Catching Up, Bookishly Speaking

It's time for another Sunday Salon. It's the third week of school and I'm still coming home every night and going to bed at eight. Exhausting. Hope things slow down soon.        I finished three books this week. X is Sue Grafton's latest mystery. You know the drill. If you are like me, there are times when you just want the drill. A week like this one sent me happily turning pages in X. Grafton has grown as a writer since her A-E days, I think. Nice intertwining of several clever mysteries, one of which looks as if it will reappear and continue in Y. I also devoured Voracious: A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way Through Great Books. The author has taken lots of her favorite books and closely looked at the food described within. It makes for a fun collection of blog posts, especially if you, like me, are a big fan of books-about-books. And, finally, I dashed through A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life. The author is a quite-famous producer of movies (including Splash and Apollo 13). The secret of his success, he reveals, is his explorations of things he is curious about. And that's the whole book. Lots of little stories about his interviews with other quite-famous people, if you like that sort of thing. But really, if you want to save time, just read the title. That's all you need to know.       Normally, at this time of the year, my thoughts go to the Texas Book Festival. I won't be there this year; it's the same weekend my first grandchild is due. A wonderful reason to miss my favorite event of the year, I think. I hope you won't miss it unless you have an equally good reason. The author lineup has been announced.       Though I'll be missing the TBF, I do have lots of great book-ish events planned for the next few weeks. I'm excited to be serving as a moderator of the Five Funny Guys panel at Tween Reads Book Festival on October 3. Who are these Five Funny Guys, you ask. Well, Jeff Anderson (Zack Delacruz), Nicholas Gannon (The Doldrums), Geoff Rodkey (Tapper Twins), Gene Luan Yang (Secret Coders), and Daniel Handler (known more commonly as Lemony Snickett). The event is free, so if you are in the Houston area, I hope you can come.       I'm also planning to head to two Inprint events in Houston in the next couple of weeks. This Thursday Mary Karr will be speaking about her new book, The Art of Memoir. And the next week I plan to see Jonathan Franzen talk about his new book, Purity. The panels for the Cybils are also forming and will be announced very soon. Lots of wonderful book events coming up.      I'm still reading A Walk in the Woods and it's every bit as good as I remembered. More when I finish.... I'm also making my way through Anita Desai's A Village by the Sea and a big stack of children's picture books including Fab Four Friends, When a Dragon Moves In Again, The Leaf Book, and Tell Me a Picture.                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.