It’s Monday! What are you reading?

Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When junior witch Magrat Garlick inherits a fairy godmother’s wand, her senior witches Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax decide to accompany her on her first assignment to make sure she does it right.  They set out on a road trip to the city of Genua to stop a girl from marrying a prince.

We listened to this audiobook on our recent trip to Toronto.  I figured a book about a road trip while on a road trip was a good idea.  I’ve read it before and I’m sneakily getting my husband addicted to Terry Pratchett too.  This was his first time with one of Terry Pratchett’s adult books and he loved it.  I figured it was a good idea to start him with the witches because Nanny and Granny are some of my literary role models.  I want to be like them when I grow up and I figured he should know what he is in for.

Altered by Gennifer Albin

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Emerald Green by Kerstin Gier

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

These two books illustrate my major pet peeve about YA series.  I read Crewel which is the prequel to Altered.  I loved it.  But, it was a year ago.  I don’t remember the details.  Altered starts right from the moment Crewel ends with an argument.  I don’t remember who is who in the argument or why they are so angry with each other.  It really annoys me when an author refuses to do a little recap for the audience.

Emerald Green did a good job with this.  This is the third book in a series.  I think I skipped the second but it was ok because in the first few chapters there were the occasional clauses that gave just a bit of a reminder about how the characters related to each other.  I could follow the story just fine.

The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean by Philip Caputo

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Philip Caputo and his wife and their two dogs set out from Key West with a rented Airstream trailer on their way to Deadhorse Alaska to see what holds such a diverse country together.

This is also a great road trip story.

A Wilder Rose by Susan Wittig Albert

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Laura Ingalls Wilder is known as the author of the Little House on the Prairie series about her pioneer childhood.  What isn’t known is how much her journalist and author daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, helped with the books.  This book is based on the diaries and letters that Rose wrote to imagine how the books actually came about. 

I didn’t know much about Rose.  She had a very interesting life before financial difficulties during the Great Depression required her to move back to her parents’ farm in Missouri.  She wrote fiction for magazines and ghost wrote several novels.  When her mother decided to write down her family stories, Rose called in her contacts to get them published.  Her mother was a good story teller but didn’t know how to write books so Rose decided to help her as a ghost writer.  They never imagined how popular the little books were going to be.