Weekly Wrap Up: Five Books Read, an Orange Cake, and a Terribly Cute Photo of My Grandchildren

Read...

What does it mean when you read three books in one day and you don't understand any of them? 

My online nonfiction book group read A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes this month. At the beginning of March, I read the first couple of chapters and put it down half-read, feeling a little befuddled.  For some unknown reason, I picked it back up and read it almost compulsively, mostly incomprehensibly, in one afternoon. My review of A Brief History is here.

I picked up a copy of Textu by Fady Joudah at the poetry reading this week. I loved Joudah's poems "Palestine Texas" and "Progress Notes" that he read and I wanted to read more of his poetry. I'm not sure that Textu was a good choice for me; I can't say I understood much of any of the poems in this book. My review of Textu is here. 

I finished out the day with The Wonderful "O" by James Thurber. It's often classified as a children's book, though it is on both the children's and the adult version of the 1001 Books You Must Read lists. It's a clever little book in which a couple of pirates force the people on an island to remove the letter "o" from all words. My review of The Wonderful "O" is here. 

I also read and reviewed Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive by Stephanie Land as well as (hurray!) Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. My review of Maid is here. My review of Don Quixote is here.

Reading...

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

Book-ish...

Isn't this fun? How Long Will It Take You to Finish Your TBR Pile? calculator is from Read It Forward. Thank you, Shellyrae at book'd out for sharing this.

If you love children's picture books as much as I do, you need to take a look at this list of 2019 Books from Caldecott Winners at 100 Scope Notes. I can't wait to read all of these, but I'm especially excited about Circle from Jon Klassen; Nine Months with art by the wonderful Jason Chin; No More Poems with art from Dan Santat; and How to Read a Book by Kwame Alexander and Melissa Sweet.

I've finished four of ten books in My Own Books Reading Challenge set by Anne of My Head is Full of Books. I feel like I'm off to a good start with this challenge. The challenge ends on May 15th. 

I went to the Margaret Root Brown Reading Series last week with poets Fady Joudah and Carmen Giménez Smith. My post about the event will appear here on Wednesday.




Baking, photography, drawing, and other projects...

I baked an Orange Cake from The Cook's Atelier this week. Orange season is almost over here in Texas, and I wanted to use up some of the oranges we got from my brother-in-law's garden.

I couldn't resist posting this picture of my two grandchildren, Annie and her new baby brother, Wyatt. I feel so happy just looking at their beautiful faces.

The Sunday Salon 

I’ve taken the helm of one of our earliest book blogging memes, The Sunday Salon. I’d love to have you stop by my blog, Readerbuzz, here and post a link to your blog. The Sunday Salon was created twelve years ago to encourage book conversations, and I hope to do the same by sharing links and visiting others’ blogs. I will keep also the Facebook group for Sunday Salon.

I would be very happy if you would spread the word about the Sunday Salon. Encourage others to post here and/or on Facebook. Post the graphic on social media. 

Other places where you may like to link up are below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

My linkup for Sunday Salon is below. If you wish to also post a link at Facebook, you can also do that. My hope is that you will post here and/or at FB and then visit other bloggers. Sunday Salon is to encourage conversations about books and book-ish things.