I left the house every day in the last weeks, and I can't remember when I was this active. I started to work on reading my 1001 Children's Books, and I also finished one fabulous adult book. Swimming, walking, going to my meditation group and church, enjoying our movie/pizza night with my sister and her husband...and now we're planning a Father's Day get-together for my 94-year-old dad and we're contemplating going on a rock dig. I think I did more in the last two weeks than I did in all of 2020!
Who recommended The Girl With the Louding Voice to me? I thank you. As you recommended, I listened to it on audio. Adunni is my new favorite character, and The Girl With the Louding Voice is my new favorite read.
Bewilderment: A Novel by Richard Powers...7%
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman (Nonfiction Challenge)...47%
Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz (Chapter-a-Day Read)...35%
Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants (Naturalist Book Club)...10%
For the 11th year, Tamara from Thyme for Tea will be hosting Paris in July. Watch for more details on her blog soon. I'm planning my reads for July, including two children's books in French. Will you do Paris in July this year?
My 20 Books of Summer challenge is underway. I've got a nice stack of books from the library ready to go. I've read a book a day, so far, but I know I won't be able to keep that up.
Sue at Book by Book has officially kicked off her Big Book Summer Challenge. Join in the big book fun by reading at least one big book from Memorial Day to Labor Day. A big book is any book over 400 pages. I have several books on my might-read list that would qualify including A Tale of Two Cities and two 1001 Children's Books.
The theme for June for Action for Happiness is finding joy, even when things are difficult. Get your Joyful June calendar here.
Good Thing #1
I got a new phone!
I had an iPhone 6, and this one is an iPhone 12.
When I couldn't download apps because the iOS wouldn't update...
I think I am in love.
Good Thing #2
We've planted lots of new native plants,
including salvias, milkweed, blue sage, and coneflowers.
Good Thing #3
We watched the Friends Reunion Show,
and I'm up to episode 6 of Gilmore Girls.
Other recommendations?
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.
August is Women in Translation Month, an event hosted by Bibliobio. The event is designed to encourage more books by women who live outside English-speaking countries to be translated into English. I finally got around to reading three of my 1001 Children's Books that are written by women and that have been translated into English: Aldabra: The Tortoise Who Loved Shakespeare by Italian author Silvana Gandolfi, A Letter to the King by Dutch author Tonte Dragt, and The Big Sister by Swedish author Six Widerberg. I have a selfish reason for wanting to encourage more English translations of works by women: many of the 1001 Children's Books (and I'm trying to read all 1001) have not been translated into English. You still have time to join in. Visit Bibliobio to read a book or two before the end of August.
The Cybils are coming! It is time to seek judges for the 2019 Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards. Do you love to read and review children's books or young adult books? Apply to be a Cybils judge here.
My sister and her husband and my husband and I have a little film club where we get together at our houses, eat pizza, and watch and discuss a movie together on Sunday evenings. We alternate the responsibility for choosing the movie. Last Sunday I chose Grand Canyon. I had forgotten how violent the story is, but it was as thoughtful a flick as I remembered it being; I'm still thinking about it. The loneliness and isolation of the characters felt tragic and it was only when they took action to connect with others that things went better for them. Have you seen this movie? What movies would you suggest we show in our film club? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
How was your week?
Did you read any good books? Please share them with us.
What other bookish things did you do? What else is going on in your life?
I'd love to have you to link up here and/or at the Sunday Salon page on Facebook each weekend (Saturday-Sunday-Monday) and let us know what you have been doing. I hope you will visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there.
If you have other blogging friends, it would be wonderful if you'd tell others about our salon and encourage them to join us.
Other places where you may like to link up are below. Click on the picture to visit the site.
If you are not taken with our friend Moby, you may be less than enamored with my post, because everything I read this week is Moby Dick-ish. It's not that I have fallen in love with Moby Dick; I'm continuing to slog through everything Moby Dick because so many people have told me how much they adore this story. I'm like the girl who has agreed to marry the boy her parents have picked out for her; she likes the boy fine and dandy, but he seems at first look to be nothing special, and she is still hopeful that she will grow to love him, in time.
I read a ridiculous nine Moby Dick books this week: five books for Dewey's 24-Hour Reverse Readathon, and an additional four later this week. The links will take you to my reviews of each:
Moby Dick: 10 Minute Classics retold by Philip Edwards and illustrated by Adam Horsepool
I read Moby Dick: 10 Minute Classics, retold by Philip Edwards and illustrated by Adam Horsepool. It's a picture book version of Moby Dick, to be sure...more
Moby Dick (Classics Illustrated, No. 5) Comics - 1943 by Herman Melville
I could now, in all honesty, say that I have read Moby Dick. Well, the comic book version, published at a time a comic book sold for fifteen cents...more
The Whaleship Essex: The True Story of Moby Dick by Jil Fine
Yes, it's a book for elementary age children, but The Whaleship Essex: The True Story of Moby Dick was an excellent introduction for me into the event...more
Moby Dick based on the novel by Herman Melville, retold by Lew Sayre Schwartz, illustrated by Dick Giordano
The City of New Bedford, long considered the Whaling Capital of the World, set out in 2001 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publishing of Mob...more
Why Read Moby Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick
In this little book, written like a master's thesis from a besotted fan, Nathaniel Philbrick shares all his favorite lines and favorite themes and fav...more
The Whale: A Love Story by Mark Beauregard
Mark Beauregard relies upon careful research and a bit of imagination to tell the story of Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, two writers who me...more
Spying on Whales: The Past, Present, and Future of Earth's Most Awesome Creatures by Nick Pyenson
Nick Pyenson is the creator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian, and this book is the story of everything scientists have learned about whales...more
In the Heart of the Sea The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
It's easy to see how reading Moby Dick led me to In the Heart of the Sea; the story of the sinking of the Essex helped inspire Melville to write his...more
The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea by Philip Hoare
I was expecting The Whale to be just that, a book about whales. And it is, but it is so much more. The Whale is a meditation on whales, on Moby Dick,...more
I'm continuing to read Moby Dick, of course. I'm at 48% on my Kindle, and I'm trying to read at least two or three small chapters a day. I would be very happy if I can finish Moby Dick by the end of the month. No, I haven't fallen in love with Moby, but I am having a lot of fun reading the book. If you are interested in joining in with Bronwyn's Moby Dick Readalong, it's not too late. Sign onboard here.
I also posted about Moby Dick covers and Moby Dick vocabulary this week:
I plan to continue my Moby Dick adventure this month with more posts now and then. I've simultaneously listened to the podcast Whale, Whale, Whale while reading along in Power Moby Dick, an annotated online version of the text. But Whale, Whale, Whale ended abruptly last February with Chapter 32, and now I'm forced to resort to listening to Moby Dick Big Read, a read aloud of the text which I've found to be highly variable in its quality, while reading along in Power Moby Dick.
I sail on.
If you have read this far, you may be wondering if I've gone over the edge like Ahab, and the answer is, yes, but I hope to recover by switching to a small 1001 Children's Book celebration of Women in Translation Month. August is Women in Translation Month, an event hosted by Bibliobio. The event is designed to encourage more books by women to be translated into English and other languages. I have decided to buy and read three of my 1001 Children's Books that are written by women and that have been translated into English: Aldabra: The Tortoise Who Loved Shakespeare by Italian author Silvana Gandolfi, A Letter to the King by Dutch author Tonte Dragt, and The Big Sister by Swedish author Six Widerberg. I have a selfish reason for wanting to encourage more English translations of works by women: many of the 1001 Children's Books have not been translated into English. You can find out more about this event by visiting Bibliobio.
The scorching heat of August here along the Texas Gulf Coast
I haven't really done much this week other than read. The temperatures have pushed up into the high 90s each day, and it doesn't cool down much at night, so I've spent a lot of time in the air conditioning. Living where I do, along the Texas Gulf Coast, we waver between wanting the slightly cooler weather we love brought on by lows which also allow hurricanes to move in or putting up with the heat brought by high pressure areas which tends to keep the hurricanes away. We did celebrate my daughter-in-law's birthday and I walked and swam and did yoga and took a little class on photography and planned our upcoming trip to Utah and did other things to distract myself while I await the arrival of some cooler weather that should arrive by Halloween.
How was your week?
Did you read any good books? Please share them with us.
What other bookish things did you do? What else is going on in your life?
I'd love to have you to link up here and/or at the Sunday Salon page on Facebook each weekend (Saturday-Sunday-Monday) and let us know what you have been doing. I hope you will visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. If you have other blogging friends, it would be wonderful if you'd tell others about our salon and encourage them to join us.
Other places where you may like to link up are below. Click on the picture to visit the site.
