All In The Family

Mine is a family of readers (including, at long last, Miss H) from our parents to our siblings to our children. I may be the only book blogger in the bunch, but I'm not the only person who makes reading plans for the year. I thought I'd share what other members of my family will be reading in the next few months.

For all of the years I brought Miss H fiction book after fiction book, disappointed in her inability to focus on the story, I was missing the obvious. Fiction is not for Miss H. She is a girl who wants a book she can relate to and that means it needs to have a connection to something real...a true story she has heard about, a musician she loves. Or, in the case of the book she is reading right now, a comedian who makes her laugh without fail. Right now she is thoroughly enjoying Ellen DeGeneres' latest Seriously, I'm Kidding. Up next, I think is Caitlin Moran's Moranthology, a book of Moran's columns that include a lot of subjects I know Miss H be interested in, including Amy Winehouse. Which brings me to the next book Miss H will buy, Mitch Winehouse's biography about his talented daughter, Amy, My Daughter.

Mini-him will be moving on to the fourth book in George R. R. Martin's Game of Throne series, A Storm of Swords: Steel and Ice.  He's always been a guy who likes to read series; the first Harry Potter book came out when he was eight and he read each of those as quickly as they were released. He's recently reread them. He's also a fan of the classics but, for the time being, they're taking a back seat to his imagination

Mini-him's also working on putting together a sci-fi/fantasy book club at the university. I'm not saying it's the only thing that attracted him to his new girlfriend but it certainly didn't hurt that she's also a fan of sci-fi and fantasy books.

Mini-me is currently reading Mark Z. Danielewski's Only Revolutions. He read Danielewski's House of Leaves last year and thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of that one. When asked what book/s he'd like for Christmas, Only Revolutions is the only one he would tell me to make sure that he got it. Mini-me has always liked to challenge himself when he reads and enjoys books with an edge. On his bookshelves he's got Chuck Palaniuk and Bret Easton Ellis but also Herman Hesse and Edgar Allen Poe.

The Big Guy just finished The Princess Bride. He's been reading up a storm lately, but mostly out of my piles of books as well as books I've gotten for him to review (he's got three guest reviews coming up in the next few weeks) but what he'll read next is a mystery. He is the one person in the family that doesn't like to think ahead about what he'll be reading, preferring to read as the mood strikes him. He pondered reading Les Miserables with me...until I told him how many pages it is.

My parents have both gotten new books for Christmas (and my dad even got a Kindle!) so I'm looking forward to more guest reviews from them in the coming months. My dad is really enjoying Hellhound On His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt For His Assassin by Hampton Sides which we gave him for Christmas thanks to book blogger recommendations. My mom just finished one of Susan Ella Macneal's Maggie Hope books which were kindly sent to me by Stacy of Life In The Thumb and which I passed on to her knowing she'd enjoy them.

Some time ago, I started a feature called "Mama Shepp's Family Recommends." This year I'm hoping to get that started up again soon so I can pass along recommendations from my aunt and uncle in Rhode Island, The Big Guy's brother and his wife, and my siblings. I'm looking forward to hearing more about what they're reading and enjoying. I hope you'll enjoy it as well.