This weekly meme is hosted by Sam at Taking on the World of Words and all you need to do to participate is answer the following three questions.

What are you currently reading?

I just started Ducks, Newburyport yesterday so I don’t have a lot to say about it. I read the first one page section since it had an obvious ending point. I’m not quite sure how to tackle this book since it is a long stream of consciousness style but I plan on reading a little bit everyday until I finish.

I also started The Burning Girls yesterday and I’m about 80 pages in. This is the kind of mystery that I love with its amazingly creepy atmosphere. I’m excited to keep reading and I can’t wait to see where this story goes.

Reputation is an ARC that I have from Netgalley that just came out yesterday. I’m trying to be better about reading my Netgalley books so I picked up the audiobook and I’m already almost done with it. It doesn’t read like the typical historical romance but instead it feels like the author tried to modernize a historical romance. The story is fun but I still haven’t quite decided if I like what the author did or not. Since I’m pretty much done with it I’m going to try to get a review out tomorrow for it.

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev is a book that I picked up because I want to read as many of the nominees of the International Women’s Prize as I can and this was at the top of my list. I’m listening to the audiobook which I highly recommend since it is a full cast. The story is completely immersive and comes across more as a podcast than a book. I’ve put this down until I finish Reputation but I’m a quarter of the way through. The first part is all back story of Opal and Nev and then we have been getting to know how they met and the early days of their band. This book is set in the 1970’s and we are building up to a devastating event, what led up to it and what happened after. Honestly, this book is about so much more than that but it’s better to just go into not knowing much.

What have you recently finished?

I went to the bookstore the last week of March and while I was there I picked up Nine Lives. And, like I did with his previous novel, Eight Perfect Murders, I immediately started reading it when I got home. I never typically read books when I buy them but there is something about his synopsis that get to me. Nine Lives is a retelling of And Then They Were None by Agatha Christie but with a twist that I didn’t see coming. Once I figured out that this book was a retelling I was a little bored but I really enjoy seeing mysteries unfold so I still gave it four stars. Also, I say I was bored, but I read this book in a day, so maybe instead of boring I should stay stale.

Sweet Home Cowboy by Maisey Yates, Nicole Helm, Caitlin Crews and Jackie Ashenden

The Wrong Victim is the third book in the Quinn & Costa series. This one focused more on the personal side of the group of FBI agents (and a detective) that are solving the case but it was still an interesting and compelling case. I gave it four stars and my blog tour review will be up at the end of the month.

I was reading Touching Spirit Bear along with my oldest son who is reading it in school. I’ve mentioned before that I understand why this book is taught in schools since it has a great message about anger and how to deal with it. The plot is a bit outlandish but overall it was a decent read. 4 stars.

My new favorite YA book is The Extraordinaries. I love everything about this book and I’m not someone that enjoys superhero movies. This was fantastic and I throughly enjoyed the world and the characters that Klune created. I laughed out loud so many times during this book and I couldn’t stop smiling at all the cute moments. It also deals with some important topics but in a way that was relatable and easy to read. I have a review copy of the second book and I really want to get to it soon but I also don’t want to rush it. The third book in the series comes out in July so I’ll definitely be reading it within the next few months.

I finally finished House of Sky and Breath! And I really didn’t enjoy the pacing of this book. It is all over the place and things were just happening all of the time. And because of that, we lost some of the great character work that was in House of Earth and Blood. But I also still really love all the characters that were from the first book and I will never stop. I gave this book four stars instead of the two or three that it probably deserved because of how obsessed with the characters I am. It is funny to talk about a book being rushed when it was 800 pages but Maas needed things to happen to get to the ending that she wanted so they just kept happening left and right. The last fifty or sixty pages were so intense and emotional and I was honestly shocked at everything that happened. While I might not have loved how we got there, I am now dying for the third book in the series to see what is going to happen to my beloved characters and I really hope we don’t have to wait too long for it.

What do you think you’ll read next?

What story would Eve have told about picking the apple? Why is Pandora blamed for opening the box? And what about the fate of Cassandra who was blessed with knowing the future but cursed so that no one believed her? What if women had been the storytellers?

Elizabeth Lesser believes that if women’s voices had been equally heard and respected throughout history, humankind would have followed different hero myths and guiding stories—stories that value caretaking, champion compassion, and elevate communication over vengeance and violence. 

Cassandra Speaks is about the stories we tell and how those stories become the culture. It’s about the stories we still blindly cling to, and the ones that cling to us: the origin tales, the guiding myths, the religious parables, the literature and films and fairy tales passed down through the centuries about women and men, power and war, sex and love, and the values we live by. Stories written mostly by men with lessons and laws for all of humanity. We have outgrown so many of them, and still they endure. This book is about what happens when women are the storytellers too—when we speak from our authentic voices, when we flex our values, when we become protagonists in the tales we tell about what it means to be human.

Lesser has walked two main paths in her life—the spiritual path and the feminist one—paths that sometimes cross but sometimes feel at cross-purposes. Cassandra Speaks is her extraordinary merging of the two. The bestselling author of Broken Open and Marrow, Lesser is a beloved spiritual writer, as well as a leading feminist thinker. In this book she gives equal voice to the cool water of her meditative self and the fire of her feminist self. With her trademark gifts of both humor and insight, she offers a vision that transcends the either/or ideologies on both sides of the gender debate.

Brilliantly structured into three distinct parts, Part One explores how history is carried forward through the stories a culture tells and values, and what we can do to balance the scales. Part Two looks at women and power and expands what it means to be courageous, daring, and strong. And Part Three offers “A Toolbox for Inner Strength.” Lesser argues that change in the culture starts with inner change, and that no one—woman or man—is immune to the corrupting influence of power. She provides inner tools to help us be both strong-willed and kind-hearted.

Cassandra Speaks is a beautifully balanced synthesis of storytelling, memoir, and cultural observation. Women, men and all people will find themselves in the pages of this book, and will come away strengthened, opened, and ready to work together to create a better world for all people.
better world for all.

~Cassandra