Current Reads and a Travel Update

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Hey everyone, welcome back to my channel. This is Heidi from My Reading Life and I'm here today to do a little currently reading video with a little bit of travel vlog footage thrown in for good measure. So, it has been another week since I've posted and the reason for that was I was traveling again. This spring has just been it's been incredible but also crazy in terms of the amount of traveling I've been doing.

[00:00:25]So, last weekend my husband and I traveled up to Halifax, Nova Scotia which is about a 6-hour drive, 5 or 6 5 to 6-hour drive from where we live here in Maine and we had a long weekend over there and it was the first time either one of us had been to Halifax. I had been to Nova Scotia previously once before to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia but never to Halifax and my husband had never been to Nova Scotia at all. So, Nova Scotia is in Eastern Canada as a province in Eastern Canada and it is really really lovely over there.

[00:01:00]My daughter had given us two nights two nights stay in a hotel on the waterfront in Halifax. So, we just had a fabulous time and after I talk about what books I'm currently reading, I will put a bunch of clips at the end of this for those of you who would like to see what we got up to on that little mini vacation. It was really really fabulous and we definitely want to go back preferably when it's a little bit warmer.

[00:01:24]It was a nice weekend. We we lucked out and got good weather but it's still so early that you know, it's not really it's just barely edging into spring and it was it was quite cold at times with the wind blowing. So, yeah, definitely want to go back up there and explore a little more in the area.

[00:01:44]So, I am reading all of the things. So, I am currently reading six books and five of them are buddy reads and one of them is for the BookTube prize.

[00:01:54]>> [laughter] >> And I am not making a whole lot of progress in the month of April so far.

[00:02:00]So, it is the 16th of April today.

[00:02:02]I've only completed two books so far this month. One was a BookTube prize book um the Yiyun Li memoir Things in Nature Merely Grow. I read I listened to that one on audiobook, finished that and then a reread of Sense and Sensibility. So, [laughter] those are the two things that I finished so far and then I'm currently reading this book that's left over from March. This is Tombland by C.J. Sansom.

[00:02:26]This is a historical mystery set in the time like right after the death of King Henry VIII. Our main character main character is Matthew Shardlake who's a lawyer and I am buddy reading this with Doris.

[00:02:38]This is the last book in the Matthew Shardlake series and it is extremely long book. I am down to the last section of the book but it has been you know, a slow-paced buddy read of this one. Doris and I are both reading multiple things and so we're just slowly making our way through this.

[00:02:58]So, that's the first thing. The next thing is another big chunky buddy read and that is this one. I'm not reading all of this. This is the trilogy bound up into one book. This is the the Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks and we're Doris and Kim from Middle of the Book Mark and I are currently working on book one in this trilogy and I am enjoying it although I will say especially the first few chapters of this are just basically fan fiction for Lord of the Rings and so that was a little bit weird and disconcerting. Although I've sort of gotten used to the fact that there's a lot of homage to homage to Lord of the Rings and I'm enjoying I am enjoying it and there are other influences that I'm noting in the story that I don't know if this book influenced those other pop culture things that I'm thinking of or if those things referenced or influenced Terry Brooks because I don't exactly know the timing. Like there was a scene that played out in this story that very much reminded me of a scene in one of the Dark Tower books and I'm thinking Stephen I think I read somewhere that Stephen King was a fan of this series when he was a young man. So, I'm thinking this influenced maybe Stephen King. There was also a scene that reminded me very much of Indiana Jones and so I think also Indiana Jones came after this was published cuz the first one was published in the 19 like 1977.

[00:04:31]So, what is the story, Heidi? It's fantasy. The Sword of Shannara is the first book in a long-running series.

[00:04:39]This is just the first three books that are bound up together. They were first published in the 1970s and there's like been I don't even know how many are in the like extended universe now so far but you're basically you're following two brothers who learn that all is not what they see what it seems in one of their backgrounds and they they are tasked with going to find this sword and they have traveling companions and so it's a quest novel and you know, lots of adventure and elves and dwarves and all that sort of thing and yeah, very much fun time, very much classic epic fantasy type stuff. So, I am about where am I at in this book so far? I am I think about yeah, 165 pages into that one. I have started a buddy read with Shawn Breeze Books. This is She Came from Mariupol by Natascha Wodin.

[00:05:32]This is non-fiction that we're reading buddy reading for people April. So, this is a story Natascha Wodin her life and her parents' lives. So, this is um basically about this woman who was born in um she was born to parents who were brought to Germany as forced laborers during World War II. And so, after the war she is sort of raised knowing that she is um you know, not considered German and also like not really like sort of an outsider. And so, she doesn't really know much about her parents or or like where they came from their ancestry or anything like that and so she's sort of in a not in a very targeted way but she sort of falls into figuring out where her her parents came from and then their backgrounds and it is fascinating. It is so fascinating.

[00:06:32]It's got lovely nature writing in it.

[00:06:35]Like she connects with this man who is like this wizard at like doing genealogical research and he helps her like figure out all of these people who are were her family like her relations and they all have these super interesting backstories. And yeah, Mariupol Mariupol is a a town in on the Sea of Az is it Azov?

[00:06:58]Azov, is that right? how you say that word? I'm not sure but it's like at the top of the Black Sea. So, like coastal Ukraine and a lot of the citizenry from that area were like swept up and purged by the Nazis during like in the process of World War II. So, yeah, really interesting place, really interesting person, like really lovely writing style. Like this is just hitting all the buttons so far. We've read the first 50 pages and it is a reread for Shawn but first time reading it for me. So, that's fun.

[00:07:34]And then a buddy read with Joe Smith.

[00:07:37]This is Little Luck by Claudia Piñeiro translated by Frances Riddle. So, this is a story of a woman who we don't really know what's in her background but it's clearly something traumatic has happened to her in the background and she has been living in Boston for 20 years or so. She's some kind of she's in education some kind of teacher. And she gets sent back to her home country of Argentina for work purposes and as she goes back there she has to face what she left behind basically.

[00:08:13]And you don't really know you're learning more about the character in sort of dribs and drabs as the story goes on. It's very interesting framing device that is used. I don't want to spoil anything about it so I'm not going to go into detail here but I am really enjoying it. It is quite page-turnery and I find it interesting. I read uh Claudia Piñeiro's other book that's really popular Elena Knows. Really loved that book. That was one of my top reads the year I read it. And that was about Elena the main character who has Parkinson's disease and she's like trying to find out information regarding her daughter's death in that story. And so, she Elena was a kind of a character who you had a lot of empathy for but she wasn't particularly like likable even even so. And I'm finding the main character whose name is Mary to be similarly um described. Like I have a lot of empathy for what she's going through but I'm also like I don't really like you and I'm not really sure why.

[00:09:18]And like she she makes questionable choices and you're like why why would you make these choices? So, super interesting character you know, lots of moral conundrums and like a very interesting framing of the story. So, yeah, very much enjoying this one and so glad that Joe and I are buddy reading that one together.

[00:09:39]And then my last buddy read is a romance novel that I'm buddy reading with Doris and Katie my two romance buddy readers and that is a problematic summer romance by Ali Hazelwood.

[00:09:51]I've read lots of Ali Hazelwood before but haven't picked one up by her in several years Um, this one follows, uh, sort of a, um, age gap romance, uh, young woman who is like early 20s, um, and a older man who is her brother's best friend. Um, he's in his, I think, late 30s, um, and they, you know, have attraction for each other, but he is not going to allow that to happen because she is too young for him. So, you can imagine what's probably going to happen between the two of them, but it takes place at a destination wedding in Italy. So, fun fun setting, fun friend group, fun dialogue, just fun fun times. So, that's it for my buddy reads, and then I am currently reading for the Book Two prize, um, Margaret Atwood's memoir, Book of Lives, and I am like halfway through this. I'm at 300 pages, and I think it's like 600 pages long, uh, maybe even a little bit more than 600 pages long. Um, so it No, it's about 600 pages long. So, I am trying my hardest to get through this one so that I can pick up my next, uh, my next Book Two prize, uh, book because I had five, um, that I needed to read for this round, and I've only I only have completed one so far, and I was really hopeful to read at least, um, at least three of the ones that I needed to read, uh, in the month of April, and it's already halfway through April. So, you can see how that's going. Um, so, but I don't have any more travel planned immediately, so that's good. Hopefully, I have a long weekend coming up as well.

[00:11:28]Um, this weekend, uh, coming up, we have the Monday off for Patriot's Day in Maine.

[00:11:33]So, that's always pleasing when you have >> [laughter] >> have a long weekend. So, that's where I am with my reads right now. I figured I'd catch you up since I haven't, um, really spoken about my current reads in a long time, and I hope you enjoy this footage of the travels that we had up in Halifax, Nova Scotia last weekend. Hope you're all doing well, finding some great books to read. I'll talk to you later.

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