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. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

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. In a Summer Season by Elizabeth Taylor

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?

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.

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

    

Today's Featured Book: 

Enormous Wings

by Laurie Frankel

Genre: Fiction

Published: May 5, 2026

Page Count: 303 pages

Summary: 

At seventy-seven, Pepper Mills is too old to be a stranger in a strange land. She didn’t choose the Vista View Retirement Community of Austin, Texas―that would be her three grown children―but when she grudgingly moves in, she not only makes new friends, she falls in love. Then the exhaustion, vomiting, and confusion start. She fears it’s cancer, dementia, a stroke. But a raft of tests later, the news is even more shocking: She’s pregnant.

 

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.

You know how it ends.

Everyone in the whole world knows how it ends.

Of course that's true anyway for all of us, no matter what.

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. 

When Alice annouced she was adopting twins, I had reminded her of this conversation. "Babies need their laundry washed and their meals cooked and their clothes shopped for and their egos stroked all the time, you know. You have to clean their bathroom sometimes several times a day."

"But only for eighteen years," said Alice. "Then they're grown up and off your to-do list."

I couldn't tell her how untrue that was. Some things you just can't know until they actually happen to you.

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.    

Are you team dog-eared pages or strictly no creases? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee-Addicted Writer)

Sometimes I dog-ear. Sometimes I keep a book pristine.

 

Cultivating My Garden

From Candide by Voltaire:

“As Candide went back to his farm, he reflected deeply on the Turk's remarks. He said to Pangloss and Martin: "That good old man seems to me to have made himself a life far preferable to that of the six Kings with whom we had the honor of having supper."

"Great eminence," said Pangloss, "is very dangerous, according to the report of all philosophers. For after all, Eglon, King of the Moabites, was assassinated by Ehud; Absolom was hanged by his hair and pierced with three darts; King Naab son of Jeroboam was killed by Baasha..."

"I also know," said Candide, "that we must cultivate our garden."

"You are right," said Pangloss, "for when man was put in the Garden of Eden, he was put there ut operaretur eum, to work; which proves that man was not born to rest."

"Let us work without reasoning," said Martin, "it is the only way to make life endurable."

All the little society entered into this laudable plan; each one began to exercise his talents. The little piece of land produced much. True, Cunégonde was very ugly; but she became an excellent pastry cook; Paquette embroidered; the old woman took care of the linen. No one, not even Friar Giroflée, failed to perform some service; he was a very good carpenter, and even became an honorable man; and Pangloss sometimes said to Candide: "All events are linked together in the best of all possible worlds. for after all, if you had not been expelled from a fine castle with great kicks in the backside for love of Mademoiselle Cunégonde, if you had not been subjected to the Inquisition, if you had not traveled about America on foot, if you had not given the Baron a great blow with your sword, if you had not lost all your sheep from the good country of Eldorado, you would not be here eating candied citrons and pistachios."

"That is well said," replied Candide, "but we must cultivate our garden.”

Cultivating our garden

Books That Have Helped Me Cultivate My Garden

Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim (Adult Fiction)

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (Children's Fiction)

Bringing Nature Home by Doug Tallamy (Nonfiction)

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: Reading Nonfiction

We are glad that you joined us here at the Sunday Salon. Welcome! 

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

We went to Dallas last week and spent time with our granddaughter, Bailey, and our great-granddaughter, Lucy. We went to the Perot Museum and did yoga and ate ice cream and went to the park. Happy days!

What I Read Last Week:

Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance by Richard Powers (Fiction)

What I'm Reading Now:

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

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 Posted Last Week Here at Readerbuzz:

The Sunday Salon: A Nature-Filled Week: City Nature Challenge and Migration Celebration, What the Owl Knows and The Book of Birds

Authors I Wish Were Still Writing Today

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

Harvest from our garden

Good Thing #2:

Glass art I brought to Bailey as a housewarming gift

Good Thing #3:

We enjoy dinosaurs at the museum with Lucy.

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.