The Sunday Salon: 20 Books of Summer and Big Books of Summer Begin

  

Welcome! I am delighted that 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. It's also a great opportunity to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

A very busy week. Big birthday celebration for one of my Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series friends who turned 90. My husband, the gemcutter, cut his 2,500th gemstone. I went to my first Mah Jongg group. And I got together for lunch with a friend I used to teach with forty years ago. The 20 Books of Summer and the Big Books of Summer begin.

What I Read Last Week:

Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty (Book Club)

Raising Hare: A Memoir by Chloe Dalton (Nonfiction)

Sanditon by Jane Austen (Classic)

What I'm Reading Now:

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (Chapter-a-Day)

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Classics Club)

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt (Nonfiction)

The Love Haters by Katherine Center (Fiction)

What I Posted Last Week Here at Readerbuzz:

The Sunday Salon: My First Butterfly

My Favorite Children's Stories about Animal Companions

The Houston Bookstore Crawl 2025: Basket Books & Art

The Love Haters by Katherine Center: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

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:

Good Thing #1:

My husband cuts gemstone #2,500.

Good Thing #2:

Joyful June

Good Thing #3:

We saw the last episode of Vera.

What series should we try now?

Weekend linkup spots are listed below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

        

I hope you will join the linkup for Sunday Salon below.

The Love Haters by Katherine Center: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

Today's Featured Book: 

The Love Haters

by Katherine Center

Genre: Light Romatic Fiction

Published: May 20, 2025

Page Count: 320 pages

Summary: 

Katie Vaughn has been burned by love in the past―now she may be lighting her career on fire. She has two choices: wait to get laid off from her job as a video producer or, at her coworker Cole’s request, take a career-making gig profiling Tom “Hutch” Hutcheson, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer in Key West. The catch? Katie’s not exactly qualified. She can’t swim―but pretends that she can.

Plus, Cole and Hutch are brothers. And they don’t get along. Next stop: paradise! But paradise is messier than it seems. As Katie gets entangled with Hutch (the most scientifically good-looking man she has ever seen . . . but maybe a bit of a love hater), along with his colorful aunt Rue and his rescue Great Dane, she gets trapped in a lie. Or two.

Swim lessons, helicopter flights, conga lines, drinking contests, hurricanes, and stolen kisses ensue―along with chances to tell the truth, to face old fears, and to be truly brave at last.

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY is hosted by Rose City Reader. What book are you happy about reading this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) on BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY! Add the link to your blog or social media post and visit other blogs to see what others are reading.

Happy Friday and welcome to the FIRST LINE FRIDAY, hosted by Reading is My Superpower! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line.

It was quitting time on a Friday, but Cole Hutcheson didn't care.

Nobody cared to much right then, in fact. Because we were all about to get laid off.

THE FRIDAY 56 is hosted by Anne of Head Full of Books. To play, open a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% on your e-reader). Find a sentence or two and post them, along with the book title and author. Then link up on Head Full of Books and visit others in the linky. 

There wasn't time to move or even duck. It happened so fast, we all just stared. The thing hurled itself toward me---and the next thing I knew, we were both skidding across the wooden deck and sliding to a stop in a heap. 

Katherine Center at a library conference the first time I met her

I'm a sensible person. Usually. 

I'm not one to fawn over authors. Generally. 

But the truth is that I have loved reading Katherine Center's books since I met her in person at a library conference and read her first book in 2007. 

Why? She is a native Houstonian. Her books generally feature Texas settings and/or Texans as characters. She's a regular person. Her books are a fun romp. And she genuinely seems like she enjoys writing books and meeting the people who read her books.

The purpose of THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, and befriend other bloggers. THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.    

May 30th - June 5th - Have you ever wondered why a passionate book blogger might suddenly stop posting or delete their blog without notice? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer)

Yes, the first time that happened to me I learned the book blogger had passed away. It was one of my favorite bloggers, one of the first bloggers I followed. She was nicknamed Dewey, and the twice-annual 24-hour readathon was named after her. 

 

The Houston Bookstore Crawl 2025: Basket Books & Art

I was delighted to participate in the Second Annual Houston Bookstore Crawl #HTXBookCrawl25 in April. Here is a map I made of the twenty-five indie bookstores in the Houston area.

How it worked: I picked up a crawl card at Then & Now Bookstore in Galveston, one of the 25 participating stores. I got my card stamped or signed by each of the stores I visited through the end of April. Once I visited 10, I submitted my card to any of the participating bookstores to be entered into a raffle for gifts. Every store I hit after the first 10 counts as an additional entry. The cards had to be turned in by the end of business on April 30.

April 26 was Indie Bookstore Day, and indie bookstores all over the US hosted events. Take a look at the map here to see what events were held in April.

Say hello to the Participating Bookstores:

Basket Books & Art · Blue Willow Bookshop · Books Abound · The Book Attic · Books by the Bay · The Book Readers Venue · Brazos Bookstore · Buy the Book · Candescent Books · CLASS Bookstore · Copperfield's Books · Dreamers Books + Culture · Good Books in the Woods · Good on Paper Books and Stationery · Gulf Coast Cosmos Comics · Houston Book Warehouse · Kaboom Books · Katy Budget Books · Kindred Stories · LIT bookbar · LIT Java Coffee & Books · Mossrose Bookshop · Murder by The Book · Then & Now Bookshop · Village Books

I visited twelve bookstores in April. 

Here is my fourth bookstore:

Basket Books & Art is an independent bookstore inside the Montrose area of Houston. It specializes in literature, art, and thought. Owners Laura Hughes and Edwin Smalling say, "Our goal is to offer a unique context in which art and books can co-mingle in exciting ways, opening up alleyways of conversation. We aim to provide a space for creative and intellectual exchange through our inventory and programming, and to offer Houston’s diverse arts and intellectual communities something for the mind, a portal to the world of art, writing, and thought writ large.”

Basket Books & Art

115 Hyde Park Blvd., Houston, Texas

All these are poetry books.

A gallery upstairs

What I bought.

My Favorite Children's Stories about Animal Companions

I've been trying to read all 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up for about twenty years, and I've managed to read 799 of the books on the list thus far. 

A surprising number of these stories are about humans and their animal companions. I found forty.

What kinds of animal companions are in these stories? Almost half are about dogs (15). Horses are also popular (8). Three stories are about pigs. There are two stories about cats, two stories about bears, and two stories about wolves. And there is one story each about less common pets: a rat, a penguin, a crocodile, a monkey, a cricket, a donkey, a mouse, a lion, and a deer. 

Warning! Warning! Warning! These animals may or may not die by the end of the book.

Note: If you are looking for a good story for children with animals, you might like something I've listed below. 

Henry and Mudge by Cynthia Rylant (dog)

That Pesky Rat by Lauren Child (rat)

Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág (cats)

Lyle Lyle Crocodile by Bernard Waber (crocodile)

Clifford the Big Red Dog by Norman Bridwell (dog)

Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion (dog)

Curious George by H. A. Rey (monkey)

Good Dog, Carl by Alexandra Day (dog) 

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo (dog)

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (horse)

Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (dog)

Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls (dogs)

Old Yeller by Fred Gipson (dog)

Lassie Come-Home by Eric Knight (dog)

The Red Pony by John Steinbeck (horse)

Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard Atwater (penguins)

Jock of the Bushveld by J. Percy FitzPatrick (dog)

A Cricket in Times Square by George Selden (cricket)

A Dog So Small by Philippa Pearce (dog)

Charlotte's Web by E. B. White (pig)

The Black Stallion by Walter Farley (horse)

A Pony for Jean by Joanna Cannan (horse)

Platero and I by Juan Ramón Jiménez (donkey)

The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary (mouse)

Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry (horse)

Sounder by William H. Armstrong (dog)

War Horse by Michael Murpurgo (horse)

The Biggest Bear by Lynd Ward (bear)

Pit Pony by Joyce Barkhouse (horse)

Babe the Gallant Pig by Dick King-Smith (pig)

The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford (two dogs and a cat)

The Call of the Wild by Jack London (dog)

The Peppermint Pig by Nina Bawden (pig)

Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George (wolves)

Gentle Ben by Walt Morey (bear)

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell (dog)

The Lion by Joseph Kessel (lion)

My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara (horse)

The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (deer)

White Fang by Jack London (wolf)

I hope that a great many of these are books that are familiar to you.

If not, it's never too late to read these.

Some of my animal posts from the past you might like to check out:

The Best Animal Stories

Best True Pet Books

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.