Sunday Mews: Goodbye August & Hello September

I am linking up to the Sunday Post hosted by the wonderful Kim of Caffeinated Book Reviewer, where participants recap our week, talk about what we are reading, share any new books that have come our way, and whatever else we want to talk about. I am also linking to Stacking the Shelves hosted by the great Team Tynga's Reviews and Marlene of Reading Reality a meme in which participants share what new books came their way recently. I am linking up to Nicole of Feed Your Addiction's Monthly Wrap-Up Post, where any book bloggers who write monthly wrap-up posts can link up and visit other bloggers to see what they have been reading.  

Welcome to September! The days are growing shorter, children are back in school, and while the leaves on the trees outside have not quite started to turn colors, they will be in another month or so. We seem to have finally left the triple digits behind. Hopefully it stays that way. I hope your September has gotten off to a great start.

New to My Shelves in August: 

Recent e-book purchases:

Alpha & Omega (#0.5) by Patricia Briggs 

Pirate Nemesis (Telepathic Space Pirates #1) by Carysa Locke

Hummus and Homicide (Kebab Kitchen Mystery #1) by Tina Kashian

Mechanica (Mechanica #1) by Betsy Cornwell

The Shadow of Death (Sister Agatha and Father Selwyn Mystery #1) by Jane Willan

What I Am Reading: Today I am spending a little more time with Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, but I plan to begin Lydia Kang's The Impossible Girl shortly.

What I Am Watching: We finally cut the cord. It is something my husband and I had been talking about for years, but never quite got around to it. I will miss The Walking Dead, but I can live without it. At the moment I have been catching up on Supernatural and am nearly done with Season 13.  It is a really good season! The all female cast episode was a favorite. My family and I have been watching Girl Meets World, which is a cute show. I confess I never really watched Boy Meets World, but I may go back and do that if I get the chance.

For movie night this weekend, we are watching Hairspray (2007). Mouse has a renewed interest in the film after performing to some of the songs during her musical theater class. Now that she is older, she is better able to understand the social issues raised in the movie, which lead to a good discussion after.

Off the Blog: August left me a bit breathless. And not just because of the heat and smoke. A broken air conditioner did not help. Our feisty kitten was spayed--and proved to be quite the little demon kitty at the vet (she even lost a tooth fighting the staff! We won't even talk about how she playfully chased after, jumped at, and startled the internet service technician today). The Wizard of Oz musical was amazing. The children did a great job, and, even more importantly, had fun. We had family visiting from out of town to see the show. We barely had time to recover before school started up again for Mouse, and things have definitely picked up at work as well. We ended the month with The Nutcracker auditions, which went well. Now the fundraising and rehearsals begin . . .

I got very little reading done in August. There were a couple of weeks there I barely cracked open a book. I am grateful for the cooler temperatures and look forward to seeing what September will bring.

Nina has no fear. 

Nina wore poor Gracie out

Here is what I finished reading in August:

• Samhain Secrets by Jennifer David Hesse
• The King Slayer (The Witch Hunter #2) by Virginia Boecker
• Smile (Smile #1) by Raina Telgemeier

This Past August In Reading Mews:

• Weekly Mews: July in Review & My August TBR Poll
• Wishing to Read Wednesday: Old & New (#10)
• Bookish Thoughts: Darkest Heart by Juliette Cross
• Wishing to Read Wednesday: The Old and the New (#11)
• Where Is Your Bookmark? (The King Slayer)
• Bookish Thoughts: The Girl From the Savoy by Hazel Gaynor
• Top Ten Tuesday: Back to School
• Waiting to Read Wednesday (#12)
• Where Is Your Bookmark? (The Impossible Girl & Goblins)
• Six Degrees of Separation: From Where Am I Now to Jane Steele

Posts That Caught My Attention This Past Month: 
(there were many, but I am terrible about saving links--these are the few I did save to share)

• Greg from Book Haven shares Some Thoughts on Book Blogging
• Boston Bibliophile's Marie asks Is the Book Always Better)
• The Bookish Libra's Suzanne's review of Mirage by Somaiya Daud
• Princess Weekes article on How I Learned to Let Go of Internalized Sexism and Embrace the Romance Novel

Tell me what you have been up to! What are you reading, listening to and watching? How was your August? Do you have anything planned for this coming month?

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Thank you for helping me decide what book from my TBR collection I should read next:

My TBR List is a meme hosted by the awesome Michelle at Because Reading. It’s a fun way to choose a book from your TBR pile to read. The 1st Sunday of every month, I will list 3 books I am considering reading and take a poll as to which you think I should read. I will read the winner that month, and my review will follow (unfortunately, not likely in the same month, but eventually--that's all I can promise). 

One of my all time favorite novels is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, and I find myself in the mood to read one of the (loose) re-tellings I have languishing on my shelves. Which one do you think I should read?

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

“Reader, I murdered him.”

A sensitive orphan, Jane Steele suffers first at the hands of her spiteful aunt and predatory cousin, then at a grim school where she fights for her very life until escaping to London, leaving the corpses of her tormentors behind her. After years of hiding from the law while penning macabre “last confessions” of the recently hanged, Jane thrills at discovering an advertisement. Her aunt has died and her childhood home has a new master: Mr. Charles Thornfield, who seeks a governess.

Burning to know whether she is in fact the rightful heir, Jane takes the position incognito, and learns that Highgate House is full of marvelously strange new residents—the fascinating but caustic Mr. Thornfield, an army doctor returned from the Sikh Wars, and the gracious Sikh butler Mr. Sardar Singh, whose history with Mr. Thornfield appears far deeper and darker than they pretend. As Jane catches ominous glimpses of the pair’s violent history and falls in love with the gruffly tragic Mr. Thornfield, she faces a terrible dilemma: can she possess him—body, soul, and secrets—without revealing her own murderous past?

A satirical romance about identity, guilt, goodness, and the nature of lies, by a writer who Matthew Pearl calls “superstar-caliber” and whose previous works Gillian Flynn declared “spectacular,” Jane Steele is a brilliant and deeply absorbing book inspired by Charlotte Brontë’s classic Jane Eyre. [Goodreads Summary]

Brightly Burning by Alexa Donne

Seventeen-year-old Stella Ainsley wants just one thing: to go somewhere—anywhere—else. Her home is a floundering spaceship that offers few prospects, having been orbiting an ice-encased Earth for two hundred years. When a private ship hires her as a governess, Stella jumps at the chance. The captain of the Rochester, nineteen-year-old Hugo Fairfax, is notorious throughout the fleet for being a moody recluse and a drunk. But with Stella he’s kind.

But the Rochester harbors secrets: Stella is certain someone is trying to kill Hugo, and the more she discovers, the more questions she has about his role in a conspiracy threatening the fleet. [Goodreads Summary]

Mr. Rochester by Sarah Shoemaker

"Reader, she married me."

For one hundred seventy years, Edward Fairfax Rochester has stood as one of literature's most romantic, most complex, and most mysterious heroes. Sometimes haughty, sometimes tender-professing his love for Jane Eyre in one breath and denying it in the next-Mr. Rochester has for generations mesmerized, beguiled, and, yes, baffled fans of Charlotte Brontë's masterpiece. But his own story has never been told.

Now, out of Sarah Shoemaker's rich and vibrant imagination, springs Edward: a vulnerable, brilliant, complicated man whom we first meet as a motherless, lonely little boy roaming the corridors and stable yards of Thornfield Hall. On the morning of Edward's eighth birthday, his father issues a decree: He is to be sent away to get an education, exiled from Thornfield and all he ever loved. As the determined young Edward begins his journey across England, making friends and enemies along the way, a series of eccentric mentors teach him more than he might have wished about the ways of the men-and women-who will someday be his peers.

But much as he longs to be accepted-and to return to the home where he was born-his father has made clear that Thornfield is reserved for his older brother, Rowland, and that Edward's inheritance lies instead on the warm, languid shores of faraway Jamaica. That island, however, holds secrets of its own, and not long after his arrival, Edward finds himself entangled in morally dubious business dealings and a passionate, whirlwind love affair with the town's ravishing heiress, Antoinetta Bertha Mason.

Eventually, after a devastating betrayal, Edward must return to England with his increasingly unstable wife to take over as master of Thornfield. And it is there, on a twilight ride, that he meets the stubborn, plain, young governess who will teach him how to love again.

It is impossible not to watch enthralled as this tender-hearted child grows into the tormented hero Brontë immortalized-and as Jane surprises them both by stealing his heart. Mr. Rochester is a great, sweeping, classic coming-of-age story, and a stirring tale of adventure, romance, and deceit. Faithful in every particular to Brontë's original yet full of unexpected twists and riveting behind-the-scenes drama, this novel will completely, deliciously, and forever change how we read and remember Jane Eyre. [Goodreads Summary]

Thank you for voting! I hope you all have a wonderful September and Happy Reading!

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