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Weekly Check-in

Chris Wolak
What a week this has been! Last weekend we moved out of our old house and are temporarily staying with my mom. We moved into her place, had a day of rest, and took off again for New England in search of a new house. We signed a contract on a new home the same day our old house was set to close. The third time was the charm and it looks like we’re on track to leave the Midwest in late November. Fingers crossed!
My reading life is already getting a bit more on track.
This week I:
  • finished I Sailed with Magellan by Stuart Dybek (really good): collection of interrelated short stories set in Chicago, mainly the south side.
  • gave up on The Troop by Nick Cutter (not my cuppa): horror novel that was just a little too formulaic and cruel/gross for my tastes.
  • read Stained by Cheryl Rainfield (excellent): YA novel about a teenage girl who’s abducted and saves herself in more ways than one.
    Posts coming soon on these three books.
One of the perks of staying at my mom’s house is that she lives a stone’s throw from the public library. Literally. Well, almost. It’s across a big field. If you had a bionic arm you could hit it, but I can see it from her kitchen window.
 
Anyway, here’s my haul:
  • Nevada by Imogene Binnie: Recently saw a few positive reviews of this one and it was on display at the library so it caught my eye.
  • The Ivy League Chronicles: 9 Squares
     by E.K. Prescott: I’m a sucker for lighthouses and one is on the cover. New Haven, Yale, the 1920s, skeleton dug up on the beach…sounds promising.
  • Astray by Emma Donoghue: I’ve wanted to read this one since it came out in 2012 and I’ve checked it out of the library twice before. Hope to read it this time.
  • Blackout by Connie Willis: I read Doomsday a few years ago on the recommendation of a coworker and loved it. Have heard nothing but praise for this one.

I’m also listening to Wilson by A. Scott Berg. I had been reading an ARC and got frustrated with the lack of reading time that I had due to packing and one day while listening to Books on the Nightstand I decided to try out their new sponsor audiobooks.com and selected Wilson as my free book. It’s a great read and a good listen, too. I’m more than half-way through it at this point, just near Wilson’s second election.

The coolest book thing that happened to me this week is that my awesome partner, who stayed behind in New England to handle the house inspection while I headed back to IL to take care of things here, stopped at R.J. Julia and bought me Pat Conroy’s new memoir, The Death of Santini. I adore Pat Conroy and am thrilled that he’s going to be in the Chicago area later this week (Thursday, 7pm) through The Book Stall in Winnetka.

Now I just need to decide which book to read first!

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