What Should I read next part 2

I think I was supposed to report back here last Saturday and tell you what book you chose for me to read this month--and it is....

Yay!  Another book to add to my reading this month.

I say that only slightly sarcastically, because I chose to do this, right?

This is what I'm reading right now:

The Lilac Girls

The Crossing Places 

Glamorous Powers  (It's my Slow and Steady Read--10 minuets a day is all)

Those above are all for my own enjoyment.

Then my book clubs in November?

The CCB (coffee, conversations and books) Club--The Bookman's Tale

Totally Lit- Don't Skip Out on Me

Lit Wits- The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Reading Between the Wines Romance--Stuffed

And I'm trying to listen to The Gown on Audible. But it's not going well.  I need a long car trip or something.  Or I need to clean my house. THAT'S IT!  Tomorrow I 'll be cleaning out the 'grandchildren's room' -- which is another term for one of my extra bedrooms where everything gets tossed!

Anyway, that is what I'm reading this month.

In September, for our Totally Lit book club, one of our members, Cathy,  had just gotten back from the Basque (Spain) Country  (we have a huge Basque population in Winnemucca) and she wanted to make  us an authentic meal. And she choose the book Guernica

An extraordinary epic of love, family and war set in the Basque town of Guernica before, during, and after its destruction by the German Luftwaffe during the Spanish Civil War.

 She paired up with another of our book club friends, Keeli,  who had been to the Basque country over the summer too.

They ran into each other at a café in Spain.  (how funny is that?!)

Because?--the Basque community is a small community after all!

I mean, you leave Winnemucca, NV, fly to Spain, go to Guernica, meet someone from Winnemucca, NV who is in  your book club!

It happens.

But the book club story?

Cathy was doing the cooking, but it was going to be at Keeli's house.

Keeli's daughter was taking her solo pilot license test the same day.  It was scheduled for the morning in a town 2 hours away--Keeli  went with her daughter.  

It began to rain (even tho the weatherman said it wouldn't) , so they waited and waited and waited.

They did not plan on the rain--- but they were stuck.  What could you do if your instructor says we'll fly as soon as the rain lets up?

Mid-afternoon, I got a call from Keeli explaining that she wasn't in town and that her daughter had just taken off in the plane for her test, and she would be late for book club,  but her house was still available and could I go help Cathy out with the cooking, etc.

I said, sure, does Cathy know?

Keeli said,  No and  I'm not telling her.  She'll freak out.  I'll tell her when she arrives and can't get in my house--she'll call me and I'll give her the code so she can get in.

So...April and myself arrived to help Cathy prepare a Basque meal in a kitchen none of us were familiar with.

It was tons of fun!

(actually Keeli has THE BEST Knives in the world--I thought of stealing them--and her kitchen is the easiest to cook it and entertain around)

Keeli arrived in the middle of book club and then we all gave her a bad time about not having to be home to host a book club.

It can be done!

Cathy made paella and croquettes and Spanish torta (2 or 3 different kinds) and salad and good cheese from the Basque country and tinned anchovies and tuna packed in oil and bread and wine and so much more!

So yummy!

We had such a good time that evening.  

The food was great!

Here are some pictures 

 (there are a lot, as you know I always overshare)

It really was a BOOK CLUB, but I don't see one book in sight!

You had to pour it this way--Cathy said!

What should I read next

The last time I participated in this monthly challenge was in March of 2018.  I gave up on Blogging for awhile tho, so can I use that as an excuse?

Here goes...

My To-Be-Read List!

(this will also help with the #unread shelf project on Instagram!)

A monthly meme hosted by Michelle at  Because Reading is Better than Real Life.

Michelle says:

We sit for hours looking through our TBR lists wondering when we will ever get to that one book we were dying to read when we added it 3 months ago or maybe even a year. As our piles get bigger we realize there is just not enough time in a day to read all the books that we wanted to read. So I had a great idea, pick 3 books from my TBR Pile and have you all pick which one I should read next. This is a monthly MEME and you are more than welcome to join me. 

There are of course some rules, but if you want to join in go here to check them all out.

It's that time of month again friends---time to help me choose what to read next!

Here are 3 of my books chosen randomly off my bookshelf (okay, maybe not so randomly--I want to read ALL of them, and I want to read them right now!)

!

You know how it goes--I'll choose 3 books from my TBR list and you guys vote on which one I should read next and then I'll read it and report on it at the end of the month.

a word of warning...I've never been able, or taken the time really, to insert a poll in the body of this blog post, so...SORRY, but you are just going to have to vote with a comment.

I'll let you know next week, which one wins!

Which one should I read?

From Goodreads:

It is the summer of 1950–and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath.

For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”

From Goodreads:

From the author of the world-wide bestseller, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, a new novel about learning how to listen and how to feel; and about second chances and choosing to be brave despite the odds. Because in the end, music can save us all ...

1988. Frank owns a music shop. It is jam-packed with records of every speed, size and genre. Classical, jazz, punk – as long as it’s vinyl he sells it. Day after day Frank finds his customers the music they need.

Then into his life walks Ilse Brauchmann.

Ilse asks Frank to teach her about music. His instinct is to turn and run. And yet he is drawn to this strangely still, mysterious woman with her pea-green coat and her eyes as black as vinyl. But Ilse is not what she seems. And Frank has old wounds that threaten to re-open and a past he will never leave behind ...

From Goodreads:

After a failed apprenticeship, working her way up to head housekeeper of a posh London hotel is more than Sara Smythe ever thought she’d make of herself. But when a chance encounter with Theodore Camden, one of the architects of the grand New York apartment house The Dakota, leads to a job offer, her world is suddenly awash in possibility—no mean feat for a servant in 1884. The opportunity to move to America, where a person can rise above one’s station. The opportunity to be the female manager of The Dakota, which promises to be the greatest apartment house in the world. And the opportunity to see more of Theo, who understands Sara like no one else...and is living in The Dakota with his wife and three young children.

Thanks!

I'll be back next Saturday.

vote in the comments please.

I did not give up--just forgot

my Disclaimer:

I did not really forget to write this post 2 Saturdays ago--I was in Arizona and then I had grandkids and then the next Saturday I was in Las Vegas, so....this is what you get.  I have one week to read the book, because my opinion is due next Saturday, the last Saturday of the month.  Thank goodness for long months!

 I love joining in a monthly meme hosted by Michelle at  Because Reading is Better than Real Life, in which we put up 3 books on the first Saturday of the month, and then you readers, vote on which one I should read, I read and then I write a blog post on the last Saturday of the month.

Thanks for voting from my TBR list

This is so much fun!

This time the winner was:

The Women in the Castle

by Jessica Shattuck

from Goodreads:

Three women, haunted by the past and the secrets they hold
Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel from the author of the New York Times Notable Book The Hazards of Good Breeding.

Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany s defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband s ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a resister murdered in the failed July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband s brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows.

First Marianne rescues six-year-old Martin, the son of her dearest childhood friend, from a Nazi reeducation home. Together, they make their way across the smoldering wreckage of their homeland to Berlin, where Martin s mother, the beautiful and naïve Benita, has fallen into the hands of occupying Red Army soldiers. Then she locates Ania, another resister s wife, and her two boys, now refugees languishing in one of the many camps that house the millions displaced by the war.

As Marianne assembles this makeshift family from the ruins of her husband s resistance movement, she is certain their shared pain and circumstances will hold them together. But she quickly discovers that the black-and-white, highly principled world of her privileged past has become infinitely more complicated, filled with secrets and dark passions that threaten to tear them apart. Eventually, all three women must come to terms with the choices that have defined their lives before, during, and after the war each with their own unique share of challenges.

Written with the devastating emotional power of The Nightingale, Sarah s Key, and The Light Between Oceans, Jessica Shattuck s evocative and utterly enthralling novel offers a fresh perspective on one of the most tumultuous periods in history. Combining piercing social insight and vivid historical atmosphere, The Women in the Castle is a dramatic yet nuanced portrait of war and its repercussions that explores what it means to survive, love, and, ultimately, to forgive in the wake of unimaginable hardship.

I'll be back in 2 weeks to let you know how it is!

Thanks.