WWW Wednesdays 5/6/20

WWW Wednesday is run by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently, I'm reading



and listening to

The last book I read was


and the last book that I listened to was


I think my next book will be
 

Have you read any of these books?

Book Beginnings/The Friday 56 - 5/1/2020

Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice and Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader. The idea is to share a sentence or so from the first page and the 56th page of the book you are currently reading!  Also, I will now also include a brief synopsis.




The dramatic first-person account of life inside an ultra-fundamentalist American religious sect, and one woman’s courageous flight to freedom with her eight children.

When she was eighteen years old, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with a total stranger: a man thirty-two years her senior. Merril Jessop already had three wives. But arranged plural marriages were an integral part of Carolyn’s heritage: She was born into and raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the radical offshoot of the Mormon Church that had settled in small communities along the Arizona-Utah border. Over the next fifteen years, Carolyn had eight children and withstood her husband’s psychological abuse and the watchful eyes of his other wives who were locked in a constant battle for supremacy.

Carolyn’s every move was dictated by her husband’s whims. He decided where she lived and how her children would be treated. He controlled the money she earned as a school teacher. He chose when they had sex; Carolyn could only refuse—at her peril. For in the FLDS, a wife’s compliance with her husband determined how much status both she and her children held in the family. Carolyn was miserable for years and wanted out, but she knew that if she tried to leave and got caught, her children would be taken away from her. No woman in the country had ever escaped from the FLDS and managed to get her children out, too. But in 2003, Carolyn chose freedom over fear and fled her home with her eight children. She had $20 to her name.

Escape exposes a world tantamount to a prison camp, created by religious fanatics who, in the name of God, deprive their followers the right to make choices, force women to be totally subservient to men, and brainwash children in church-run schools. Against this background, Carolyn Jessop’s flight takes on an extraordinary, inspiring power. Not only did she manage a daring escape from a brutal environment, she became the first woman ever granted full custody of her children in a contested suit involving the FLDS. And in 2006, her reports to the Utah attorney general on church abuses formed a crucial part of the case that led to the arrest of their notorious leader, Warren Jeffs.

Book Beginnings

share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

Preface

The Choice Was Freedom or Fear

Escape.  The moment had come.  I had been watching and waiting for months, The time was right. I had to act fast and without fear. I could not afford to fail.  Nine lives were at stake: those of my eight children and my own.

My thoughts: This beginning paragraph grabs you from the start and makes you want to read more. Since 2011, when I obtained my first Kindle, I have read a book of some sort on FLDS or a similar polygamist Mormon group each year.  At this time, I have been wondering how this COVID-19 has been affecting them.


THE FRIDAY 56

RULES:

*Grab a book, any book.

*Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader.
If you have to improvise, that is okay.

*Find a snippet, short and sweet.

Page 56

By the end of the first week, I realized that for the first time I was embarrassed to be a woman.

I'm excited to continue on delving into this book.  I just started this book last night and merely read the Preface, so I haven't come upon this passage yet.

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? a place to meet up and share what you have been, and are about to be reading over the week. It’s a great post to organise yourself. It’s an opportunity to visit and comment and er… add to your groaning TBR pile! So welcome in everyone. This meme started on J Kaye’s blog and then was hosted by Sheila from Book Journey. Sheila then passed it on to Kathryn here at The Book Date.

Hope everyone is reading and staying busy, as well as sane.  I'm trying to!  Our governor just extended the stay-at-home order to May30th and school has been cancelled for the rest of the school year or in actuality, it will be e-learning, which I have doubts  about how effective it is. especially for elementary or middle school students.

 

What I read last week:

Wannabe Farms is for upper primary graders or lower middle graders. It is really a cute book written in prose.  I was listening to a Map of Days, the fourth book in the Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children.  Now that they are in the U.S., I am enjoying the series again.

What I am reading now:

Another middle grade book.  This one take place in Russia and is about the Chernobyl disaster in April 1986

I started listening to An Author's Odyssey by Chris Colfer, which is the 5th book in The Land of Stories series.  It is narrated by the author and I decided I'd rather read it in the near future.

Up next:

Tomorrow, I think I will start listening to Roll of Thunder. Hear My Cry.  I never read this as a kid, not sure why

Book Beginnings/The Friday 56 4/24/20

Friday 56 is hoste
d at Freda's Voice and Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader. The idea is to share a sentence or so from the first page and the 56th page of the book you are currently reading!  Also, I will now also include a brief synopsis.




Like Ruta Sepetys for middle grade, Anne Blankman pens a poignant and timeless story of friendship that twines together moments in underexplored history.

On a spring morning, neighbors Valentina Kaplan and Oksana Savchenko wake up to an angry red sky. A reactor at the nuclear power plant where their fathers work--Chernobyl--has exploded. Before they know it, the two girls, who've always been enemies, find themselves on a train bound for Leningrad to stay with Valentina's estranged grandmother, Rita Grigorievna. In their new lives in Leningrad, they begin to learn what it means to trust another person. Oksana must face the lies her parents told her all her life. Valentina must keep her grandmother's secret, one that could put all their lives in danger. And both of them discover something they've wished for: a best friend. But how far would you go to save your best friend's life? Would you risk your own?

Told in alternating perspectives among three girls--Valentina and Oksana in 1986 and Rifka in 1941--this story shows that hatred, intolerance, and oppression are no match for the power of true friendship.

Book Beginnings

share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

Pripyat, Ukraine, Soviet Union
April 1986

Valentina

Valentina wondered where the birds went. They weren't waiting on the sill when she went to the sitting room window that morning.

A pretty good first line for a book that takes place after the disaster that we know as Chernobyl happened.  But as the book begins, it is an ordinary morning, or so the citizens of the area believe.  It has me wanting to read on.


THE FRIDAY 56

RULES:

*Grab a book, any book.

*Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader.
If you have to improvise, that is okay.

*Find a snippet, short and sweet.

Page 56

Chapter 9

Oksana

After breakfast Oksana's mother turned on the radio to listen to the news.  

The explosion of the nuclear reactor has already occurred, so will this be main topic of discussion as we Americans would expect it would have here in the U.S,  Remember this is the U.S.S.R during the years of the Cold War.

Book Beginning/The Friday 56 4/17/20

Friday 56 is hoste
d at Freda's Voice and Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader. The idea is to share a sentence or so from the first page and the 56th page of the book you are currently reading!  Also, I will now also include a brief synopsis.



When Lila Moore inherits her grandfather's house, she finds herself in a small Midwestern town where margarine is never an acceptable substitution for butter, a coveted family recipe can serve as currency, and the friend who will take your darkest secrets to the grave will still never give you the secret to her prize-winning begonias.

Lila is charmed by the people of Auburn, from the blue-eyed lawyer with the southern drawl to the little old lady who unceasingly tries to set Lila up with her grandson. But when strange things begin to happen, Lila realizes some of her new friends are guarding a secret like it's a precious family heirloom. It's a dangerous secret, and it has come back to haunt them. Lila is caught in the middle, and her life may depend on uncovering it. But even if she can, can she stay in Auburn when not everyone is what they seem, and even the house wants her gone?

Book Beginnings

share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

Chapter 1

Lila watched them standing alongside the casket, five women in their Sunday best, forming a wall you couldn't drive a Dodge Ram through.

THE FRIDAY 56

RULES:

*Grab a book, any book.

*Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader.
If you have to improvise, that is okay.

*Find a snippet, short and sweet.

56% 

Thr humor drained from his face and he sounded more genuine than he had all weekend

March Reading Update

Number of Books Read:  7 - 






@AnnieRainsBooks #StartingOverAtBlueberryCreek @rjpalacio @jeaninecummins

What I Am or May Be Reading In April

Sine this stay t home order due to the Coronavirus is my best opportunity for reviving this blog,  I'll start with this post.

Currently, I am reading Sunrise at Half Moon Bay by Robyn Carr



I am also listening to My Name is Mahtob by Mahtob Mahmoody, which I hope to finish this weekend.



Usually. I do not have  set reading plan.  But I do have several books that I have planned.  Next I'll be reading Not Like My Mother, which has been on my Kindle for nearly 7 years.





My next audiobook will be The Library of Lost and Found



Other books that I'm hoping to get to this month include:





Since we are on a stay at home order, I would hope I can get to these.