Books . . .

I was going to post this yesterday, but the info about The Shift seemed more important.  :-)

Onward . . .

In the interest of finishing what I start, after Tuesday's post I updated my Goodreads with as much info as I could, and created a list that I'm calling The Unfinished Book List - The UBL for short.  I suppose it's not as bad as The Big List of WIPs was, but I had eight or nine books in some state of partially read.

Much like with my WIPs, this is supremely irritating.  For some of the books on The UBL it's been so long that I'm probably going to have to start over because I'm sure I will have lost the train of thought completely.  I mean, seriously - I need that brain space for other stuff.  Bugger.  :-D  But, as I did last year with my WIPs, at least now I have a list and a plan, and I can - hopefully - plow on through.

My goal is to read one of The UBL books in the evenings and on weekends, while still enjoying the Outlander series on Audible during my daily commute to and from work.  Currently, the Audible book in process is #4 in the Outlander series, Drums of Autumn.  I have been enjoying the series all summer long.  Here's what Amazon says about #4:

"The magnificent saga continues....

It began in Scotland, at an ancient stone circle. There, a doorway, open to a select few, leads into the past—or the grave. Claire Randall survived the extraordinary passage, not once but twice. Her first trip swept her into the arms of Jamie Fraser, an eighteenth-century Scot whose love for her became legend—a tale of tragic passion that ended with her return to the present to bear his child. Her second journey, two decades later, brought them together again in frontier America. But Claire had left someone behind in the twentieth century. Their daughter, Brianna....

Now Brianna has made a disturbing discovery that sends her to the stone circle and a terrifying leap into the unknown. In search of her mother and the father she has never met, she is risking her own future to try to change history...and to save their lives. But as Brianna plunges into an uncharted wilderness, a heartbreaking encounter may strand her forever in the past...or root her in the place she should be, where her heart and soul belong...."

If you have any interest at all in the Outlander series - you must start with the first book:  Outlander.

"Scottish Highlands, 1945. Claire Randall, a former British combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding clans in the year of Our Lord . . . 1743.

Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of a world that threatens her life, and may shatter her heart. Marooned amid danger, passion, and violence, Claire learns her only chance of safety lies in Jamie Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior. What begins in compulsion becomes urgent need, and Claire finds herself torn between two very different men, in two irreconcilable lives."

Audible rocks.  I didn't think I would enjoy listening to a book - I never got in to books on tape back in the day.  But I'm enjoying hearing these.  The only bad thing about Audible thus far, is that I have been known to drift off on the train on the way home from work, and more than once I've lost 15 minutes and had to go back and attempt to find where I lost the story.  There might be a way around that, but I'm still relatively new to the app and I don't know all the ins and outs yet.

I never thought I would like reading a book on an e-reader either, but I do, particularly for travel and evening reading.  It's great for when you want to read before falling asleep - you don't have to have the light on - or, in my case, wear my miner's light :-D (my bedside lamp is not bright enough to read by) - you can read and then just drop off to sleep - and unlike with Audible, where the story continues if you've fallen asleep, when you're reading on a Kindle or Kindle app, you can wake up and find your place again without too much difficulty.  Yay!

So - as mentioned Tuesday, my current finish-it-up book on my Kindle app was Becoming Marta, by Lorea Canales and translated by Gabriel Amor.  Here is what Amazon says about it:

"Thanks to her wealthy and well-connected family, twenty-six-year-old Marta is used to getting whatever she wants. And what she wants is a good time.

That is, until her father’s wife—the woman who raised her—becomes ill. Beautiful young Marta is forced to witness her unfaithful, brutish father abandon her adoptive mother in her final moments. After her father’s swift remarriage, Marta is surprised to discover that she is now the sole heir of her late mother’s sizeable estate. For the first time, she can choose to cut ties and establish her true self, apart from her parents, her social standing, and the complications of a life of excess. From the balmy beaches of Mexico to New York City, Marta searches for clues to her unconventional heritage and seeks to shed her family’s tradition of secrecy and betrayal as she finds her own way."

It sounded good - which is why I selected it as my free Kindle First monthly read back in January.   If you are an Amazon Prime member, one of the benefits is Kindle First, where you can choose a free download of one of the six choices for the month.  There wasn't all that much left of it to read, and I finished it yesterday.

I didn't like it and I gave it one star on Goodreads.  I think it was well-written, and it was somewhat Chekhovian in style, but I didn't enjoy the subject matter, I guess.  Still, it's one down on The UBL, and that makes me all happy  :-)

Next up on The UBL is Already Home, by Aruni Nan Futuronsky.

But first, some music to think about Scotland . . .