"Outside a dog a book is man's best friend, inside a dog it is too dark to read!" -Groucho Marx========="The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." -Jane Austen========="I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book."-JK Rowling========"I spend a lot of time reading." -Bill Gates=========“Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.” -Jacqueline Kelly=========

Sunday, March 13, 2022

Sunday Salon -- Spring ahead

Ian eating green eggs and ham on Dr. Seuss day at preschool.

Weather: I've been thinking about the term: Spring ahead. It is part of a phrase that reminds us that we are to set our clocks ahead to daylight savings time this weekend. But what if it really means Spring is ahead? I like that thought. I'd say that is what is going on. Spring is ahead around here. The weather is starting to be quite springish, as a matter of fact: cool mornings, often with fog, followed by sunny/rainy days. Our yard is coming to life with early bulbs blooming and the flowering plum trees, that line the sidewalks in our neighborhood, are just about ready to burst out in bloom.

In a bit of a funk: I'm not really in a human funk, just a reading/blogging funk. I can't make myself do either very reliably these days. My last Sunday Salon was two weeks ago and I've only blogged four times since then. On the reading front, I was working away on a pile of books for several weeks. Oddly I didn't really want to read any of them but I slogged along and now that I've finished (or decided to not-finish) that pile I am just meandering along in the third book of the Narnia series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, for the Narniathon March book.  I had a big "talk" with myself about what happens when I select books not on my TBR and then wonder why I don't enjoy them. Sigh. 

What I have read the past few weeks (Okay, I admit, it looks like I've read a lot of books😕)

  •  Footnotes from the Greatest Bookstores by Bob Eckstein. Illustrated with short, funny stories about the stores and its patrons. Print.
  • Measuring Up by Lilly LaMotte. The 2022 Cybils winner for MG Graphic Novels, about a young Taiwanese girl whose family has moved to the US. She wants to help raise money to bring her grandma over for a visit. She does it by entering a cooking contest. Print.
  • The City of Mists: Stories by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. A short story collection published after the author's death in 2020. Print.  I didn't finish this one.
  • A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers. A novella about a future time when robots and humans do not co-habitat and yet... Print.
  • The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki. An odd book partially narrated by a book itself. A long book at 548 pages. Audio. I did love this one.
  • Recitatif: a Story by Toni Morrison. Morrison's only published short story where she attempt, successfully I might add, to remove all racial identifiers so that the reader does not know which girl is black and which is white. Print.

What I've blogged during that same time: 

A Christmas gift from our daughter: On Thursday night Don and I went to the theater, a gift from our daughter. THE THEATER. We love going to shows and it is the first show we've been to since COVID times. We went to see "The Band's Visit", put on by a Broadway touring group, and loved it. It is the story of an Egyptian musical group that goes to Israel to play at an Arab Cultural Center but accidentally takes the bus to the wrong town. (Have a listen on Spotify)

Speaking of our daughter: Carly is all moved into her apartment and starts her new job tomorrow. She has been staying with us while we all worked on getting her settled, pictures hung, new needed items purchased until yesterday when she and her kitties moved over. It has been fun having her back. She and I both love playing board games and we played something every day, usually more than one game.

Dialogues on Race: I am taking a class at church called Dialogues on Race. The class is on Zoom and so far it has been very good. I hope to blog about the insights I am gaining from the book. So stay tuned. Here is a link to the book, if you want to look for it.

Ukraine. Links to articles that give a glimmer of hope:

 

And on the lighter side:

“There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally, they credit the wrong person.”  ~ Bill Bryson
 

-Anne

Posted by at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

I look forward to your comments and interactions! Join in the conversation.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)