Video: What I'm Reading

I thought I would try a video blog for this week's It' Monday! What are you reading? I give an overview of what will be appearing on my blog this week, but I also listed below the video the books I'm reading in case you don't want to watch the video.

What I'm Reading:

Still on my list from last week is Tribulation Point: Sometimes Just Making It Through Another Day Isn't Always Easy by Ricci Lane, Convergence by J. D. Watts, and The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella

I'm participating in the Once Upon a Time Read-a-thon. I have to work, but hopefully I will get a few of these books off my list. Can I count audio books during a read-a-thon?

The Queen of the Big Time: A Novel by Adriana Trigiani

This heartrending story of forbidden love chronicles the remarkable life of the Castellucas, an Italian-American family, over the course of three generations. In the late 1800s, the residents of a small village in the Bari region of Italy, on the shores of the Adriatic Sea, made a mass migration to the promised land: America. They settled in Roseto, Pennsylvania, and re-created their former lives in their new home -- down to the very last detail of who lived next door to whom. The village's celebration of Our Lady of Mount Carmel -- or "the Big Time," as the occasion is called by the young women who compete to be the pageant's queen -- is the centerpiece of Roseto's old-world tradition.

The industrious Castellucas work the land outside Roseto. Teenage Nella, the middle daughter of five, aspires to a genteel life "in town," far from the rigors of farm life, which have taken a toll on her mother and placed the Castellucas low on the social strata. But Nella's dreams of making her own fortune shift when she meets and falls in love with Renato Lanzara, a worldly, handsome, devil-may-care poet who has a way with words that makes him irresistible. Their friendship ignites into a passionate affair that Nella is certain will lead to marriage. But Nella is not alone in her pursuit: every girl in town seems to want Renato. When he disappears without explanation, Nella is left with a shattered heart. Four years later, Renato's sudden return to Roseto the night before Nella's wedding leaves her and all the townsfolk shaken. For although Renato has chosen a path very different from Nella's, they are fated to live together, in the same town, for the rest of their lives.

An epic of small-town life, The Queen of the Big Time is the story of a determined, passionate woman who, through decades of change, cannot forget her first love. From Goodreads.com

 Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, ROOM is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another. From Goodreads.com