Book Challenges; Lemon-Pecan Tea Bread; and Lots and Lots of Holiday Movies

 

After reading and drawing from 50 Ways to Draw Your Beautiful Ordinary Life every day since May, I finally finished it. What a wonderful experience. I'll share some photos of my little drawings at the end of the year.

I also read and loved Humans by Brandon Stanton. Stanton is the author of Humans of New York. He's known for interviewing and photographing strangers on the streets of New York. He expands his range in Humans and interviews and photographs strangers in forty countries around the world.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy...96% complete

Year of Pleasures: Classical Music for Every Day...80% complete

The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You...32% complete

The Salt Path...11% complete

Are you interested in joining a book challenge in 2021? Susan from Bloggin' About Books has created a new site called Ready for a Reading Challenge to share the challenges others might like to join. You can also take a look at The 2021 Master List of Reading Challenges. I'm planning to do the Nonfiction Reader Challenge and the Back to the  Classics Challenge for 2021. I'm also hoping to do the Books in Translation Challenge (beginner) and the Japanese Literature Challenge.

Need gifts for book lovers? Take a look at these.

I loved the Chapter-a-Day Read-along of War and Peace this year. I plan to do some (all?) of the five books scheduled for the 2021 Chapter-a-Day Read-along: The Divine Comedy; Quo Vadis; The Hunchback of Notre Dame; David Copperfield; and The Three Musketeers. For more details, take a look here.

My dad has oodles of lemons. We have oodles of pecans. The result? Lemon-Pecan Tea Bread. I will make this again.

Good Thing #1:

My daughter-in-law, Lisa Chavarria, a reporter at the NBC affiliate in Chicago, was asked to interview author Marisel Vera about her new book, The Taste of Sugar. I was thrilled to watch Lisa conduct such a wonderful interview.

Good Thing #2:

I listened to an Action for Happiness meeting with meditation expert Jon Kabat-Zinn this week. "The world needs all its flowers," Kabat-Zinn said. "You are the flowering of life on earth." The talk will be archived here.

Good Thing #3:

We are determined to enjoy this holiday time, and every evening we choose a different Christmas movie (or audiobook or play) to watch. So far we have seen White Christmas; A Christmas Story; A Christmas Carol: Charlie Brown Christmas; How the Grinch Stole Christmas; The Holiday; and Miracle on 34th Street. We also listened to an audiobook, The Greatest Gift, the book behind It's a Wonderful Life. And we watched a play from Houston's Alley Theater, A Christmas Carol. What recommendations do you have for other Christmas movies and audiobooks that we might enjoy?

I'm happy you found your way to the Sunday Salon. Sunday Salon is a place for us to link up and to share what we have been doing during the week. It's 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?

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

My linkup for Sunday Salon is below.