It's Monday! What are You Reading?

It’s Monday! What are you Reading? (#IMWAYR) is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journeys with a kid/YA-lit spin hosted by Kellee at Unleashing Readers and Jen at Teach Mentor Texts.

Past Reads: I did not get nearly as much reading done as I would have liked this week - isn’t that always the case?! I took a mini-reading hiatus because I keep finishing books but not writing about them. I told myself “NO reading” until I wrote the four reviews that piled up. Well, I finished those four reviews, so reading hiatus over...phew! 

The one book I did finish this week - LOVED. If you haven’t already read The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin, do it! Move it right up to the top of your TBR list. It features one of the swooniest (is that word?), swoon-worthy boys of all time - Noah. Oh, Noah… Of course it ended, I needed more, and so The Evolution of Mara Dyer is now tops on my TBR list. I’m already sad that I have to wait until next year to get the conclusion of the trilogy (no idea it was a trilogy going in but am so glad it is because again...Noah).

Current Reads: I changed my reading path a bit this week; I’m not sure why I ever make a prioritized list, because it always ends up changing. Instead of continuing my young adult list, I jumped into an adult nonfiction read: Frozen in Time by Mitchell Zuckoff. Kelly Gallagher (English teacher rockstar) tweeted this title out, likening it to Unbroken, one of the best books I’ve EVER read. I immediately checked my library’s website, the book was available, so here we are. I’m only a few chapters in, but so far so good. It’s a lot of background information upfront but it’s written in an engaging way - I never knew so much about war planes and Greenland. I’m skeptical that this can live up to Unbroken, so we’ll see. Now that the reading hiatus is over, I’m jumping back in.

Here’s the goodreads summary of the book: Two harrowing crashes . . . A vanished rescue plane . . . A desperate fight for life in a frozen, hostile land . . . The quest to solve a seventy-year-old mystery

The author of the smash New York Times bestseller Lost in Shangri-Ladelivers a gripping true story of endurance, bravery, ingenuity, and honor set in the vast Arctic wilderness of World War II and today.

On November 5, 1942, a U.S. cargo plane on a routine flight slammed into the Greenland ice cap. Four days later, a B-17 on the search-and-rescue mission became lost in a blinding storm and also crashed. Miraculously, all nine men on the B-17 survived. The U.S. military launched a second daring rescue operation, but the Grumman Duck amphibious plane sent to find the men flew into a severe storm and vanished.

In this thrilling adventure, Mitchell Zuckoff offers a spellbinding account of these harrowing disasters and the fate of the survivors and their would-be saviors. Frozen in Time places us at the center of a group of valiant airmen fighting to stay alive through 148 days of a brutal Arctic winter by sheltering from subzero temperatures and vicious blizzards in the tail section of the broken B-17 until an expedition headed by famed Arctic explorer Bernt Balchen attempts to bring them to safety.

But that is only part of the story that unfolds in Frozen in Time. In present-day Greenland, Zuckoff joins the U.S. Coast Guard and North South Polar—a company led by the indefatigable dreamer Lou Sapienza, who worked for years to solve the mystery of the Duck’s last flight—on a dangerous expedition to recover the remains of the lost plane’s crew.

Drawing on intensive research and Zuckoff ’s firsthand account of the dramatic 2012 expedition, Frozen in Time is a breathtaking blend of mystery, adventure, heroism, and survival. It is also a poignant reminder of the sacrifices of our military personnel and their families—and a tribute to the important, perilous, and often-overlooked work of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Future Reads: I’m thinking Frozen in Time might take me a bit longer than usual, so I probably won’t even make it to another book this week. If I do, here are my options: The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau, Embrace by Jessica Shirvington The Evolution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin and One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt. Any suggestions as to where I should start?

        

What are you reading? What have you just finished? What are your top recommendations? Leave me a comment as I'm always looking for books to add to my To-Be-Read list!