The Sunday Salon: Sometimes It's Good to Let Things Go...

What I Read Last Week:

A Woman's Story by Annie Ernaux (Nobel Prize Winner; Memoir)

No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith (Book Club Reread)

You: A Writer's Guide to Craft Through Memory by Ruta Septys (Writing)

Zen and the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury (Writing)

Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg (Writing)

Pictures from Italy by Charles Dickens (Italy; Nonfiction; Travel)

The Little Italian Hotel by Phaedra Patrick (Italy; Fiction)

Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells by Helen Scales (Nonfiction)

I found A Woman's Story to be a powerful book, and the author worthy of the Nobel Prize for Literature. It's the story of the death of Ernaux's mother. If you read and enjoyed a Claire Keegan novel, I feel safe in predicting that you will like A Woman's Story, too.

I listened to No. 1 Ladies' Detective for my book club this month, and I found it just as solid as I did when I first read it twenty years ago.

I wrote less-than-positive reviews for five books this week: You, Zen, Wild Mind, Pictures from Italy, Italian Hotel, and Spirals. It's not the books; I think I wasn't in the mood for reading these.

What I'm Reading Now:

I'm reading two more Italy-related books this week, and reading these has helped restore my reading mojo. One is a very light novel, My Italian Bulldozer, also by Alexander McCall Smith, and the other is a light overview of the history and current life of the Italian people titled, appropriately, The Italians, written by John Hooper. 

I'm definitely planning to dig into The Covenant of Water this week, and I'm about 15% of the way into Count of Monte Cristo.

Last week I posted here at Readerbuzz:

The Sunday Salon: I Commit to Writing a Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very-Bad Novel This Summer

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese: Friday Book Friends: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

The Last Ten Books I Couldn't Resist Buying

Good Thing #1

Since Lance Wood from the National Weather Service

spoke at our Texas Master Naturalist meeting

about hurricanes,

I now know a lot about storm surge

and flooding risk and tornadoes and wind speed

and how all these relate to hurricanes 

here along the Gulf Coast of Texas.

So I guess this is a good thing...lol...

Good Thing #2

Tamara of Thyme for Tea and I 

decided not to host Paris in July this year.

Tamara said she'd be happy to pass this on

if someone else would like to host.

Let me know if you'd like to do this in July,

and I'll share Tamara's contact info.

Good Thing #3

I decided not to serve as category chair

for Fiction Picture Books and Board Books

this year for the Cybils Awards.

Happily, one of the wonderful judges on the panel

agreed to take this on in 2023.

Sometimes it's good to let things go...

I'm happy you joined us here at the Sunday Salon. Sunday Salon is a place 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.