Sunday Salon --- June

Gourmet Popcorn Rose. First bloom in 2025.

Weather: HOT. Our first above 90-degree-day is predicted for Sunday.

Scheduling our summer events: We don't have a BIG, overseas trip planned for the summer, but we do have a lot of little/medium trips planned all summer long: two 50-year high school reunions; a trip with our family to Glacier National Park in Montana; a 70th birthday party and family reunion in July. Lots to look forward to. Our first trip of the summer is next weekend where we travel to Don's hometown for his reclass reunion.

A new reading project: Storygraph offers a breakdown of genres for all the books I've read so far this year. (See graph above.) The other day I marveled at how varied my list was. Then a little light bulb went off in my head: How many genres can I manage to read in one year? There is an idea for a personal challenge. So far I've managed 37. Is 50 possible? More? Books are usually assigned more than one genre, so it is easier to imagine being successful than it seems. For example, Go Tell It On the Mountain by Baldwin is assigned four genres: literary, classic, historical, LGBTQIA.  But I am having a hard time thinking up fifteen more categories. Here are a few genres missing from my current graph: Horror, Western, Fairy tales, Sports, Race, Middle Grade books, Sociology, Religious/Spirituality, Satire, a Translation, and Humor. I'm not sure if these are even genres according to Storygraph. Can you think of any? Please help!

Books:

• Recently finished:
• Passing by Nella Larsen -- Classic book published in the 1920s about the realities of a Black person passing as white. 
• Be Ready When the Luck Happens: a Memoir by Ina Garten -- The famous cook on reality TV known as the Barefoot Contessa.
• Cooking for Jeffrey: A Barefoot Contessa Cookbook -- the first book I read for my genre project. I thought why not read a cookbook written by an author whose memoir I just finished.
• Three Days in June by Anne Tyler -- My seventh book by Tyler and my favorite. Very short, novella length.
• Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin -- Surprisingly religious. Very religious. A Classic.
• Watchmen by Alan Moore -- the genre-bending superhero classic story told in comic book style. It took me forever to read, but I finished it!
• Currently reading/listening:
• The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Hammel -- A first fo me -- I had to switch off the audiobook and resort to reading the print novel. The audiobook narration drove me nutty and it is a book club selection so I have to finish it. Set in France during WWII, a Holocaust story. 51% complete.
• The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami -- a sort of modern "Minority Report", a woman is arrested for a dream she had about murdering her husband. 13% complete.
• A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society by Eugene Peterson -- Just getting started on this classic book on Christian discipleship.
• Next up:
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller will be our road trip audiobook this coming weekend.
• The In-Between Bookstore by Edward Underhill. A Trans man enters a bookstore which sends him back in time to meet his teen self.
• How to Read a Book by Monica Wood. The June selection for my other club.

Blog posts:

• Sunday Salon: Memorial Day
• TTT: Nonfiction Animal Books
• Review: The Motherless Land
• Classic Review: Passing
• TTT: The Most Summerish Books on my Summer Reading List
• Review: Oh, William!
• Review: Watchmen

My Roses: First Blooms of 2025:
Right to left, top to bottom:
Mustard and Ketchup; Cécile Brunner Climber; Midas Touch;
Fourth of July Climber; Abbaye du Clooney; Voodoo;
Pink Drift; Gourmet Popcorn (closeup); Scentimental.

-Anne