prospect of seeing it further unfold will probably lead me to the next book, The Curse of the Wendigo, sooner rather than later.
I have seriously neglected my non-fiction reading this year. Not even a third of my reading this year falls into the non-fiction category and I miss it! It has been an extremely busy year, and with the time that I could spend reading I chose fiction as my vehicle of escape. To remedy this I put a serious dent in Crossing the Heart of Africa: An Odyssey of Love and Adventure by Julian Smith and Keep the Change: A Clueless Tipper’s Quest to Become the Guru of the Gratuity by Steve Dublanica. So far I am loving Crossing the Heart of Africa. It’s got the right blend of history and information about the countries Smith is exploring in Africa without being completely overwhelming. I’ve been disappointed in Keep the Change. While it bills itself as an exploration of tipping and its origins and evolution it reads more like why you should tip and the horrible things service workers will do if you don’t. As a former waiter, etc, Dublanica’s bias is showing big time.
Continuing my study of Sherlock Holmes, I am reading The Sherlockian by Graham Moore. I just started, but I am enjoying the writing and looking forward to discovering what the mystery will be, and seeing if I can tell whodunnit.
Rounding out my reading, is Finny: A Novel by Justin Kramon. I have been trying to read this book since the summer, but have always had to put it off for one reason or another. I read the first fifty pages, and the story moves quickly and is easy to get into. Though the circumstances surrounding Finny being bundled off to boarding school broke my heart a little, I am looking forward to her further adventures.
Today I don’t have much of anything planned with the exception of brunch with Allie, and finishing up my shopping for my Secret Santa. After that I plan to come home and do a little reading. I feel like I will be juggling back and forth between The Sherlockian and Crossing the Heart of Africa.
How about you? What are you reading today?
