Saturday, June 14, 2025

The Sunday Salon: The 41st Classics Club Spin...and the Spinner...Stops...on...Number...

  




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. 





What I Read Last Week:








What I'm Reading Now:

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Pigeon Post by Arthur Ransome

The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger







"Read the best books first, 
or you may not have a chance to read them at all."
  ---Thoreau


The Classics Club has issued the announcement of the Classics Club’s 41st CC Spin.

What is the spin?

It’s easy. At your blog, before next Sunday, June 15th, create a post that lists twenty books of your choice that remain “to be read” on your Classics Club list.

This is your Spin List.

You have to read one of these twenty books by the end of the spin period.

On Sunday, June 15th, The Classics Club will post a number from 1 through 20. The challenge is to read whatever book falls under that number on your Spin List by Sunday, August 24th. 

Let's see who can make it the whole way and finish their spin book!

I have a brand-new Classics Club list. Let's see where the needle stops.

So here is my list.

1. Coronado's Children: Tales of Lost Mines and Buried Treasure by J. Frank Dobie

2. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

3. The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse

4. Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor

5. Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes by Robert Louis Stevenson

6. The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes

7. The Trial by Franz Kafka

8. Brendon Chase by B. B.

9. Old Herbaceous by Reginald Arkell

10. In the Mountains by Elizabeth von Arnim

11. The Swish of the Curtain by Pamela Brown

12. Warrior Scarlett by Rosemary Sutcliff

13. The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather

14. One Man's Meat by E. B. White

15. The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh

16. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

17. Afoot in England by W. H. Hudson

18. The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley

19. A Lost Lady by Willa Cather

20. Village School by Miss Read 


Have you read any of these?

Do you recommend any of these?


And the spinner...stops...on...number...


Hurray! It's The Swish of the Curtain,
one of the 1001 Children's Books You Must Read!




The Edinburgh International Book Festival is coming August 9 through August 24. You lucky folks who live in Europe can attend in person, but, happily, those of us on the other side of the world can also attend some of the sessions via Zoom. Here are the sessions I would love to attend:
























What I Posted Last Week Here at Readerbuzz:

The Houston Bookstore Crawl 2025: Class Bookstore









Looking for hope...

What if Robert Frost's Neighbor Was Right? by Margaret Renkl

Naomi Shihab Nye suggests we write to help us here.





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:

Baby House Sparrows!
The parents were bringing
the babies food right 
outside our kitchen window.



Good Thing #2:

Certified Wildlife Habitat:
Just a way of (1) telling our neighbors that 
what might look unkempt is purposeful and
(2) giving the National Wildlife Federation 
a nice donation.




Good Thing #3:




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.


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Friday, June 13, 2025

Run for the Hills by Kevin Wilson: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop





Today's Featured Book: 

Run for the Hills: A Novel

by Kevin Wilson

Genre: Fiction

Published: May 13, 2025

Page Count: 256 pages

Summary: 

Ever since her dad left them twenty years ago, it’s been just Madeline Hill and her mom on their farm in Coalfield, Tennessee. While it’s a bit lonely, she sometimes admits, and a less exciting life than what she imagined for herself, it’s mostly okay. Mostly.

Then one day Reuben Hill pulls up in a PT Cruiser and informs Madeline that he believes she’s his half sister. Reuben—left behind by their dad thirty years ago—has hired a detective to track down their father and a string of other half siblings. And he wants Mad to leave her home and join him for the craziest kind of road trip imaginable to find them all.





 


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.

COALFIELD, TENNESSEE, 1982

Mad stood beside her father, close enough that nothing he did would escape her attention. On the farm, if you wanted to know anything, you had to be watching all the time. She walked with him along the stalks of sorghum as he clipped the grain heads off the crop and dropped the bundles of seeds into the basket she was carrying.





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. 

She accepted the possibility, even wished for it, that nothing would change. They would meet their father again, have it out, ask him the questions they wanted to ask. He would impart some kind of wisdom or reveal that there was no meaning to anything, and then they would each return to their lives, those separate compartments spaced out by so many miles, and everything would go back to the way that it was, except that strange emptiness they'd felt when their father had left would now be replaced with certainty.






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.    

June 13th - 19th - Do you set a monthly budget for books? If yes, what amount? Have you ever exceeded your limit? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer)

I primarily borrow books from libraries instead of buying books. I do treat myself to the occasional book. I do not have a budget.

If I did set a budget, I would be willing to spend most of my discretionary income on books. I like books.

  

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Wednesday, June 11, 2025

The Houston Bookstore Crawl 2025: Class Bookstore


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 sixth bookstore: 

Class Bookstore was begun by two book lovers, Dara and David Landry. It's an independent Black-owned bookstore that seeks to create a culture for people who love discovery.

Class Bookstore

3803 Sampson Street, #C

Houston, Texas

Open Thursday-Sunday 



This bookshop was a little tricky for me to find, just off the main street. It is on the Texas Southern University campus.






What I bought.
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Saturday, June 7, 2025

The Sunday Salon: It's Summer: Swim Class and Seashells and Butterflies and My Guitar and Gardening Plus a Little Hope

 




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. 






Swim class (almost) every morning is how I start my day in the summer, and it's a great way to start my day. I am so fortunate to live in a town where we have a great rec center, with excellent programs.

I also spent time on our weekly butterfly survey, volunteering at some sites on the Great Texas Wildlife Trails, working in our garden, visiting with a fellow Rae and I met on the plane coming home from New York City, learning about the seashells of Galveston beaches, practicing my guitar, and working on my latest idea for a book.




What I Read Last Week:

The Love Haters by Katherine Center (Fiction)

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Classics Club)





What I'm Reading Now:

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

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

The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence  Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoë Schlanger (Nonfiction)







What I Posted Last Week Here at Readerbuzz:

The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence  Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoë Schlanger: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

The Houston Bookstore Crawl 2025: Kindred Stories







Need a little hope?

Beginning May 29, and for the next six weeks in the On Being podcast feed and Substack, the On Being folks are opening a reflection/course experience curated by Krista and drawing upon her conversations with several visionary humans: adrienne maree brown, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ocean Vuong, Joy Harjo, Joanna Macy, and Ross Gay. 

Together, they extend rich and actionable invitations for a muscular, reality-based hope. They offer ways of seeing and living to lay our hands and our hearts, our imaginations and life force on the generative possibilities of life in this time.  





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:

Kermit the Frog and
"The Rainbow Connection"

I'm trying to learn to play this on guitar.





Good Thing #2:

Thank you to everyone who suggested McDonald & Dodds
as a series to watch after we finished up Vera.





Good Thing #3:

I learned about the seashells of Galveston beaches
last week. I hope to do some beachcombing soon.



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.


Posted by at 32 comments:
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