Readerbuzz: The Sunday Salon: Book Serendipity

Welcome! I'm happy you joined us here at the Sunday Salon. What is the Sunday Salon? The Sunday Salon is a place to link up and share what we have been doing during the week plus it's a great way to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there.

I encourage you to link up with us, and then visit as many of the other participants as you can.

There should be a name for this. You have probably had it happen to you. It happened to me last week.

I'll call it Book Serendipity. I had been reading North Woods for a couple of days, and Here: A Novel came in for me at the library. Both of these are books about a specific location over time.

No, it was not intentional. Yes, it was odd.

What I Read Last Week:

North Woods by Daniel Mason (Fiction)

Here: A Novel by Richard McGuire (Graphic Novel)

What I'm Reading Now:

Madame Bovary (in French) by Gustave Flaubert (Classic)

The Complete Poems by Wallace Stevens (Poetry)

Writers and Their Notebooks edited by Diana Raab (Writing)

Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard (Nature)

Rinkitink by L. Frank Baum (Ozathon)

The Edinburgh Book Festival (online)

I just saw that the Edinburgh Book Festival is a hybrid book festival this year. I so enjoyed attending virtually during 2020 and Covid. I'm hoping to listen to Matt Haig discuss his latest book.

What I Posted Last Week Here at Readerbuzz:

Sandwich by Catherine Newman

Books That Have Changed the Way I Think About Relationships, Life, Right and Wrong, and My Place in the Universe...and That Might Change Your Thinking, Too

The Sunday Salon: Playing Reading Catch-Up

Happily, I've finished both of my summer reading challenges!

20 Books of Summer Challenge

20/20

It's the tenth anniversary of the wonderful celebration of reading, 20 Books of Summer, hosted by Cathy at 746 Books.

There are very few rules...make a list of ten, fifteen, or twenty books...post the list...try to read them all starting on June 1st and finishing up on September 1st...drop a book from the list, if you wish, and replace it...change your goal from twenty to ten mid-summer, if you wish...

How the Mountains Grew: A New Geological History of North America by John Dvorak (Nonfiction; Naturalist Book Club)

Writing on Empty by Natalie Goldberg (Nonfiction; Writing)

The Stolen Child by Ann Hood (Historical Fiction)

The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl (Fiction; Paris in July)

Magpie Murders: A Novel by Anthony Horowitz (Mystery; Face-to-Face Book Club)

The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan (Nonfiction; Memoir; Birding)

The Great Book of Journaling: How Journaling Can Support a Life of Wellness, Creativity,

Meaning, and Purpose edited by Eric Maisel (Nonfiction; Writing)

North Woods by Daniel Mason (Fiction)

The Wedding People: A Novel by Alison Espach (Novel)

The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson (Nonfiction)

Summer by Edith Wharton (Novel; Classic)

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (Novel; Classic)

The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center (Novel)

Virgil Wander by Leif Enger (Novel)

James by Percival Everett (Novel)

Germinal by Émile Zola (Classic)

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Science Fiction)

Tik-Tok of Oz by L. Frank Baum (Fantasy; Ozathon)

The Scarecrow of Oz by L. Frank Baum (Fantasy; Ozathon)

French Windows by Antoine Laurain (Novel; Paris in July)

Clara Reads Proust by Stéphane Cartier (Novel; Paris in July)

Big Book Summer Challenge

6/6

Big Book Summer Challenge is hosted by Sue at Book By Book.

The Big Book Summer Challenge is an annual challenge that begins on Memorial Day weekend (at the end of May) and runs until Labor Day (the first Monday of September). The idea is simply to read bigger books (400 or more pages)--just one or two or as many as a person wants to read. And readers have the whole summer to do it! I have several Big Books picked out. Hope you'll join Sue and me for the laid-back fun this summer!

The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson - 565 pages

Germinal by Émile Zola - 596 pages

Magpie Murders: A Novel by Anthony Horowitz - 501 pages

Captain Fracasse by Théophile Gautier - 478 pages

How the Mountains Grew: A New Geological History of North America by John Dvorak - 464 pages

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens - 831 pages

I began to list 3 Good Things every day during the pandemic. Now I've established a regular routine of writing down my 3 Good Things. Here are 3 Good Things from last week: