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The Sunday Salon


Well, it’s been cold here this weekend, with a healthy dose of snow yesterday. Good thing I got my errands in yesterday before it all started! I spent much of the weekend indoors, reading and watching TV. This week I finished reading The Love Knot; read The Victory, by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles (the 12th book in the Morland Dynasty series); and yesterday afternoon I finished an ARC of Heresy, by SJ Parris, which came to me courtesy of the Vine.

Also reading intermittently this week (and probably well into this next) was the 800-page-plus collection of Mitford letters, edited by Charlotte Mosley (The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters. I'm using it for the A to Z Challenge, and cheating just a bit; I'm taking the X from the word six and using the book as my X title). It’s been my bedside book this past week, and I’ve been reading a bit at a time before bed. Currently about halfway through and enjoying it immensely. This compilation is only about 5% of the total collection of 12,000 letters, and it’s really fascinating to read the Mitford story through the unique voices of the six sisters (Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah). I think when I review the book, I’m going to focus on the collection itself, not necessarily analyze the sisters themselves—one could go on for days about the controversial and not-so-controversial things the girls did during their lifetimes. It’s a very good collection of letters, spanning the course of the twentieth century and slightly beyond.

More blog maintenance this weekend; I realized I needed to get some of my bookmarks sorted out. What I do is, whenever one of my fellow bloggers reviews something I have, I bookmark it, to later link to the review in my own. I realized that I have four months’ worth of bookmarks to link! I think it was somewhere in the realm of 150 posts. So I’ve been busy with that, although I’m still not done yet. This week I also wrote a few reviews, to be published at a later date.

On to the ubiquitous reading wrap-up for January. 11 books read this month, with two in progress (the Mitford book, plus Dorothy Whipple’s Someone at a Distance). Alphabetically by author:

Within the Hollow Crown, by Margaret Campbell Barnes
The Love Knot, by Elizabeth Chadwick
Twilight of Avalon, by Anna Elliott
Fidelity, by Susan Glaspell
The Road to Jerusalem, by Jan Guillou
The Queen’s Governess, by Karen Harper
The Victory, by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
The Carlyles at Home, by Thea Holme
The Splendour Falls, by Susanna Kearsley
O Juliet, by Robin Maxwell
Heresy, by SJ Parris

The best of these were the Susanna Kearsley, as well as the Holme (I gave both five stars). Coming in close behind were the Elliott, Chadwick, and Glaspell books, with 4.5 each. Least favorite read of the month was the Robin Maxwell, which earned two. Given that I tend to be on the harsh side when it comes to ratings, it’s been a good month! One of my goals for this year is to read more nonfiction (since only 8% of what I read last year was nonfic, down from 17% in 2008); and I've definitely been keeping up with that so far. Hope to keep up my good reading streak in February...

How was your weekend?

Comments

Svea Love said…
You read some good books this month! I have a few of those waiting on my shelf.
Marg said…
It must be nearly time for me to read another Kearsley book. I do enjoy them!

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