An Open Book – June Edition

Thanks to Carolyn Astfalk and CatholicMom.com for hosting!

Holy cow, I haven’t posted here since last month’s version of An Open Book! I had no idea how much I’d been slacking lately. Last month passed in a blur with exams, essays, and portfolios, and I’ve been pouring ever spare second since into finishing up revisions on This Dread Road and updating the covers for all of The Bennett Series books. (Don’t worry, I’ll post on that soon!)

I have been getting a lot of reading done, though. It might seem a bit odd to spend time reading when there’s so much writing to be done, but I consider it research. I’m constantly finding new ways to improve, and what better way than to study what others in my genre are doing?

 

 

As always, I have a couple of irons in the fire. From my Netgalley list (which is about as conquerable as a hydra right now, to be honest), I’m reading Dear Thing by Julie Cohen. Ben and Claire have struggled for years to conceive a baby. After yet another failed embryonic transfer, Claire decides she’s done with treatment, but Ben’s not ready to give up so easily. When his best friend Romily finds out, she makes what seems like a reasonable offer: she will carry their child for them. Well, Ben’s child. Claire’s not able to produce a viable egg. Romily’s convinced that being a surrogate will be easy enough–she’s a single mom already, and she doesn’t want any more children. But as the pregnancy progresses, things get a little . . . complicated.

I’m about halfway through this book as of this morning and I’m enjoying it. The writing is superb, the characters are well-developed, and it’s provoking a lot of internal dialogue and debate about medical ethics. I have a strong feeling this will receive a five-star rating from me.

 

On the audiobook front, I’m listening to Cinder by Marissa Meyer. I haven’t finished listening to Harry Potter yet, but I won’t have the credit to download Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows until next week, so here we are! I think The Lunar Chronicles will be my next audio project. I loved reading these books, and I love listening to them too. Rebecca Soler is a fantastic narrator.

 

Up Next

I’m going to spend this month (and the next, and probably the next) slowly whittling away at my entirely too long NetGalley queue, in addition to a few titles I own but haven’t gotten around to reading. What I hope to read in June:

Dreaming of Antigone by Robin Bridges
Undecided by Julianna Keyes
Lucky Me by Saba Kapur
Don’t Tell, Don’t Tell, Don’t Tell by Liane Shaw
A Fierce and Subtle Poison by Samantha Mabry
Practical Applications for Multiverse Theory by Noa Gavin and Nick Scott
A Thousand Salt Kisses by Josie Demuth
Anything You Want by Geoff Herbach
Whisper to Me by Nick Lake
The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi
Summer of Sloane by Erin L. Schneider
The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson
Lady Susan by Jane Austen
Seize the Flame by Lynda Cox
The Martian by Andy Weir

Fifteen books seems like a tall order, but I managed to read 8 last month without even really trying, so hopefully I’ll get through this bunch!

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Would you like to participate in An Open Book and share what are you reading? 

The rules are simple:

1. Include a link back to My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com somewhere in your post.(http://carolynastfalk.com/category/my-scribblers-heart-blog/ and http://catholicmom.com/tag/open-book) Better yet, link to the week’s post.
2. Link up your post.
3. Use the hashtag #OpenBook on social media.
4. Visit some of the other bloggers’ sites and see what they are reading. Let’s build a community and expand our reading horizons.