It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Welcome to It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading!  This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!

I love being a part of this and I hope you do too!  As part of this weekly meme I love to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme.  I offer a weekly contest for those who visit 10 or more of the Monday Meme participants and leave a comment telling me how many you visited.  **You do not have to have a blog to participate! You receive one entry for every 10 comments, just come back here and tell me how many in the comment area.

Under the new and hopefully improved 2013 guidelines, the winner each week will receive a $5 Amazon gift card.  This past weeks winner is:

Holly Mueller!!!!

I had an AMAZING blog week!  I am pretty sure I posted every day and almost had a review every day as well, thanks to the cabin weekend that left me with five books read but not reviewed.  It feel so good to be back on track and enjoying blogging and reviewing again.  I even got out his week and visited quite a few blogs too.  I love that.

 

Here is what I posted this week:

 

The Murder Of The Century by Paul Collins

 

Level 2 by Lenore Appelhans (Lenore’s (from Presenting Lenore) apocalyptic novel ROCKS! 

 

The Midwife’s Tale by Sam Thomas (wow wow wow wow wow wow wow!)

 

Born This Way by Paul Vitaglanio (creator of the Born This Way blog/website)

 

Will To Murder by Gail Feichtinger (The true crime stories behind the Glensheen Mansion murders)

 

Ashes by Ilsa Bick (great dystopian YA… or is it called Apocalyptic now?)

 

The Gilly Salt Sisters by Tiffany Baker (looking for a great audio and/or a great read – here you go!)

 

 

I was right!  Look at that!!!  What a great week!  Seriously I feel like a rock star and I am not tapped out yet, I have another book and an audio almost ready for review!

 

 

So what is new for this week?

On the day her daughter leaves for college, Anne Colwater’s husband of twenty years announces he wants a divorce. Her roles of wife and mother suddenly gone, Annie retreats to her childhood home of Mystic, Washington, to heal. There she finds her old friend Nick, suddenly widowed and unable to cope with his emotionally scarred young daughter, Izzie. Annie agrees to look after Izzie, and soon finds herself caring for both father and daughter with a joy and passion she never expected – and she finds her love returned with a fervor she had never even hoped for. But love is never simple, and it is not until Annie learns a hard lesson from her own grown daughter that she finds the strength to claim the happiness she has earned.

I started this one yesterday and so far…. hmmmm…

In the summer of June of 1991, I was a normal kid. I did normal things. I had friends and a mother that loved me. I was just like you. Until the day my life was stolen.

For eighteen years I was a prisoner. I was an object for someone to use and abuse. For eighteen years I was not allowed to speak my own name. I became a mother and was forced to be a sister. For eighteen years I survived an impossible situation.

On August 26, 2009, I took my name back. My name is Jaycee Lee Dugard. I don’t think of myself as a victim, I simply survived an intolerable situation. A Stolen Life is my story—in my own words, in my own way, exactly as I remember it.

On a recent trip to Wal-Mart I found this true story written by Jaycee Dugard regarding her 18 year abduction.  I have started it and WOW, it is painfully real and intense.

 

 

 

 

In January 1961, as the Cold War escalates, John F. Kennedy struggles to contain the growth of Communism while he learns the hardships, solitude, and temptations of what it means to be president of the United States. Along the way he acquires a number of formidable enemies, among them Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and Alan Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In addition, powerful elements of organized crime have begun to talk about targeting the president and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

In the midst of a 1963 campaign trip to Texas, Kennedy is gunned down by an erratic young drifter named Lee Harvey Oswald. The former Marine Corps sharpshooter escapes the scene, only to be caught and shot dead while in police custody.

The events leading up to the most notorious crime of the twentieth century are almost as shocking as the assassination itself. Killing Kennedy chronicles both the heroism and deceit of Camelot, bringing history to life in ways that will profoundly move the reader. This may well be the most talked about book of the year.

My kitchen audio should be complete in the next couple days and this one is next up.

 

 

 

 

 In her forties – a widow, too young, too modern to accept the role – Becky Aikman struggled to make sense of her place in an altered world.  In this transcendent and infectiously wise memoir, she explores surprising new discoveries about how people experience grief and transcend loss and, following her own remarriage, forms a group with five other young widows to test these unconventional ideas.  Together, these friends summon the humor, resilience, and striving spirit essential for anyone overcoming adversity.

   Meet the Saturday Night Widows: ringleader Becky, an unsentimental journalist who lost her husband to cancer; Tara, a polished mother of two, whose husband died in the throes of alcoholism after she filed for divorce; Denise, a widow of just five months, now struggling to get by; Marcia, a hard-driving corporate lawyer; Dawn, an alluring self-made entrepreneur whose husband was killed in a sporting accident, leaving two small children behind; and Lesley, a housewife who returned home one day to find that her husband had committed suicide.

   The women meet once a month, and over the course of a year, they strike out on ever more far-flung adventures, learning to live past the worst thing they thought could happen.  They share emotional peaks and valleys – dating, parenting, moving, finding meaningful work, and reinventing themselves – while turning traditional thinking about loss and recovery upside down.  Through it all runs the story of Aikman’s own journey through grief and her love affair with a man who tempts her to marry again.  In a transporting story of what friends can achieve when they hold each other up, Saturday Night Widows is a rare book that will make you laugh, think, and remind yourself that despite the utter unpredictability and occasional tragedy of life, it is also precious, fragile, and often more joyous than we recognize.

I was excited to see this was a true story!  I love women friendships and I am excited to read about this group who supported one another.

 

 

 

I am really excited about my reading and listening this week.  How about you?  What great things have you read or listened to this week?  Whats up for this upcoming week?  Share your It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading by linking below where it says click here. 

(On Twitter our hashtag is #IMWAYR)

 

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For those of you who review mainly Middle Grade (MG) and/or Young Adult (YA) reads, please also add your link to this meme as well: