Sunday Salon: My Week in Books

What I Finished Last Week I picked up You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons: The World on One Cartoon a Day by Mo Willems at a library sale last week. You know Mo Willems, right? The amazing children's picture book author, he of Pigeon fame and Knuffle Bunny fame, universally adored by children of all sizes and ages (even those of us who are 58). If you know who he is, then you know why I couldn't possibly pass up this book for a buck. I read the blurb on the back, telling You Can Never Find a Rickshaw is a compilation of cartoons Willems drew during a round-the-world trip he took in 1990. He made one cartoon a day, each a drawing to help him recall the quirkiest thing that happened that day. Here are a couple of cartoons from the book I thought you'd like: But here was the most amazing thing about this little $1 buy: Autographed! God Went to Beauty School is a mesmerizing book of little...well, let's call them poems for lack of a better word...little poems about God visiting in our world. It's by Cynthia Rylant, who, if you are a children's literature fan, you know is one of our living great writers of children's stories. I loved these little poems. Carrie's War by Nina Bawden is the story of Carrie and her little brother Nick during World War II. The children were sent to live in the country, away from the bombings in London, for their own safety. I'd bet you $55 million dollars you could not show me a children's story with characters more real and more human. The children are placed with an absurdly cheap shopkeeper and his mousy sister for the war's duration, and they are very unhappy there, suffering from the shopkeeper's frugality and the sister's inability to stand up to her brother. Nevertheless, Carrie and Nick gradually form a relationship with the two, and come to see the underlying reasons for the miserly ways of the shopkeeper and the fearfulness of the sister, as they grow to know the household of an estranged sibling of the two. Very complex characters, and that's the great strength of this story.

What Arrived Last Week   Two audiobooks! I've already up to CD 5 In the Kingdom of Ice, and I'm fascinated with the detail in this epic polar adventure.

What are you reading today?!

What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them,and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....That's what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual. Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book. Click here to join the Salon.

The Sunday Post is a meme hosted by Kimba at Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It's a chance to share news and recap the past week.

Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia at The Printed Page. We share books that we found in our mailboxes last week. 

 It is now being hosted here.

Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews in which you can share the books you've acquired.