Snowy Sunday Sound-off

Merriam Webster: 
 Sound off: to voice one's opinions freely with force;
Synonyms: pipe up, shoot, sound off, speak out, spout (off), talk up 
Related Words:  bawl, bay, bellow, call, cry, holler, roar, shout, sing (out), thunder, vociferate, yell; articulate, enunciate

Welcome to Sunday Sound-Off, a regular weekly posting about my reading life, my other than reading life, and life in general in Maine. I also encourage you to drop a comment sounding off about your week, your gripes, your reading life, etc.

Wow...we are still hunkered down enjoying the beauty of mother nature. As of late Saturday, we still have power, we have plenty of food and firewood and we have auxiliary heat/cooking with propane gas, so we're spending a lovely weekend cut off from the world, sitting in front of the fire, cat-lapped and reading.

I spent a very productive book week getting caught up on reviews. Later this week you'll see reviews for a great 2012 Book ("Where'd You Go Bernadette"), and a couple of older (pre 2012)series by Rose Connors and William Kent Krueger I recently re/discovered. I also wrote and saved for later, reviews for books with upcoming pub dates in March and April. The publishers have requested that we hold reviews until we're closer to the pub date.

It's hard to believe that Ash Wednesday is this week. I usually try to focus my reading during Lent on at least one more spiritual book than my normal diet of cozies, mysteries, fiction and bios. This year I'm going the history route.  Two years ago I discovered Diarmaid MacCullough's chunkster Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years.  I downloaded a sample on my Nook, really liked it, but just felt like I didn't have the time to devote to the 1138 pages!  Then audible had a sale, I had some extra credits, so I bought the audio but at 46 hours and 35 minutes, I didn't want to start it until I had some serious listening time to devote.  Now Amazon has made the e-book available in Whisper-Sync with the audible version.  So, although I detest the Kindle's lack of page numbering (my mind doesn't work in "locations"), I think I'm going to spring for the full e-book and work my way through at least the 1st thousand years.  Before I commit to that next $18.99, I'm trying out the e-book as a library download.  I listened to and read along the Introduction - the first 48 pages - and it's really well done, easy to understand but not dumbed down, thoroughly fascinating, and as far from a proselytizing religious tome as one can get. It's serious history and I'm looking forward to this one.


At the same time, I really want to make a dent in another fascinating history book I purchased for our Nooks last year: In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire by Tom Holland.  I started this one last fall, and also got through the introduction (part I), but put it aside waiting for a period when I have more time to digest it.  I'm going to take some time to read at least another 170 pages to take me through part II.  This one has only 547 pages so I can probably finish it by summer.

I'm going to try to put a separate widget in my sidebar featuring what I call "on-going" reads-- books I don't want to finish in one swoop because they need time to be digested but if I don't keep at them, they'll languish forever.  Stephen King's 11-22-63 is one such, as well as 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.

And finally this week, I'm lazing through two ARC from Net Galley, both set in Maine:  Reunion at Red Paint Bay by George Harrar and Out of Nowhere - a strong and deep YA book by Maria Padian that is grabbing this adult.  I'm enjoying both and should have some reviews coming up in the next couple weeks.  Red Paint Bay published last week, and Out of Nowhere comes out next week.