Sunday Salon – March 7, 2010

March 7, 2010

9:30 AM

Good morning everyone! Winter was stubbornly hanging on here last week in Northern California despite some warm days which tricked us into thinking Spring had arrived. We ended up having three inches of snow during the week (which feels like a lot after having only rain for weeks upon weeks). Raven likes the snow – it makes her silly…she likes to throw her feet way out in front of her and run full speed in circles around the yard. This morning the sunshine is back and the snow is melting. I long for tulips.

I have posted a few reviews since my last Sunday Salon…

Life Sentences by Laura Lippman was an easy and enjoyable read for me (read my review). For those of you familiar with her early novels, you might be interested to know she has changed things up a little. Rather than writing straight mystery or suspense novels, she is now writing what I would consider more literary fiction with a mystery embedded in it. I have one of her earliest novels in my TBR pile and I am interesting to compare it to her more recent work. I was thrilled that Lippman agreed to write a guest post for my blog as part of my TLC book tour of her book.

I also finished reading Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt (read my review). I was pleasantly surprised by this little memoir which packs a punch. Although initially I was on the fence about the style of Rosenblatt’s writing, I eventually grew to appreciate it as it related to theme. Rosenblatt was interviewed about his memoir on NPR and I listened to it after reading the book. It is a fabulous interview which I attempted to embed here on my blog – but for some reason the code refused to cooperate. So here is a link to the interview which I think you might enjoy (to hear the interview you have to click on the phrase “Listen to the story – All Things Considered” which is just above the title to the article).

I also was thrilled to get a copy of the re-release of Garth Stein’s debut novel: Raven Stole the Moon (read my review). I didn’t love this book, but I appreciated it and found it an interesting (and quick) read. Although on the surface this comes off as a straight forward supernatural thriller, Stein explores some bigger issues within its pages. Those readers who are interested in Native American legends and religion will probably want to pick up a copy of this book which was just released this week. I’m giving away a copy on March 11th as part of the Reading for a Cure project. To learn more about the giveaways, please go to this post. (I’m also drawing a winner for a paperback edition of The Local News by Miriam Gershow on March 9th – you can read more about that here).

My current read is The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt which was short listed for the 2009 Booker prize. This is my first Byatt novel and I was not really sure what to expect. I’ve heard great things about this book, and also some not so great things about it. But I must say that, so far, I am captivated by this dense family saga set in Victorian England. Perhaps it is my love of stories or, more precisely, my love of story telling…but I am finding myself just immersed in this novel which revolves around a children’s book writer named Olive and her huge family of children. At nearly 700 pages, it is a good thing I am enjoying the book! I have no idea when I’ll finish reading it…but when I do, I’ll post a review.

Here are my scheduled reads for this month (subject to change, of course!):

• The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver
• The Lotus Eaters, by Tatjana Soli (being toured here on my blog on March 24th)
• An Irish Country Girl, by Patrick Tyler (another book I’ll be giving away toward the end of the month)
• The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer (reading this for the Booker Yahoo group)
• Say You’re One of Them,by Uwem Akpan (short story collection)
• Ellen Foster, by Kaye Gibbons
• I Never Told Anyone, edited by Ellen Bass and Louise Thornton (an anthology of writings by women survivors of sexual abuse which I’m reading for The Social Justice Challenge)

Some of these are chunky reads, some look like they will demand a lot of my attention … so I am hoping I can get through them all in March!

What about you? What are you reading? What is on your nightstand? What are YOUR plans for today? Whatever they are, I hope they involve a great book!