The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

What did I do this week? Read. Pretty much all the time. 

I finally seem to have gotten into the quarantine reading spirit; I finished eleven books last week and eight of them were adult titles. 

I heartily want to recommend The Splendid and the Vile. I started this year deeply saddened by the mean-spirited political climate in America, and I began the year reading only mood-boosting books. The Splendid and the Vile would be an excellent addition to that list. It's perfect for this awful time in the world. The Splendid and the Vile tells the story of Winston Churchill, prime minister of England during the terrible days, weeks, months of bombing from Nazi Germany. I felt heartened by reading the words of Churchill. We could all become better people if we modeled ourselves after that man (well, we might skip the cigars and whiskey). 

I also loved the novel Migrations. There's an end-times feel to Migrations, with the main character, Franny Stone, attempting to follow the last migration of the last of the Arctic terns from the north all the way to Antarctica. Franny is an unreliable narrator and the world feels unreliable, too, with mass extinctions occurring everywhere. There is the sense that everything is falling apart; there is uncertainty in how to act in these sorts of times. Migrations will be published in August of this year.

I also finished:

 In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

Wild Lives: 50 Extraordinary Animals That Made History by Ben Lerwill (5 stars)

Happiness Is...500 Ways to Be in the Moment by Lisa Swerling

The Paris Hours by Alex George

The Candy Mafia by Lavie Tidhar

The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea by Jack E. Davis (5 stars)

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Separation Anxiety by Laura Zigman

Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler (5 stars)

I'm reading four wonderful books right now:

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

The Emergency Poet: An Anti-Stress Poetry Anthology edited by Deborah Alma

Weather: A Novel by Jenny Offill

Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse

Lots of articles about Quarantine Reading:

What Your Go-To Quarantine Reading Says About You from Literary Hub

Miss Travel? Explore the Country in Quarantine Through These Books from LA Times

What to Read in Quarantine by The Harvard Crimson

The Exquisite Pain of Reading in Quarantine in The Atlantic

Several bookish events going on now or soon:

The Classics Club Spin #23

The Cybils TBR Reading Challenge

Off the Grid Readathon

1. I had a cough this week with aches and maybe a touch of fever. That doesn't sound like a good thing, does it? But the cough was not a dry cough, and it seems to be diminishing, and the fever and aches are gone. My daughter-in-law, son, and two grandchildren all had something similar the last time we saw other human beings, three weeks ago. 

2. Sunny, cool days.

3. Our daughter-in-law and son in Chicago mailed us a package this week. Hurray! 

How are you doing this week?

Thank you for coming to the Sunday Salon. There are no real requirements for linking up at Sunday Salon. Sunday Salon is a great way to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

Some of the things we often talk about at the Sunday Salon:

• What was your week like?
• Read any good books? Tell us about them.
• What other bookish things did you do? 
• What else is going on in your life?

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