Kym and I were discussing the other day that things are feeling a little slow in the blog world. Not a lot of posts right now and stuff like that. I even said the sentence I dread most: I have nothing to blog about tomorrow.

:::shudder:::

And then I thought, wait. When I have nothing to talk about what can I always talk about? Books. Right now in particular I can talk about books I have been reading for Summer Book Bingo. Because progress.

The first book I read was for the Free Square and that was Small Mercies by Eddie Joyce. My goodreads review:

I absolutely loved this book. The setting was so well detailed and described that I felt like I could taste the baked ziti and meatballs and chianti. Each character was human and flawed and real – like people I actually know. The title is reflected throughout the book in the small mercies that we recognize when not everything goes as badly as it could. This is the type of book that I want to hand to my friends and say: READ THIS. Highly recommended.

Book #2 was a Book by an author of a different gender and that was World Gone By by Dennis Lehane. Again, my goodreads review:

This was quite good but I was disappointed when I realized, when I was already half through it, that it’s the 3rd in a series. I won’t go back and read the first two since I think I already know too much about what happened to enjoy them, but knowing this explains why I was sometimes confused about the plot and characters in this one. It stands alone but I’m sure I’d have been more invested in it if I had read the first two. I enjoy Dennis Lehane’s writing very much, his style is gritty and his subjects always make me think.

Book #3 was On a topic currently in the news and that was A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Here’s that good ole goodreads review:

What can the human spirit endure? How much hurt and war and poverty and restriction can someone overcome? A lot, if you believe the message delivered in this book. I learned about Afghanistan history and more than I wanted to know about the horrible treatment of women under Taliban rule. The thing that sticks with me, though, is that grace and hope endure, that love can save us, and that good is stronger than evil. Highly recommended.

I also finished (finally, I’d been waiting for it forfeckinever) The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman. My goodreads review:

I found this book to be compelling and beautifully written. The descriptions of living in a lighthouse, the tragedies that can lead someone to make a terrible mistake, the love that exists between a man and a woman, a parent and a child, and the power of the ability to forgive, made it a book I couldn’t put down until I finished it. As I was reading I kept trying to figure out how it would end – I knew the ending had to be satisfying since so many of my friends said they loved the book – but I couldn’t have predicted it. It left me in tears, of course, but in a completely acceptable way. Highly recommended.

I can’t figure out a square that could count for so it’s just a book I’ve finished. I shouldn’t have any issues making at least a bingo or two so I’m not really worried about that and the book was so wonderful and I’d been waiting so long that I wouldn’t have wanted to wait until the end of the summer anyway.

Okay, onward.

I am currently reading (well, listening) to Mink River by Brian Doyle and I’m going to use the square that says With a Mythological Creature on the Cover. I realize that a crow, which is what is on the cover of this book, isn’t technically a mythological creature. However, in this particular book and in consideration of this particular crow, mythological is definitely a word I would use. Plus, it’s my bingo card and it’s my rules.

I am also currently reading Doc by Mary Doria Russell and that will be for the Western Square. Pretty straight up and self-explanatory there.

I have plans for the other squares, including To Kill A Mockingbird for the banned book square, A Tale of Two Cities for the book I have pretended to have read square, Double Fudge Brownie Murder for the cozy mystery square and Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography for the biography/memoir square.

For someone who didn’t have anything to say today I guess I managed to say a lot.

Related posts:

Summer Book Bingo Success Summer Book Bingo Update Summer Book Bingo Summer Book Bingo