Category: Currently Reading

My Week in Books – 11th July 2021

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MyWeekinBooks

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I published my review of Business As Usual by Jane Oliver & Ann Stafford.

Tuesday –  This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Reasons Why I Love Reading. I had no problem coming up with ideas for this one!

Wednesday – WWW Wednesday is the opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to have a good nose around what others are reading. 

Thursday – Courtesy of September Books, I featured a (UK only) giveaway with a chance to win a paperback copy of The Museum Makers by Rachel Morris. Still time to enter…

Friday – I published my review of Those I Have Lost by Sharon Maas as part of the blog tour. 

Saturday – I shared my review of my latest audiobook listen, A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende. 

As always, thanks to everyone who has liked, commented on or shared my blog posts on social media.

New arrivals

The Reading ListThe Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams (eARC, courtesy of Harper Collins via NetGalley)

Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life in the London Borough of Ealing after losing his beloved wife. He shops every Wednesday, goes to Temple, and worries about his granddaughter, Priya, who hides in her room reading while he spends his evenings watching nature documentaries.

Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a list of novels that she’s never heard of before. Intrigued, and a little bored with her slow job at the checkout desk, she impulsively decides to read every book on the list, one after the other. As each story gives up its magic, the books transport Aleisha from the painful realities she’s facing at home.

When Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list…hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too. Slowly, the shared books create a connection between two lonely souls, as fiction helps them escape their grief and everyday troubles and find joy again. 

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Blog Tour/Book Review: For Lord and Land (The Bernicia Chronicles #8) by Matthew Harffy
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Book of Echoes by Rosanna Amaka
  • Top Ten Tuesday
  • WWW Wednesday
  • Book Review: Songbirds by Christy Lefteri
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: Kyiv by Graham Hurley

#WWWWednesday – 7th July 2021

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WWWWednesdays

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

Currently reading

Songbirds by Christy Lefteri (reSongbirdsview copy, courtesy of Manilla Press and Readers First)

Nisha has crossed oceans to give her child a future. By day she cares for Petra’s daughter; at night she mothers her own little girl by the light of a phone.

Nisha’s lover, Yiannis, is a poacher, hunting the tiny songbirds on their way to Africa each winter. His dreams of a new life, and of marrying Nisha, are shattered when she vanishes.

No one cares about the disappearance of a domestic worker, except Petra and Yiannis. As they set out to search for her, they realise how little they know about Nisha. What they uncover will change them all.

For Lord and LandFor Lord & Land (The Bernicia Chronicles #8) by Matthew Harffy (eARC, courtesy of Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

AD 647 Anglo-Saxon Britain. Greed and ambition threaten to tear the north apart. War rages between the two kingdoms of Northumbria. Kin is pitted against kin and friend becomes foe as ambitious kings vie for supremacy.

When Beobrand travels south into East Angeln to rescue a friend, he unwittingly tilts the balance of power in the north, setting in motion events that will lead to a climactic confrontation between Oswiu of Bernicia and Oswine of Deira. While the lord of Ubbanford is entangled in the clash of kings, his most trusted warrior, Cynan, finds himself on his own quest, called to the aid of someone he thought never to see again. Riding into the mountainous region of Rheged, Cynan faces implacable enemies who would do anything to further their own ends. Forced to confront their pasts, and with death and betrayal at every turn, both Beobrand and Cynan have their loyalties tested to breaking point. Who will survive the battle for a united Northumbria, and who will pay the ultimate price for lord and land?

Recently finished

Links from the titles will take you to my review.

This Shining Life by Harriet Kline 

Business As Usual by Jane Oliver & Ann Stafford

Those I Have Lost by Sharon Maas

A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende

What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Book of Echoes PBThe Book of Echoes by Rosanna Amaka (ebook, courtesy of Doubleday and Random Things Tours)  

While giving thanks at a shrine in Africa over two hundred years ago, a young woman tosses her infant son to safety moments before she is hauled away by slavers. After a brutal sea passage, her baby girl is snatched steaming from her loins as she gives birth. Although she doesn’t know it yet, her spirit is destined to roam the earth in search of her lost children.

She will make her way to England where Michael is trying to stay out of trouble as riots spit and boil down the streets of South London, and all the way to a sun-baked village in Nigeria, where a servant girl named Ngozi struggles to escape her low-caste status. As the invisible threads that draw her to these lives are pulled ever tighter, The Book of Echoes asks: how can we overcome the traumas of the past when they are woven, so inextricably, with the present?