The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by
Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer.
It’s a chance to share news.
A post to recap the past week on your blog,
showcase books and things we have received.
Share news about what is coming up
on your blog for the week ahead.
See rules here: Sunday Post Meme

*** 

This post also counts for
 

Mailbox Monday,
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?
and WWW Wednesdays

I’m baaaaack! Last time I wrote for The Sunday Post was in January 2016!
One of my 2020 resolution is to post short reviews of books I have just finished (and keeping long review formats only for books received for review).
Plus, I’d like to start a type of book journaling, we’ll see how this goes.
So I think the Sunday Post will work well for that – though I may not be able to link it until late afternoon, because of Church commitments.

Click on book covers to access synopsis or review

JUST READ

Crenshaw,
by Katherine Applegate
Feiwel and Friends
9/22/2015
Childrens Books
245 pages
Goodreads

I really like Applegate’s style: it’s very simple, though at the same time beautiful and very real. She always tackles important themes. In this one, we meet young Jackson.
He understands much more than his parents tell him, and he knows they are major financial problems. Because of that, they will probably have to go back and live in their van, as they did some time ago. When things get too tough, Jackson suddenly meet Crenshaw, a very special giant cat.
These are difficult issues, homelessness, how kids cope with adversity, poverty, and hunger, for instance by living in their head with imaginary friends. But Applegate, as usual, does it in a delicate way, with lots of tenderness and wisdom.
Highly recommended.

CURRENTLY READING

Perfect Little Children
Received for review through Edelweiss
Release date February 4
A woman goes to have a peek at the place where her former friends are now leaving. She sees their kids, but they have not aged, whereas they should be 12 years older.

Theological Territories: A David Bentley Hart Digest
Received for review through Edelweiss
Release date April 15
It is so unusual to find Orthodox theology on Edelweiss or Netgalley. Plus I have read an enjoyed another book by this author, so of course I had to request it.

Audio book

The Book of Tea
Am listening for The Classics Club
“That a nation should construct one of its most resonant national ceremonies round a cup of tea will surely strike a chord of sympathy with at least some readers of this review. To many foreigners, nothing is so quintessentially Japanese as the tea ceremony–more properly, “the way of tea”–with its austerity, its extravagantly minimalist stylization, and its concentration of extreme subtleties of meaning into the simplest of actions.”

BOOK UP NEXT

BOOK JOURNALING

1/1
📚 I managed to finish my first book of the year, Crenshaw (see above) = 1/110
📚 I also started listening (35 minutes) to the Book of Genesis. Indeed it recently dawned on me (finally!), that I could listen to the whole Bible, a nice way to revisit it. So I plan to do this. I found a good recording of it on YouTube – I chose The King James, which is close to the Orthodox translation.
📚 I also figured out a way of reading 2 ebooks at the same time, without having to switch back and forth between 2 books on my kindle. Actually, I didn’t realize I could read books sent by Edelweiss Plus on the kindle app!! So I’m now reading a theological book on my kindle, and a mystery on my phone (see titles above), through the kindle app. Works great!
📚 Perfect Little Children: What’s going on? I have some ideas, but I may be wrong. In the mean time, I enjoy the flow of the writing and the suspense. Sophie Hannah is masterful.

1/2
📚 Perfect Little Children: It’s getting really weird, and now there are many more issues about the reliability of the narrator. I enjoy how her teenagers, especially her daughter, is trying to help explain what’s going on.
📚 Theological Territories: I have read the introduction, that basically presents each of the 26 essays. Some of them may totally be over my had, as they refer to authors I have not read.

1/3
📚 Listened to the book of Genesis for about 15 minutes. I really enjoy the experience, it’s like rediscovering the text.

1/4
📚 Theological Territories: Read the 1st chapter on Rowan Williams’s The Tragic Imagination. I don’t really agree, as I will explain in my review, for instance with this statement: “As aesthetic experiences go, tragedy is probably among the least intellectual.”

RECENTLY ON WORDS AND PEACE/FRANCE BOOK TOURS

• 12/30: December recap
• 12/31: January titles
• 1/1: My top reads for 2019
• 1/2: My 2019 stats
• 1/3: My fun with 2019 book titles
• 1/4: 7 degrees of separation, from Daisy Jones to Japan
• Book of the month giveaway

LAST 2 BOOKS ADDED TO MY GOODREADS TBR

  

Everything is Illuminated
Recommended by my niece
“With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man — also named Jonathan Safran Foer — sets out to find the woman who may or may not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war; an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior; and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past.”
A reviewer wrote: “a very complicated narrative structure”. I am intrigued!

The Salt Path
Recommended by Booker Talk
“Just days after Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years, is terminally ill, their home and livelihood is taken away. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset, via Devon and Cornwall.”

BOOK RECEIVED THIS PAST WEEK

Sido
Downloaded for free
Classic recommended by my niece.
Colette write about her Mum and her childhood

COMING UP ON WORDS AND PEACE

   

January 6-12: Bout of Books 27
It starts on Monday, but I’ll probably won’t be able to read much the first two days!

1/6: Book review: Lady Clementine
1/7: Top Ten Tuesday, if I have time, about Most anticipated 2020 titles
1/8: Book review: Dreamland
1/9: My top 12 favorites of the decade!
1/10: Book review: Figure Drawing for Kids

January-March: Japanese Literature Challenge 13
You are going to read a lot about Japanese Literature here for three months!!

HOW WAS YOUR WEEK?