It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. As she says, it’s “a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!”

Aside from getting some reviews up, I was able to post a Shelves Are Groaning post in a day! A new record for me, as they usually take several days, but it wasn’t too long a list of books to share.

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I READ:

The Bay of Foxes by Sheila Kohler
Love and Other Perishable Items by Laura Buzo
Slammed by Colleen Hoover
Short Soup by Coleen Kwan
Raising Boys in a New Kind of World by Michael Reist

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I REVIEWED:

The Man Plan by Elise K Ackers
Die For Me by Amy Plum
The Age of Hope by David Bergen
Taken by Kelli Maine

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CURRENTLY READING:

The Painted Girls
by Cathy Marie Buchanan

This historical fiction novel counts towards both the Canadian Book Challenge and the Around the World in 12 Books Challenge, as it’s by a Canadian author and is set in Paris. It takes place in the years from 1878 to 1895 and is about two sisters, Antoinette and Marie, who along with their younger – and pretty – sister Charlotte learn to dance ballet at the Opera. Antoinette was kicked out a while back and now earns coins doing background roles, while Marie and Charlotte are just starting lessons. Their mother is a laundress who drinks absinthe and their father, who used to be a tailor, is dead. Marie becomes one of many young girls modelling for Degas, the painter famous for his ballet scenes, while Antionette becomes involved with a young man the blurb describes as “dangerous”. So far, I’m really enjoying it. Here’s a quote from the page I’m at:

Turns out, Monsieur Degas is not so bad, maybe a little peculiar, but he would not hurt a flea. Oh, he is grumpy, more so with Sabine [his housekeeper] than anyone else. He hollers when he cannot find a brush, when he cannot find a clean rag, and then hollers again when he finds his pastels all lined up, back in their box with all the crumbling ends gone.

Today he is happy. I know it the minute I walk into his workshop and see three of his canvases turned around instead of facing the wall. It means that at this moment he is thinking less harshly of his work, also that I have something new to look at while posing hour upon hour. [p.77]

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WHAT’S NEXT:

Definitely reading 419 by Will Ferguson next, as it’s for a book club that’s meeting on Friday night.