The Books I'm Reading Now
I'm listening to Surrender, Bono's memoir about inspiration, faith, pain, love, and music; I'm reading Lost in Time, A.G. Riddle's twisty time-travel mind-bender that's also about responsibility and causality; and I'm listening to a stand-alone historical fiction novel that's also a sequel, The Book Woman's Daughter by Kim Michele Richardson.
What are you reading these days, bookworms?
01 Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story by Bono
I prefer listening to my memoirs read by the author, and I'm already hooked by hearing U2's songwriter and lead singer Bono take us through the stumbles, pain, joy, and faith that have inspired his music and shaped his life.
From treasuring friends he's had since childhood (one of whom was the inspiration to the song "Bad"), to exploring "growing up in Ireland in the seventies with my fists up (musically speaking)"; from digging into the difficult relationship with his father to sharing how he attempted to cope with the loss of his mother decades after the fact, Bono's Surrender is beautifully honest, self-deprecating, and fascinating so far.
I love listening to his story in his voice.
02 Lost in Time by A.G. Riddle
You may already know that I love a time-travel book (see my lists of favorites below).
In A.G. Riddle's 450-page dual-timeline story Lost in Time, a device called Absolom has been developed to send dangerous criminals back in time--to the time of dinosaurs, presumably to fight for their survival and never to be heard from again.
When Sam, one of the creators of the system, is framed for the murder of another creator, he finds himself about to be sent back in his own creation as punishment. But his physicist friends are determined to try to get him back to the present again somehow.
If only Sam had had time to do more than give himself a crash course in reading about the Triassic Period (weather, Pangea, dinosaur identification) or to hear his friends' ambitious plan for his return--but he is whisked back in time.
When he arrives, he encounters murderous Absolom survivors, carnivorous dinosaurs, earthquakes, and lava flow--meanwhile he's struggling to make fire and keep the flames going for one full day, please.
If you like books that play with time, you might also like the books on my Greedy Reading Lists Six Riveting Time-Travel Stories to Explore and Six Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories--or you can search this site for other Bossy reviews of books that involve time travel.
03 The Book Woman's Daughter by Kim Michele Richardson
The Book Woman's Daughter is Kim Michele Richardson's stand-alone sequel to The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, a book I listened to as an audiobook and loved.
The Book Woman's Daughter picks up with teenage Honey, Cussy's daughter, as Cussy and her husband are suffering persecution--which leaves Honey on her own.
Richardson writes about strong Kentuckians and their environment, and in The Book Woman's Daughter she delves back into the Pack Horse Library Project of Kentucky as well as rural nurses, moonshiners, fire-spotters, and other mountain folk characters who help or harm Honey as she fights for independence in a time when many don't think a young woman should make her own decisions.
Click here for my review of The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek.