The Sunday Salon: New York!

  

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. 

I'm off in New York City with my friend, Rae, if all has gone well. Rae has always wanted to visit NYC, her favorite city in the world, but somehow things have never worked out until now. We are doing the two things Rae has on her NY bucket list: (1) go to the Strand Bookstore and (2) see a Broadway play. In addition, we are doing one thing I've always wanted to do: (1) stay at the Library Hotel. Wish us luck!

What I Read Last Week:

How to Listen by Thich Nhat Hanh

What I'm Reading Now:

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (Classics Club)

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (Reread)

Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide by Tony Horwitz (Nonfiction)

What I Posted Last Week Here at Readerbuzz:

The Sunday Salon: Prepping for NYC

The 2025 Houston Bookstore Crawl: Then & Now Bookshop in Galveston

Taken in 2017 from my hotel window

when I last visited NYC for BookExpo

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 (recent) Good Things:

Good Thing #1:

Birders at Quintana Neotropical Bird Sanctuary

Good Thing #2:

Ah, a mystery I might enjoy...

setting is near me 

with characters that are birders.

Good Thing #3:

Enjoying a slice of pie

at House of Pies

with a friend,

along with some House of Pies wisdom. 

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 2025 Houston Bookstore Crawl: Then & Now Bookshop in Galveston

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 first bookstore: 

Then & Now Bookshop began life as a pop-up bookstore in Galveston. It was always Lori's dream to own a bookshop. After working for thirty years as a preschool teacher and librarian, Lori, with a nudge from her daughter did just that.

Then & Now Bookshop

2118 Postoffice St.

Galveston, Texas 

(409) 502-2234

The owner, Lori.

What I bought there.

Texas Authors I've Met in Real Life

I have found great happiness in meeting authors and photographing them, 

like some folks enjoy seeing birds and taking photos of them.

All of these authors at one time were Texans.

Pinterest Page of Authors I Have Met and Photographed

What these authors have written...Katherine Center (Things You Save in a Fire, The Bodyguard, The Rom-Commers, and Happiness for Beginners)...John R. Erickson (Hank the Cowdog series)...Austin Kleon (Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work)...Mary Karr (The Liar's Club, Cherry, Lit)...Rick Riordan (The Lightning Thief series)...Elizabeth McCracken (The Giant's House, Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry, and Bowlaway)...Kinky Friedman (Elvis, Jesus & Coca-Cola, and Armadillos & Old Lace)...Stephen Harrigan (The Gates of the Alamo, Remember Ben Clayton, and Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas)...Naomi Shihab Nye (Everything Comes Next and There is No Long Distance Now)...Chris Barton (Shark vs. Train and What Do You Do With a Voice Like That?)...Don Tate (It Jes' Happened, Ron's Big Mission, and Carter Reads the Newspaper)...Christina Soontornvat (The Last Mapmaker, All Thirteen, and A Wish in the Dark)...Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (Mistress of Spices, Sister of My Heart, and One Amazing Thing)...Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street, Woman Hollering Creek, and Caramelo)...Aaron Reynolds (Creepy Carrots and Nerdy Birdy).

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.    

The Sunday Salon: Prepping for NYC

  

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. 

I am delighted to have met and spent time with Mae of Mae's Food Blog this week. What a lovely person she is, and how fortunate I am to have gotten to talk with her in real life!

What I Read Last Week:

New York Melody by Hélène Druvert

Going into Town by Roz Chast

New York: 365 Days by James Barron

A History of New York in 101 Objects by Sam Roberts

What I'm Reading Now:

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (Classics Club)

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (Reread)

Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide by Tony Horwitz (Nonfiction)

My friend Cindy and I visited two bookstores this week to conclude my 2025 Houston Bookstore Crawl. We stopped at two of the oldest independent bookstores in Houston, Murder by the Book and Brazos Bookstore. I'll be featuring a bit about my visits to twelve independent bookstores over the next three months on my blog. 

What I Posted Last Week Here at Readerbuzz:

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

National Poetry Month: Gate A-4 by Naomi Shihab Nye

Some Great Books to Read for a Person Traveling Soon to New York City

The Sunday Salon: A Volunteering Weekend at Quintana Neotropical Bird Sanctuary and San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge

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:

First harvest from our garden this year.

Good Thing #2:

I brought home a

Painted Lady butterfly-to-be

from Migration Celebration.

Good Thing #3:

A 700-day streak,

learning Spanish, French, and Italian

on Duolingo.

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.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

  

Today's Featured Book: 

Lonesome Dove

by Larry McMurtry

Genre: Historical Fiction

Published: 1985

Page Count: 864 pages

Summary: 

Journey to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove and meet an unforgettable assortment of heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove is a book to make us laugh, weep, dream, and remember.

 

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.

When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake - not a very big one.

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. 

In an effort to get the coffee going, Bolivar had spilled a small pile of coffee grounds into the grease where the eggs and bacon were frying. It seemed like a small enough matter to him, but it enraged Augustus, who liked to achieve an orderly breakfast at least once a week.

"I guess it won't hurt the coffee none to taste like eggs," he said testily. "Most of the time your eggs taste like coffee."

I read Lonesome Dove for the first time in 1985 when it first came out. I couldn't stop recommending it to other people, and it has been one of my big recommendation successes as a librarian. 

My happiest recommendation story was when I recommended it to my niece, Erin, a nonreader at nineteen, and a longtime cowgirl. "It was Lonesome Dove and my Aunt Debbie that made me a reader," she always told people. 

I'm reading Lonesome Dove for the fourth time starting on May 1 with Nick Senger's longtime Chapter-a-Day Book Challenge. This year the focus is on American Masterpieces. Here's the schedule if you would like to join along. 

I thought it would be a snap to find a used copy of Lonesome Dove, but after I searched three used bookstores without luck, I ended up buying a new copy of the book online. One bookseller said there's a Tik-Tok person who has set a whole new generation of readers on fire for Lonesome Dove, and that's the reason for the used book shortage.

I love the Lonesome Dove tv series, too. Here's a video from the 20th anniversary of the series that gives a bit of the flavor:

I never expected to like a Western, but it's these characters I fell in love with. Here's a link to my ten reasons for reading Lonesome Dove, if you'd like to hear a little more.

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 2nd - 8th - What's your typical process for writing a book review, from reading the book to publishing the review on your blog? (submitted by Page @ Pages of Perfiction)

What a great question! And I'm eager to hear the responses of others. 

I'm probably the lamest longtime blogging book reviewer there is. Typically, I read a book, I write down a few notes about my favorite parts and quotes, and I very quickly scribble a book review.