It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Sheila at  Book Journey. For this meme, bloggers post what they finished last week, what they're currently reading, and what they plan to start this week.

Finished this week:

Took me longer than I planned to finish this as "stuff' got in the way. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Just a great read with lots of history mixed in. Any time a book covers off the secrets of the Vatican I am fascinated.The story flips back and forth between a Templar knight's adventures protecting and hiding ancient Christian religious texts and the modern search for the same texts by a terrorist who wants to destroy the texts to undermine the Christian religious beliefs that the Vatican would want all to believe.

We start off in the Vatican and then travel around Turkey in search of the texts.

There's plenty of action, some a little unbelievable, but makes for a lot of fun reading. 

It's one of those books that you'd like to see made into a movie (although of course the book would be better) just so you could see some of the stunts.

Started this week:

AArecap of the story line ca be found in this post. It is moving along quickly and other than a slow start it has picked up. 

Plan to start this week:

From the book jacket:

The Forgotten Waltz is a memory of desire: a recollection of the bewildering speed of attraction, the irreparable slip into longing, that reads with breathtaking immediacy. In Terenure, a pleasant suburb of Dublin, in the winter of 2009, it has snowed. A woman recalls the trail of lust and happenstance that brought her to fall for "the love of her life." As the city outside comes to a halt, she remembers the days of their affair in one hotel room or another: long afternoons made blank by bliss and denial. Now, as the silent streets and the stillness and vertigo of the falling snow make the day luminous and full of possibility, she awaits the arrival on her doorstep of his fragile, twelve-year-old daughter, Evie. InThe Forgotten Waltz, Enright is at the height of her powers. This is Anne Enright's tour de force, a novel of intelligence, passion, and real distinction.

Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of  Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Include the link to your Teaser in the comments.

Here's mine from The Templar Salvation that I started last week and am still reading:
And if not now,  if not during his lifetime or the lifetimes of many of his descendants, there  would come a time when they would be read and studied openly. A time when they would enrich man's understanding of his past.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Sheila at  Book Journey. For this meme, bloggers post what they finished last week, what they're currently reading, and what they plan to start this week.

Finished this week:


Nothing, nada, ziltch, rien, niets. Been busy with life!!


Started last week and slowly getting through it, I am enjoying it but just haven't had the time to finish it.

From the book jacket;
With its iconic title and unmistakable cover, Raymond Khoury's million-copy- selling The Last Templar remains one of the most memorable thriller publications of the last decade. Finally, after four long years, Khoury returns to the world of the Templars with The Templar Salvation, a sequel that's every bit as eye-popping and as gripping as its predecessor. Constantinople, 1203: As the rapacious armies of the Fourth Crusade lay siege to the city, a secretive band of Templars infiltrate the imperial library. Their target: a cache of documents that must not be allowed to fall into the hands of the Doge of Venice. They escape with three heavy chests, filled with explosive secrets that these men will not live long enough to learn. Vatican City, present day: FBI agent Sean Reilly infiltrates the Pope's massive Vatican Secret Archives of the Inquisition. No one but the Pope's trusted secondi get in-but Reilly has earned the Vatican's trust, a trust he has no choice but to violate. His love, Tess Chaykin, has been kidnapped; the key to her freedom lays in this underground tomb, in the form of a document known as the Fondo Templari, a secret history of the infamous Templars... With his trademark blend of incendiary history and edge-of-your-seat suspense, Raymond Khoury's The Templar Salvation marks a triumphant return to the rich territory that launched his bestselling career.


Plan to start this week:
I posted this in last week's Friday Finds.  and then bought it for my e-reader.

From the book jacket:

In a world still uneasy after the financial turmoil of 2008, Justin Cartwright puts a human face on the dishonesties and misdeeds of the bankers who imperiled us. Tubal and Co. is a small, privately owned bank in England. As the company's longtime leader, Sir Harry Tubal, slips into senility, his son Julian takes over the reins-and not all is well. The company's hedge fund now owns innumerable toxic assets, and Julian fears what will happen when their real value is discovered.

Artair Macleod, an actor manager whose ex-wife, Fleur, was all but stolen by Sir Harry, discovers that his company's monthly grant has not been paid by Tubal. Getting no answers from Julian, he goes to the local press, and an eager young reporter begins asking questions. Bit by bit, the reporter discovers that the grant money is in fact a payoff from Fleur, written off by the bank as a charitable donation, and a scandal breaks. Julian's temperament and judgment prove a bad fit for the economic forces of the era, and the family business plunges into chaos as he tries to hide the losses and massage the balance sheet.

A story both cautionary and uncomfortably familiar, Other People's Money is not a polemic but a tale of morality and hubris, with the Tubal family ultimately left searching only for closure. Bold, humane, urbane, full of rich characters, and effortlessly convincing, this is a novel that reminds us who we are and how we got ourselves here. 

Book Beginnings

Book Beginnings on Friday is a meme hosted by Katy from A Few More Pages. Anyone can participate; just share the opening sentence of your current read, making sure that you include the title and author so others know what you're reading.


I am reading The Templar Salvation by Raymond Khoury. 
"Stay low, and keep quiet," the grizzled man whispered as he helped the knight clamber onto the walkway.


This is the second book in his series, so I am excited to delve into the story. I read the first one back in 2006 when it came out and I was fixated on templars.

Teaser Tuesday - The Templar Salvation by Raymond Khoury

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of  Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Include the link to your Teaser in the comments.

Here's mine from The Templar Salvation that I started this week:
"The Keeper caught it and his face lightened up with the merest hint of a grin. "Where best to hide something than in plain sight?""