The Sunday Salon: Home from Georgia

 

Welcome! I am delighted that you joined us here at the Sunday Salon. 

What is the Sunday Salon? 

The Sunday Salon is a place to link up and share what we have been doing during the week. It's also a great opportunity to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

We will be on our way home today from our trip this week to the Georgia mountains. 

What I Read Last Week:

Enormous Wings by Laurie Frankel (Fiction)

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (Fiction)

The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America by Elizabeth Letts (Nonfiction)

What I'm Reading Now:

The Book of Birds: A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss by Robert Macfarlane (Nonfiction)

Make Life Happier by Mark Williamson (Nonfiction)

South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry (Nonfiction)

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson (Nonfiction)

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (Fiction)

In a Summer Season by Elizabeth Taylor (Fiction)

What I Posted Last Week Here at Readerbuzz:

The Sunday Salon: Baby Alligators on Mother's Day

Favorite Minor Characters

Yesteryear: A Novel by Caro Claire Burke: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

I began to list 3 Good Things every day during the pandemic. Now I've established a regular routine of writing down my 3 Good Things. Here are 3 Good Things from last week:

Good Thing #1:
Almost everything we had for supper

was from our garden.

Good Thing #2:

I picked up my t-shirt for 

the adult summer reading program.

Good Thing #3:

Flowers are everywhere.

Weekend linkup spots are listed below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

        

I hope you will join the linkup for Sunday Salon below.

Yesteryear: A Novel by Caro Claire Burke: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

               

Today's Featured Book: 

Yesteryear: A Novel

by Caro Claire Burke

Genre: Fiction

Published: April  9, 2026 

Page Count: 400 pages

Summary: 

Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle – and her followers are sick with envy. Her charming farmhouse on her working ranch is artfully cluttered, her husband is a handsome cowboy, her homemade sourdough boules are each more beautiful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers and industrial-grade ovens behind the scenes? What her followers don’t know won’t hurt them.

Then, one morning, Natalie wakes up in a strange, horrible version of reality. Her home, her husband, her children―they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Is this a hoax? A reality show? A test from God? Natalie knows just two things for sure: this isn't her perfect life, and she must escape, by any means possible.

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY is hosted by Rose City Reader. What book are you happy about reading this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) on BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY! Add the link to your blog or social media post and visit other blogs to see what others are reading.

Happy Friday and welcome to the FIRST LINE FRIDAY, hosted by Reading is My Superpower! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line.

This is the last day of the life I imagined for myself. 

THE FRIDAY 56 is hosted by Anne of Head Full of Books. To play, open a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% on your e-reader). Find a sentence or two and post them, along with the book title and author. Then link up on Head Full of Books and visit others in the linky. 

In the daylight, it's easier to see how ramshackle this house truly is. The floorboards are old and rotted. Through the ceiling eaves in the kitchen, I can see slivers of sky...In this kitchen, there's no hidden pantry containing a massive refrigerator, two dishwashers, and a microwave... 

The purpose of THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, and befriend other bloggers. THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.    

 What do you think about rising prices for hardcovers, paperbacks, and eBooks? 

It's important that people are able to read and think about what is going on in the world. Books should always be affordable.

 

Favorite Minor Characters

In all my favorite books I have favorite minor characters.

Lonesome Dove has Gus and Call, of course, but it also has Lorena and Newt. 

I love Calvin and Charles Wallace as well as Meg in A Wrinkle in Time.

It's obvious who the title character is in Anne of Green Gables, but who can resist Marilla and Matthew?

India Opal Buloni and her father, The Preacher, and the dog, Winn-Dixie? I adore all the characters, minor and major, in Because of Winn-Dixie.

How often do you run across Death as a character in a novel? It's Death that makes The Book Thief so poignant.

By the Great Horn Spoon is full of crazy characters: 12-year-old Jack Flagg; his butler, Praiseworthy; Jack's Aunt Arabella; and the dastardly Cut-Eye Higgins.

There's Head of Ranch Security, Hank the Cowdog, of course, but there's also his loyal assistant, Drover; Hank's chief annoyance, Pete the Barn Cat; two buzzards, Wallace and Junior; two coyote brothers, Rip and Snort; and the humans, ranch owners High Loper and Sally May, and their kids, Little Alfred and Baby Molly. All the characters of the Hank the Cowdog series are favorites.

You never know what characters you will encounter in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, but I have come to love inept wizard Rincewind and his luggage and Cohen the Barbarian, the tourist Twoflower, and witches Granny Weatherwax and Tiffany Aching. Oh, and, you can't forget Death.

Don Quixote has the lost dreamer himself but also the wonderful Sancho Panza.

You might be thinking about reading The Count of Monte Cristo now that you've seen the series on PBS. I encourage you to do that. You love The Count in all his pain and hurt, but you will also find yourself intrigued, I think, to read more about Mercedes and Abbé Faria, and the wicked Danglars and Fernand Mondego and Gérard Villefort.

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.   

The Sunday Salon: Baby Alligators on Mother's Day...and a New Classics Club Spin!

 

Welcome! I am glad that you joined us here at the Sunday Salon. 

What is the Sunday Salon? 

The Sunday Salon is a place to link up and share what we have been doing during the week. It's also a great opportunity to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

Intarsia

I'm leaving on Sunday for a week in the mountains of Georgia. My husband is going to a lapidary school to learn intarsia and I shall be hiking and, of course, reading and writing and drawing.

What I Read Last Week:

What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World's Most Enigmatic Birds 

by Jennifer Ackerman (Nonfiction)

The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America by Elizabeth Letts (Nonfiction)

What I'm Reading Now:

The Book of Birds: A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss by Robert Macfarlane (Nonfiction)

Make Life Happier by Mark Williamson (Nonfiction)

Enormous Wings by Laurie Frankel (Fiction)

The Classics Club has issued the announcement of the Classics Club’s 43rd CC Spin.

What is the Spin?

It’s easy. At your blog, before next Sunday 17th May, 2026, create a post that lists twenty books of your choice that remain “to be read” on your Classics Club list.

This is your Spin List.

You have to read one of these twenty books by the end of the spin period.

On Sunday, May 17th, The Classics Club will post a number from 1 through 20. The challenge is to read whatever book falls under that number on your Spin List by Sunday, July 5th. 

Let's see who can make it the whole way and finish their spin book!

I have a lot of books to read on my latest Classics Club list. Let's see where the needle stops.

So here is my list.

1. Coronado's Children: Tales of Lost Mines and Buried Treasure by J. Frank Dobie

2. Afoot in England by W. H. Hudson

3. Lost Horizon by James Hilton

4. The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse

5. Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes by Robert Louis Stevenson

6. Bevis: The Story of a Boy by Richard Jefferies

7. The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham

8. Brendon Chase by B. B.

9. In a Summer Season by Elizabeth Taylor

10. In the Mountains by Elizabeth von Arnim

11. Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton

12. The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

13. The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather

14. The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen

15. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

16. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

17.  Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym

18. Stowaway to Mars by John Wyndham

19. A Lost Lady by Willa Cather

20.The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell 

Have you read any of these?

Do you recommend any of these?

And the spin has stopped on number…

What I Posted Last Week Here at Readerbuzz:

The Sunday Salon: Reading Nonfiction

Cultivating My Garden

Enormous Wings by Laurel Frankel: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

I began to list 3 Good Things every day during the pandemic. Now I've established a regular routine of writing down my 3 Good Things. Here are 3 Good Things from last week:

Good Thing #1:

A friend took this picture 

at the Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge

on Mother's Day. 

Now doesn't this make your own swarm

feel much more manageable?!

Good Thing #2:

A friend made me this

lovely patisserie.

How did she do this?!

Good Thing #3:

Is there anything better than

receiving a book as a gift for Mother's Day?

Weekend linkup spots are listed below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

        

I hope you will join the linkup for Sunday Salon below.