The Sunday Salon: Visitors from Out of Town

 

Welcome! I am glad you joined us 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 time to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

We had lots of company last week---our granddaughter and great-granddaughter plus my sister and her husband and my brother. It rained almost every day, but we still managed to make it to Galveston where we played on the beach, and we spent time with great-granddaughter, Lucy, exploring all the wonderful toys we keep at our house for just such visits. 

My husband and I celebrated our 48th wedding anniversary by going out to eat and (yay!) visiting a bookstore. 

I also squeezed in a couple of swims between rainstorms, and I made it to my writing group for the first time in several weeks. 

What I Read Last Week:

Thirty Days in Paris by Veronica Henry (Fiction - Paris in July)

One Summer in Paris by Sarah Morgan (Fiction - Paris in July)

The War of the Buttons by Louis Pergaud (Children's Fiction - Paris in July)

My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein: A Fiction by Deborah Levy (Fiction - Paris in July)

What I Am Reading Now: 

The Earth by Émile Zola (Fiction - Paris in July)

Candide, or Optimism by Voltaire (Fiction in French - Paris in July)

France: An Adventure History by Graham Robb (History - Paris in July)

The Shortest History of France by Colin Jones (History - Paris in July)

Toujours la France! by Janine Marsh (Memoir - Paris in July)

Quartet by Jean Rhys (Fiction - Paris in July)

Moveable Feasts: A Story of Paris in Twenty Meals by Chris Newens (Nonfiction - Paris in July)

En Route: A Journey Through France in the Company of Great Writers by Peter Fiennes (Nonfiction - Paris in July) 

What I Posted Last Week Here at Readerbuzz:

The Sunday Salon: Reading an Absurd Number of Books for Paris in July

Eleven Books I Want to Read by New to Me Authors

Moveable Feasts: Paris in Twenty Meals by Chris Newens: 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:

I showed considerable restraint and 

just came home with one book

from the anniversary trip to the bookstore.

Good Thing #2:

I made progress in French

on Duolingo.

Good Thing #3:

Lucy took a surprise photo of us this week.

Sometimes it's nice to see things

from an almost-four-year-old's 

point of view.

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.

Moveable Feasts: Paris in Twenty Meals by Chris Newens: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

Today's Featured Book: 

Moveable Feasts:

Paris in Twenty Meals

by Chris Newens

Genre: Travel; Foodie

Published: February 3, 2026

Page Count: 368 pages

Summary: 

Paris has a justifiable claim to be the center of European gastronomy—but beyond its trademark terrasses and zinc-topped tables, what can its cuisine tell us about the city? Chris Newens, an award-winning food writer and long-time resident of the historic slaughterhouse quartier Villette, takes us on a delightful gastronomic journey around Paris' twenty spiralling arrondissements, seeking out, sampling, and attempting to recreate a dish that represents each as it is today.

Hemingway wrote that "wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” From Congolese cat fish in the 18th to Middle Eastern falafels in the 4th, to the charcuterie served at the libertine nightclubs of Pigalle in the 9th, Newens lifts the lid on the city's ever-changing, defining, and irresistible food culture.

 

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.

A Paris bistro is the stage of a thousand cliches. Surly waiters in their suits, barflies crowding the zinc, a terrace of small tables and rattan chairs that all face the street, coffee, croissants, steak frites.

Le Mistral, at the corner of the rue des Pyrenees in Belleville, fitted this description so perfectly it deserved World Heritage status; it was a place so familiar to the global imagination that, like Paris itself, I felt I knew it before I even came to visit the city, let alone live here.

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. 

The transubstantiation of raw into cooked is a low-grade miracle. You witness in real time something repellent become its opposite. Never, though, had I seen a change as profound as I did then. Raw, the kebab had looked like a prolapse, but now it was starting to resemble, well, a kebab. The layers of turkey and lamb were drawing into one another: sizzling, browning, beads of flavour escaping from within. And the smell: that commingling of proteins which hits somewhere at the top of the nose, combined with a base note of smouldering charcoal. It was actually working! Of course it was working. It was meat on a stick.

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.    

Do you read one book at a time, or juggle a few at once? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee-Addicted Writer)

Ha! I was reading fifteen books at one time at the start of this week. Ha!

I usually have four or five going at one time.

 

Eleven Books I Want to Read by New to Me Authors

Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset

Green Mansions by W. H. Hudson

Indian Summer by William Dean Howells

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen

Barabbas by Par Lagerkvist

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

The Diary of a Madman, The Government Inspector and Selected Stories by Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol

Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata

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.