Weekend reads and many transitions...

The last few weeks have been busy, emotional, and full of transition.  I celebrated my sixth wedding anniversary last weekend, which also marked four weeks until our Little Reader is due.  As we scramble, badly, to finish our baby prep, I learned my youngest cat, Grace, had kidney failure and would need to be euthanized.

Last night, she passed away on her own, in my arms, comforted by our remaining elderly cat who slept with us until Grace's last moments. It's been very hard this year to have lost two cats, both of whom I've had for more than a decade, ahead of Little Reader's arrival -- to lose loved ones just before a new loved one comes feels, well, cold.

I haven't felt much like reading -- clearly a theme of my pregnancy, shamefully -- but have three current reads that are a welcome distraction from the stress and heartbreak. This weekend, I'm finishing up Sherry Jones' The Sharp Hook of Love, which is a decadent and engrossing novel of Heloise and Abelard. I'm quite smitten. I've just started Judith Starkston's Hand of Fire, a historical novel that features a heroine just given just a few lines in the Iliad. It's fabulous. And finally, I plan to begin Lois Leveen's Juliet's Nurse, a historical novel about the nursemaid to Shakespeare's Juliet.

What are you reading this weekend?

Comments

  1. bermudaonionOctober 17, 2014 at 10:22 AM

    What an emotional time for you. I'm sending hugs your way.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sherry JonesOctober 17, 2014 at 1:20 PM

    Poor kitties! Poor Audra! I'm so sorry, but excited about your Little Reader and also SO happy that THE SHARP HOOK OF LOVE can distract you! I so want to read HAND OF FIRE and JULIET'S NURSE, as well. I'm looking forward to your review of my book, Audra! If any of your readers want to read the prologue and first chapter, they can download them from my website: http://authorsherryjones.com/swag. In the next day or two I'll be putting up an ebook of Heloise and Abelard's early love letters, as well, as a special gift to my newsletter subscribers.

    ReplyDelete
  3. rhapsodyinbooksOctober 17, 2014 at 1:35 PM

    So sorry for your loss!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Soft Fuzzy SweaterOctober 17, 2014 at 7:11 PM

    I feel your pain...I just had 'let go' of my Tanuki at age 15. I keep looking for her. Even my dog, who had a kind of peaceful coexistence with her, looks at the bed where she napped. The loss is palpable. I rermember as a shy kitten who hid under my tv cabinet

    ReplyDelete
  5. LisaOctober 17, 2014 at 8:48 PM

    I'm so sorry for your loss. They leave such a big hole in our hearts and lives. I'm glad you've found some comfort reading.

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousOctober 18, 2014 at 12:13 AM

    also finishing The Sharp Hook of Love, and loving it!

    ReplyDelete
  7. phastingsOctober 18, 2014 at 3:02 PM

    I too am sorry for your loss.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Jennifer HartlingOctober 20, 2014 at 10:31 AM

    Big hugs to you, Audra. I'm so sorry :( We lost a cat months ago. It seemed that a lot of people didn't get why I was so sad and why I grieved so hard. (Heck, I thought of him last night and had a little crying session) I just want you to know that there are cat people out there who get exactly what you are going through. I'll be thinking of you :D

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Weekend Reads, or readathon-ing it...

Image
Busy weekends upon us, including this one. School open houses, playdates, and birthday parties. Spending time outside, enjoying New England fall when it's not an icy, rainy deluge.

But Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon is tomorrow, and as always, I've signed up in hopes of getting some good reading in. I've a string of books more than half read, and I'd love to finish them during the readathon.

I'm hoping I'll finish up Tarot for Troubled Times, which has given me so much to chew over and freshened up my tarot practice; as well as the absolutely emotionally gripping This Is How You Lose the Time War, which I'm both listening to and reading. It's deeply romantic and wonderfully fantastic, and the language is so good that after I hear the amazing audiobook readers do a chapter or two, I go back and read them to savor. And to my surprise, I'm going to be reading Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Iconic Poet. I&#…
Read more

Chilling Effecty by Valerie Valdes

Image
Before she could shoot, a familiar voice boomed from the loudspeakers. "Attend me, worthless muck-eaters. I have come to your inferior outpost to apprehend the human captain Eva the Innocent!"

I erroneously described this as Firefly with a lesbian Mal; but I was only wrong about our main character's sexual identity (pansexual, maybe?). Otherwise, this marvelously fun comedic sci fi takes the best part of shows like Firefly, with a charming crew and a "curmudgeonly" "anti-hero" captain (who is both adorable and heroic), and injects welcome imagination into the ragtag-posse-take-on-enormous-challenges plot line.

Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes
Harper Voyager, 2019
Copy from publisher for blog tour

Captain Eva Innocente loves her ship, La Sirena Negra, and her work: running cargo and passengers around the universe. The book opens with Eva struggling to recapture her most recent order -- a passel of psychic cats -- and so, by page 3, I was literally enam…
Read more

Interview with Susan Higginbotham

Image
I am so excited to share my interview with novelist Susan Higginbotham. Although she might be most well known for her novels set in the UK, she's started exploring 19th-century America in her more recent books, including her newest, The First Lady and the Rebel. It's the gripping story of Abraham Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and her beloved sister Emily, as they find themselves at the opposite ends of the Civil War. My review comes on Thursday but prepare for major squees. I loved this book!

What was the plot of your very first piece of fiction?

Because I've been writing since I was a child, I can't remember, but I can tell you that it likely had something to do with cats. My first attempt at a historical novel, however, was when I was in junior high and started to write a novel about a family of orphans living through the Blitz. (Clearly, given the current vogue for World War II novels, I was way ahead of my time.) It didn't have much plot, as I recall,…
Read more

To Join the Lost by Seth Steinzor

Image
Title:To Join the Lost
Author: Seth Steinzor

Genre: Poetry (Contemporary / Hell / Current Events / Politics / Social Commentary / Satire)
Publisher/Publication Date: Antrim House (5/1/2010)
Source:TLC Book Tours

Rating: Okay, to liked (at moments) and eh (at other moments)
Did I finish?: I did, in about three days!
One-sentence summary: A middle-aged agnostic-Jewish-Buddist American travels to Hell with Dante.
Reading Challenges:Fearless Poetry

Do I like the cover?: Actually, I rather do -- it kind of fits the feel of Steinzor's writing style!

First line: Midway through my life's journey, I found myself/lost in a dark place, a tangle of hanging/vines or cables or branches -- so dark! -- festooning/larger solid looming walls or/trucks or rocks or rubble, and strange stapes/moving through the mist, silent or/howling, scuffling through the uneven dirt or/dropping from the blotchy sky like/thicker clouds, so close sometimes I ducked in/fright so that they never quite touched me.

Did... I ve…
Read more