My May TBR and the Goodreads Challenge


   Hallo and Happy May! I hope you are all enjoying this lovely weather now that May seems to have shaken off the blues. Beltane was a few days ago, but it certainly didn't feel like Beltane: wet, dreary, COLD; today May is living up to her light and lively name, giving us sun, a gentle breeze, and a beautiful greening everywhere. Yesterday I spent far too much money at Home Depot and got everything I needed to start my seeds. (More on that tomorrow) Today I am reveling in the lovely air and making plans for the month which sadly do not include a Memorial Day trip to the seaside or canoeing on the Connecticut River as I want to keep my family and my ladies and gentlemen at work safe, but do include revising wedding plans and researching how to hand-wash a wedding gown. My beautiful girl AlysonRose is getting married on May 30 to a charming, kind young man who absolutely adores her, so I think Nikolas is a keeper. Unfortunately they have had to completely re-think their wedding and push the celebration back a year, but they are still exchanging vows on the 30th. I am so proud of them. They aren't letting the ongoing health crisis get them down; instead they are going forward with their union and are going to face whatever life throws their way together. I can't wait to share photos with you next month! In the meantime, any reliable tips on how to safely hand-clean a beaded wedding gown would be greatly appreciated!

    Later this month I will post the Ellie @ Home Summer Reading List. This should be interesting to put together this year as my library remains closed so I will have to cull the selections from my shelves unless Josh gives me permission to run rampant on Amazon. Actually, Josh doesn't care so long as the bill continue to get paid. (Note: I will not be running rampant on Amazon) I think the theme for this year will be books I haven't read before. I have plenty of those sitting on the shelves, patiently waiting to be read. I'll have the list up in time for Memorial Day, and if anyone wants to read along just drop me a line. Below is my May TBR in no particular order (excluding the Jennifer Roberson series, that is):

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence (going to find out why this is such a shocking book!)

Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

The Unicorn Expedition by Satyajit Ray (I have no idea what this is about; I picked it up at a library sale. Apparently it is a YA book. According to Goodreads:

Professor Shonku cannot dismiss without proof the possibility that unicorns do exist somewhere on earth. In fact Charles Willard a fellow scientist claimed to have actually seen them in Tibet but unfortunately died shortly afterwards. So when Shonku learns that another expedition is starting off for Tibet he jumps at the opportunity to trace Willard's route and find the unicorns.

Tibet is just one of the exotic places Professor Shonku's exploits take him in this volume of stories. In the Sahara Desert he comes face to face with a massive pyramid like structure no one knew of earlier he travels underwater in a submarine with two Japanese scientists to investigate the sudden appearance of deadly red fish that have taken to eating humans in the caves of Bolivia he meets a primitive man who has been painting his dwelling with animal figures and strange mathematical formulae and on a peculiar island which has appeared out of nowhere in the Pacific Ocean horrific plants suck out all his learning from his brain.

Professor Shonku is at the height of his ingenuity and daring in this collection and thrills and surprises await us around every bend as we follow him on his astonishing adventures.
(It looks fun)

 The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett (I've heard a lot about it; Willa Cather claimed it was one of the best books ever written. Guess I should read it)

Libertarians on the Prairie: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and the Making of the Little House Books by Christine Woodside (I LOVED the Little House Books as a girl. I still own my collection and they are absolutely destroyed. Spines broken, covers torn off, pages falling out. I will never dispose of them. Grandchildren will have to be given shiny new boxed sets.)

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren (This is a reread for me. I picked it up at a library sale because I remember it was an interesting memoir)

The Karavans series by Jennifer Roberson (The entire hardcover trilogy was on sale at my library and I wasn't going to pass it up. I loves Roberson's Lady of the Forest and Lady of Sherwood, and her Tiger and Del series, so this was a no-brainer. No idea what it's about. Let's check Goodreads:

Audrun and her husband Davyd, along with the others of the land of Sancorra, have been left homeless because of the brutal Hecari. Consulting diviners, they learn that their newest child must be born in the peaceful province of Atalanda. They must now travel close to the sinister woodlands of Alisanos, where darkness awaits. Joining a karavan for safety, the family moves ever closer to the dangerous, mystical forest. And, as they are all about to discover, Alisanos is moving ever closer to them
(This is the synopsis for book 1, Karavans. Sounds interesting. I'll let you know how it is)   

    Speaking of Goodreads, according to the 2020 Goodreads Reading Challenge, I am 6 books ahead of schedule, having read 56 out of 150 so far. Take a look, and set your own goal:  https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/19430067

    I have a confession to make: I've already read Lady Chatterley's Lover. I read it yesterday. I see why it was considered so shocking for the time it was written. Today? Not so much, especially thanks to Anne Rice's erotica and the 50 Shades series that I have not read and have zero interest in reading. I found Lawrence to be easy to read, but the story itself was really dull. Oh well. I can now say I have read one of the most scandalous books written.)

    All right, this post has gone on forever and blogger has managed to delete it twice on me (thank goodness for the autosave feature) I will sign off for now as I have reading to do, a book list to make, and literary agents to harass. Thanks for checking in, and feel free to leave any thoughts or comments below. See you soon!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ellie@Home 2020 Summer Reading List

   Good Evening and Happy Memorial Day! This post is far later than I planned thanks to technical difficulties (sob, sob) but here it is, better late than never! The earlier version of this post was wry, witty, and weird, and I don’t recall any of it now on my THIRD attempt. So without further ado (or headaches) I’m going to dive in. I have 34 books for this summer’s list. Because I can’t order from my library, I scoured my shelves for books that I haven’t read or have not finished. I managed to come up with 28. I grabbed one of Josh’s books, and two of Liam’s, then on a whim treated myself to a copy of Caleb Carr’s The Alienist and Angel of Darkness for my Kindle. Then, just when I thought I had enough (plenty!) Henry Roi from HellBound Books kindly sent me a review copy of The Horror Writer: A Study of Craft and Identity in the Horror Genre compiled and edited by Joe Mynhardt. This is at the top of my reading list, partly because it sounds really interesting and informative, a
Read more

Beauty for Your September Morning...

Image
To the Light of September By W. S. Merwin When you are already here you appear to be only a name that tells of you whether you are present or not and for now it seems as though you are still summer still the high familiar endless summer yet with a glint of bronze in the chill mornings and the late yellow petals of the mullein fluttering on the stalks that lean over their broken shadows across the cracked ground but they all know that you have come the seed heads of the sage the whispering birds with nowhere to hide you to keep you for later you who fly with them you who are neither before nor after you who arrive with blue plums that have fallen through the night perfect in the dew
Read more

Carrying On

Image
I hope this finds you and your loved ones well. My family has been fine during this stressful time, anxiety a little high but nothing debilitating, and certainly nothing we haven't been able to work through. Still, each day is an exercise in uncertainty, wondering if we are doing enough to keep ourselves and others safe, wondering if our luck will change, and what we will do if that does happen. We recently learned that our boy will not be going back to school next month (we weren't going to send him anyway), and now my husband and I are trying to figure out how we are going to oversee our son's virtual schooling while both of us are working full time. My husband has said that is the main topic of canversation in his workplace, as many of his coworkers are parents to school-age children and both parents are working. It is less of a conversation at my workplace; not so many of us have school-age children, though a handful have school-age grandchildren. Because I work
Read more