It's Monday! 07/16/12

Sheila at Book Journey wants to know!

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I'm currently reading The Lower River by Paul Theroux and it is scaring the bejeepers out of me! I'm right in the middle of it and I'm trying really hard not to speed read through it. (I'm kinda dying to know what happens to the protagonist!!)

This is my first time taking part in What Are You Reading? and I'm pretty sure I should also be talking about what I'll be reading throughout the rest of this week. Uh oh, I'm not sure yet! I'll be hitting the library today and I'll update later. Don't hold your breath now. Ha.

Edit~~ I got myself to my home away from home (the library) and picked up 2 books that were waiting for me. This is what I'll be reading this week:

Per Goodreads: A mom in her early fifties, Clover knows she no longer turns heads the way she used to, and she's only really missed when dinner isn't on the table on time. Then Clover wakes up one morning to discover she's invisible--truly invisible. She panics, but when her husband and son sit down to dinner, nothing is amiss. Even though she's been with her husband, Arthur, since college, her condition goes unnoticed. Her friend Gilda immediately observes that Clover is invisible, which relieves Clover immensely--she's not losing her mind after all!--but she is crushed by the realization that neither her husband nor her children ever truly look at her.  She was invisible even before she knew she was invisible.
   Clover discovers that there are other women like her, women of a certain age who seem to have disappeared.  As she uses her invisibility to get to know her family and her town better, Clover leads the way in helping invisible women become recognized and appreciated no matter what their role.  Smart and hilarious, with indomitable female characters,Calling Invisible Women will appeal to anyone who has ever felt invisible.

Hilary Mantels Bring Up the Bodies is making a big splash right now, and I'm dying to read it. But I cannot until I've read the prequel Wolf Hall.

Per Goodreads: "Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning," says Thomas More, "and when you come back that night he'll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks' tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money." 

England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the Pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey's clerk, and later his successor. Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. 

Ruthless in pursuit of his own interests, he is as ambitious in his wider politics as he is for himself. His reforming agenda is carried out in the grip of a self-interested parliament and a king who fluctuates between romantic passions and murderous rages. 

From one of our finest living writers, Wolf Hall is that very rare thing: a truly great English novel, one that explores the intersection of individual psychology and wider politics. With a vast array of characters, and richly overflowing with incident, it peels back history to show us Tudor England as a half-made society, moulding itself with great passion and suffering and courage.