It’s Monday, What Are You Reading? Is hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date, a great place to meet up and share your reading plans for the week. I love finding new blogs and new books – so a link-up that helps me do both? Sign me up!

Well, it’s another rainy Monday here in Houston. Hopefully it’ll clear out before it’s time to drive home! Luckily, the weather was perfect for the weekend – making for great driving weather to visit the family! During the drive, I read Viet Thanh Nguyen’s latest collection of short stories, The Refugees. An affecting collection, his work explores the far-reaching affects of the Vietnam war as his characters struggle to accept the changes in their lives. While creating a new future, in new country, they’ll always carry the war with them in their memories. I also finished reading The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping by Aharon Appelfeld, an amazing story based on the writer’s own experience as a young Holocaust refugee immigrating to Israel. Written in a dream like state, the main character struggles to define himself as a man, bearing down on what it means to be a refugee, the language exchanged and the people left behind. It’s a novel I haven’t stopped thinking about, and likely never will.

Unfortunately, I finally broke my on-going record and finally had my first DNF for the year… well, actually two: Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente and Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum. They’re beautifully written, but the audiobooks just weren’t for me. I’ll definitely be trying them again in print… someday. Instead, I spent my Valentine’s Day listening to Caraval by Stephanie Garber! Between the romance and the mystery, and the AMAZING Scarlet, who’s modesty equals her smarts, it all adds up to an amazing listening experience. Best. Audio. Book. Ever!

Right now, I’m in the middle of Blood of the Dawn by Claudia Salazar Jimenez, a poignantly written account of the Peruvian conflict during the 1980s as experienced by three very different women, a guerrilla, a photojournalist, and an indigenous woman living in the highlands. Intense and hard-hitting, it’s one of the most difficult reads I’ve experienced in while, even at 120 pages. From there, I’m not sure what I’ll read next. I have a few library books to get through, but I’m so tempted to throw them all aside to jump into my new copy of We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter!

What are you reading?