Sunday Salon

It's been a fun first week back blogging!

I appreciate the comments also. I will try to be good about reading blogs and commenting back.

I signed up for a book club hosted by the Yiddish Book Center and attended a virtual talk this week about the writer Jonah Rosenfeld, whose book Rivals and Other Stories they are reading now. My copy is on the way; I'm a little late to the party on this but I'm looking forward to it. The talk was given by the translator who talked about his life and works. It was really interesting and I learned a lot. You can see some information about the book here.

I decided to stop reading Jacob's Ladder; as much as I love Ludmila Ulitskaya this book has been a slog and I decided to treat myself to a re-read of one of my favorite novellas, Tayeb Salih's The Wedding of Zein. You can find my review under either Reviews tab above. Suffice to say it's just so full of joy and humor and an absolute delight. You should read it too.

I brought a big bag of galleys out to one of the Little Free Libraries in my town. We have four that I know of and probably more than that if I went hunting. I have to keep things flowing out as I'm always buying and acquiring new books and my apartment is not going to get bigger.

Here's a picture of my cat.

Happy Sunday!

Sunday Salon- Labor Day Means No Labor For Me

Well I'm happy to say I'm enjoying Labor Day Weekend by doing no labor. I have the whole three day weekend off, which is something of a miracle! Yesterday my big plan was to get my hair cut; today, we may go to the beach and play skeeball at an amusement park and tomorrow there might be a visit to a coffee shop and a croissant to eat. That's about it.

Here are my cats Tanya and Pandora doing what I'd like to be doing this weekend!

The past week was average-busy for me; the bookstore has been slowish during August, but you can already tell that's about to change. My new staff pick will go up soon if it hasn't already; it's Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm, which I reviewed here last week.

Like everyone else, it seems like the summer has ended really quickly. This weekend was the annual Santa Lucia Festival in my neighborhood, a small street fair centered on a tiny chapel in a residential neighborhood. The chapel seats maybe 30 people; the fair has food and live music and it's come to represent the end of summer for me, always bittersweet. After a typical work schedule this week Jeff and I are headed to King Richard's Faire next weekend; should be fun. We went to a Renaissance fair last year and enjoyed it, and I think we'll enjoy this one too.

Reading-wise, I finished I Hadn't Understood by Diego de Silva and started Elza's Kitchen by Marc Fitten; I read his first book Valeria's Last Stand a while back and liked it. With I Hadn't Understood I've now finished by 12-book commitment to the Europa Challenge but I'm sure I'll read more. I have a ton of unread Europas waiting for me and I can't stop buying their books. There are lots of great challenges out there but that seems to be the only one I can stick to!

I'm tempted to do a Fall Books Part 2 post sometime soon, with more mainstream titles I'm looking forward to (my first post was very small-press-heavy). What do you think? Enough already with the fall books or do you want to hear more?

Have a great Sunday. More Sunday Salon here.

Sunday Salon- New Year, New Stuff Going On

Happy New Year!!

So, I'm no longer a bookseller, at least for the time being. The bookstore job didn't work out and I'm back to pounding the pavement in the new year. My last day was December 23. I loved being a bookseller and I'd love to work in another independent bookstore. Some of you know the details; I'm happy to share offline but that's all I want to say in public.

I guess I'm back to reading and blogging until I find a new opportunity. And writing. I've been working on my book sporadically for the past few months but I'm going to use the time to get back to writing seriously and daily, and I hope to finish my rough draft by the end of the month.

Here's my cat Tanya terrorizing my Christmas village. We'll probably be putting our decorations away soon but they're still up for the time being. I plan to light a nice fire sometime this week and dive into my writing again.

2011 was a pretty good year of reading for me. If you didn't see my statistical roundup you can click here. I finished the Europa Challenge just in time, and look forward to continuing with it in 2012. V. S. Naipaul's boring In a Free State derailed my attempt at the Booker Challenge last year but I'm getting back on track with Stanley Middleton's Holiday this month. I'm determined to finish Little, Big soon as well. I'm reading The Russian Passenger, a German crime novel, for something light and entertaining right now, too. The author is Gunther Ohnemus and it's published by Bitter Lemon Press.

Today we have relatives visiting and I expect I'll be kept busy hanging out with them, shopping and enjoying their company. I think the plan is brunch and then who knows. Happy New Year! I hope 2012 is filled with wonderful books and bookish events, friendships and more.

More Sunday Salon here.

Sunday Salon - Read-a-Thons and Other Stuff

Yesterday was the 24 Hour Read-a-Thon and I decided at the last minute to participate. I used the opportunity to finish three books that I'd been reading simultaneously; it was a great day of reading and relaxing and blogging! Now I'm deep into Jetta Carleton's The Moonflower Vine, republished recently by HarperCollins after being out of print since 1962. It's a wonderful family story set during the early 20th century in Missouri. But it's not a sappy heartwarmer; it's about a family full of turmoil and conflict, beautifully written. I don't do sappy heartwarmers, generally speaking.

I want to extend my thanks to everyone who helped organize the Read-a-Thon and to all the cheerleaders and commenters. The Read-a-Thons are great community events and it's always so much fun to participate, when I remember they're happening!

Challenge-wise, I read my two Europa Editions for October- Everything Happens Today and Poisonville. The review for Everything will be forthcoming this week. For next month, I think I'll read The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress, by Beryl Bainbridge, and Days of Fear, by Daniele Mastrogiacomo. I've been meaning to read more nonfiction and Mastrogiacomo's book about being held captive by the Taliban sounds really fascinating.

Activity-wise it's been a slow week for me. Life is about to get busier but I'll have more on that next week. In the mean time this evening I'm looking forward to a big family birthday party and some more reading today, in between bouts of housework.

Just for fun, here's a picture of my Pandora-kitty enjoying her yellow chair. Is she cute or what?

I started a blog on Tumblr. Come follow me! I'll post miscellaneous bookish stuff there from time to time- random stuff that catches my attention.

What are you up to today? Sorry for the brief post but there's not much to talk about today! I hope you're having a great Sunday. More Sunday Salon here.

This or That: A Quick Post for a Saturday

If you're new to my blog, here's a few this-or-that questions I borrowed from Hooked to Books, to help us get to know each other a little better. I'd love to hear your answers too!

Unicorns or Zombies
Unicorns. I hate zombies. I have no interest in all those zombie books, zombie apocalypse, zombie wars, whatever. Where's the unicorn apocalypse? Who's gonna write Jane Eyre and Unicorns? Maybe I should!

iPhone or Blackberry
iPhone. I love my iPhone. I love it so much. I don't know how I could live without it! I actually use and carry a cell phone every day now, which I never did before.

My cat Pandora lounges on a quilt.

Dog or Cat
Cats. Cats rule, dogs drool.

TV or Movies
Movies. I don't go out as often as I'd like to, but I love going to the movies and seeing films on the big screen.

Truth or Dare
Truth. I have no secrets.

Dinner or Dessert
Both, please!

Mac or PC
Mac. I've had a Mac of one kind or another for 20 years and I could never switch! I have a PC netbook for travel but I really, really prefer my Mac.

Beach or Mountains
Beach. I grew up near the ocean and nothing says home to me like a sea breeze. But I'm a city girl and the best thing is a city on the sea, like Boston or San Francisco or Honolulu.

Night Owl or Early Bird
I like to sleep in and stay up late, but sometimes it is awfully nice to enjoy a quiet, cool morning.

The last quilt I completed.

Rock or Country
Rock all the way. Another thing I can't live without is my iPod.

Too Hot or Too Cold
I'm always too cold! I have a house stuffed with quilts and blankets because I'm always cold. I hate being chilly. I think I learned to quilt just so I could have warm blankets around all the time.

Text or Talk
Either. Sometimes texting is great for quick things that don't require long conversations. I love the convenience of texting sometimes.


This came from a guest post on Hooked to Books, a great blog you need to read!

Sunday Salon- End of an Era

My husband and I had to put our beloved cat, Sasha, to sleep yesterday morning. He'd been sick since before Christmas, with what turned out to be some kind of sepsis. He had diabetes, liver problems and cancer and had been doing well on medication but this infection was too much for him and in the past couple of weeks he'd stopped eating almost entirely and lost more than 2 pounds. We took him in for blood tests yesterday, got the bad news and decided to let him go. He had a good life and he went peacefully. He was my little friend for 10 years and three homes, and he will be missed.

I don't know what today holds as far as reading or anything else. I'm reading Hotel du Lac, the Booker Prize-winner by Anita Brookner, and just heard yesterday that another Booker winner, Michael Ondaatje of The English Patient, has a new book due this summer. You can bet I'll get a hold of that one as soon as possible. I just got a first edition of The English Patient for my Booker collection; it's one of my all-time favorite books. I also want to read one of my graphic novels today, maybe Julia Wertz's new one, Drinking at the Movies.

My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and families of victims of yesterday's shooting in Arizona.

What are you up to today? More Sunday Salon here.

Sunday Salon - Lots of Bookish Stuff Going on in Boston

Every Sunday I come here and write about a book I'm reading today or planning on reading today, and every Sunday I almost never read, or read very little. Maybe today will be different, but I don't know. I'm still working my way through Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America, which I want very much to like. So far? Eh. I'll keep plugging away though. I'm going to make another attempt to start Olga Slavnikova's 2017, which I have to read for LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program. I've tried a couple of times now, and have never got past the second page. It's been a busy week- it seems like every springtime there's one week when every reading I want to attend takes place, and I just get to as many as I can. After the Newburyport Literary Festival last weekend, this past week local appearances were made by Peter Carey, Alina Bronsky, Helen Simonson and Atiq Rahimi, and I got to the first and last of those; my book club met the night Bronsky was here, and Simonson and Rahimi were appearing the same day and I couldn't get to both. I'm going to have more to say about the Rahimi event later in the week- it was one of the best book talks I've been to in a long time. Yesterday and Friday was also the Boston Antiquarian Book Fair, held over at Boston University. I spent a fun hour or so browsing among the exhibits. To be honest, there was almost nothing that I was interested in buying, although I did have a great conversation with a Canadian bookseller (and fellow Margaret Atwood fan) about which books are and aren't collectible. One question was on the commercial viability of personalized signed books. I said I thought they were worthless and she said no, to some collectors they're more valuable because they show the human touch. I get books signed and personalized because I'm a fan, not because I'm trying to build up some fortune in collectible books, but I still appreciated hearing that. My husband came home with some treasures- some books on Roman history he was interested in. So between that and my chat with the Canadian bookseller, it was a fun day. We saw lots of neat things- collectible children's books, various editions of Alice in Wonderland- including one signed by Lewis Carroll for about $2,500- but not one Jane Eyre in the whole room. Oh well. Someone was selling a nice set of Jane Austens, though. But I don't collect those. I've also been sewing a little again lately. Here's my cat on a quilt I'm making for him. I'm not done with it yet, but it's nice to know it's already kitty-approved: Hope you're having a relaxing Sunday too. More Sunday Salon can be found here.

Sunday Salon- Finishing up the Read-a-thon

After a pretty average week, I was glad to settle into the 24-Hour Read-a-Thon yesterday; my goal was to read at least two stories or essays from a stack of anthologies, with the secondary goal of weeding out a few. It struck me that I had a lot of them sitting around that I had never even touched, and that dipping into a few might not be a bad idea.

So if you came by to visit yesterday, you know that my day was interrupted by another visit to the hospital thanks to my cat; when I got home I decided to throw in the towel and just watch TV. Today I think will be a slow day and so I'm going to work on reading a few things from some of the books I didn't get to, and work on finishing up Solar, Ian McEwan's absolutely compulsively-readable novel.

My cat is making his own visit to the (kitty) hospital tomorrow, to get a melanoma and some skin anomalies removed; he should be fine by the end of the day.

Tell me how something so cute can be the source of such unhappiness?

More Sunday Salon here.

Sunday Salon - Lots To Do

Today looks to be pretty busy, but I'm starting slow by icing my foot; I have tendinitis and I'm supposed to ice it two or three times a day, so I'm interpreting that as breakfast, lunch and dinnertime. I have a fairly busy day ahead; brunch with friends in a while, and then my husband and I are attending the 2010 Hemingway & Winship Award Ceremony sponsored by PEN New England; it's being held this afternoon at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. I'm very excited!

And reading? Yeah, I'll be doing some of that, too. I'm still working my way through Frank Delaney's Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show and I'd like to start Jonathan Keats' The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-Six, a re-imagined Jewish folktale about extraordinary or special people.

I also have a lot of work to do on the blog today, because I have some good things coming up this week, including an interview with comics artist and author Steve Sheinkin tomorrow, a virtual Valentine to author Ian McEwan for Tuesday, to celebrate the release of his latest novel, Solar, and a post for Wednesday about book collecting, a sort of follow up to one I did a couple of weeks ago. So I hope you have a great Sunday and I hope to see you back later in the week!

Chag Sameach to my Jewish readers- have a lovely Passover!

Here's a photo of my office assistant, doing what he does best:More Sunday Salon here.

Sunday Salon - A Taste of Spring

Since the Sunday Salon police caught up with me last week and reminded me that the purpose of Sunday Salon is to talk about reading and not what's going on in my personal life, I will spare you the recap of my week and get straight to the books.

Friday night I finished Adam Schwartzman's new book, Eddie Signwriter, which is coming out on Tuesday. I'll talk about it more later this week but I highly recommend it to readers of literary fiction, especially those interested in books about Africa. It's set there and in France, and it's terrific.

Yesterday I started to read Frank Delaney's wonderful Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show. I'm only a few chapters in but I love the narrative voice. I feel like I'm sitting in a pub in Dublin listening to a great raconteur spinning yarns. My seasonal allergies have been bothering me lately- we've been having some unseasonably warm temperatures after a period of heavy rain, which always equals allergies- and so I get very sleepy very quickly when I sit down to read. Good thing those chapters are short!

Today? Today I plan to continue with Venetia Kelly and start reading a short book. Which one I haven't decided yet; I actually have a tag in my LibraryThing catalog for short books so I'll scoot on over there in a while and pick one out.

I also decided to join a read along of Lonesome Dove which I think is taking place in the fall. It's
being run by Amy at My Friend Amy and sounds like fun. I'm not typically a joiner but I think maybe I need to branch out a little in that respect.

That's a picture of my cat doing what I'd like to do as soon as possible- curl up with a good book.

What are you up to today?

More TSS can be found here.

Sunday Salon - My New Desk!

Well, as I'm sure you could tell by the fabulous quality of my blog posts last week- no reviews, a couple of days skipped, memes aplenty- I was sort of lacking in focus. My husband has had the flu since Tuesday so I've been pretty preoccupied. He's feeling better but it's been a long week. Luckily the house was stocked with food so when I had to go to the store 2-3 times every day it was only for little things. In the meantime not a lot else got done, except work and TV.

But today is a new day so let's see. As I mentioned on Friday, I've dropped my no-new-books-till-Lent thing. And really, given my personality how realistic was that? Not very. Couple that with the upcoming release of a new novel by one of my favorite authors and let's face it- it wasn't going to happen. Midweek last week I needed some time to kick back a little and what did I do? I went to a bookstore. Two, actually. And I shopped. Two books for me, one for my husband to read while he was sick, and a couple of DVDs while I was at it. So much for Lent.

In between fetching water, soup, crackers and more soup and more crackers, I worked and I continued to tidy up the new office. See? That's my desk above. It's Leksvik desk from IKEA- simple and traditional. The pencil cup, ruler and mug are all things I painted during my decorative-painting phase; I was never any good at it but I enjoyed it for a while. The coasters were a gift from a friend who made them.

Here's my bookshelf, beginning to get filled up with signed books. I could write a whole blog post about the books; each one has a story behind it.

Sometimes the story is, "I went to the bookstore and bought a signed copy off a pile," or "I ordered it online from the author who personalized it," but sometimes the story is better.

My cat is also enjoying the new shelf, as you can see below. It's important that he enjoy the furnishings.

What are you enjoying this Sunday? I hope you all are having a great day.

You can read more Sunday Salon here.

Sunday Salon - Getting Ready for the Big Day

So with Christmas coming up, this week's going to be pretty busy! I have most of my shopping done but I still have to wrap and send out those last few cards. We send out our cards the day after Thanksgiving but I always get a few back and send them out the week before Christmas; I hope they get to their recipients on time!

My big plan for today? Bake cookies, and then bake more cookies. Friday I made sugar cookies shaped like Hello Kitty; yesterday was chocolate chip cookies and today is peanut blossoms. Tomorrow I'll make cranberry pinwheels and Tuesday I'll make gingersnaps and coconut macaroons. Finally, on Wednesday I'll make something else- what, I don't know yet. Most of the cookies are traditions but I always like to try something new as well. Then on Christmas day I have to make an upside down cake for dessert, garnished with pomegranate seeds. Yum!

We also have to take my cat to the vet today- a challenge considering the amount of snow outside! We're fairly buried here in the Boston area today! Those flamingos are in my backyard and that picture is from about 10 a.m. this morning!

What are your holiday traditions?

You can read more Sunday Salon posts here.

Persephone Secret Santa - Revealed!!

First of all, thanks so much to Stacy of Book Psmith for organizing this great swap!

The idea behind Persephone Secret Santa was for bloggers to send and receive books from the Persephone Books line:

Persephone Books reprints neglected classics by C20th (mostly women) writers. Each one in our collection of 86 books is intelligent, thought-provoking and beautifully written, and most are ideal presents or a good choice for reading groups.

My package came on Friday from Nadia of A Bookish Way of Life; go check out her blog if you haven't! Her package included a cute card, a sweet frame and an adorable pin (perfect because I collect Christmas pins!) and the book Good Evening Mrs. Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes, by Mollie Panter-Downes. This is a collection of short stories about the experience of World War 2 in Great Britain. I think it will be a perfect addition to my library! (As you can see, my cat Sasha had to get in on the photo.)

If you'd like to see what I sent to Dolce Bellezza, you can check it out here! (Stick around to check out her gorgeous blog while you're at it!)

Is this a great swap, or what? You can see more Persephone swappers here. Thank you so much Stacy for your work organizing it!

Sunday Salon

This Sunday finds me sidelined with a sinus infection and a foot injury- so I think I'll be doing a lot of reading!

I'm about 100 pages shy of finishing Ursula Le Guin's wonderful Lavinia, and I think next up will be Shulamit Lapid's Valley of Strength, about an Israeli kibbutz. I also have some blog posts to work on, about the Association of Jewish Libraries conference, ReaderCon, and more. So I'm going to pull up an ice pack and a box of tissues and settle in for the day.

I picked up another blogging gig for a local synagogue, Boston's Temple Israel, where I'll be blogging their Summer in the City lecture series; you can read the first entry, a lecture by travel writer Steve Jermanok, here. The blog is at TIsraelBostonSummerintheCity.blogspot.com.

Just for fun, here's a picture of my cat Sasha with a shaved belly. He has a liver infection and went to the vet for an ultrasound earlier this week. They gave him a little air conditioning:
Now he loves to stretch out towards the fan or the breeze with his belly up in the air.
You can read more Sunday Salon posts here.

Book Shelf Kitty

While I was having breakfast this morning, my cat felt the need to squeeze himself up in to my bookshelf. He stayed just long enough for me to snap this picture. Is he cute or what?