Skip to main content

The Sunday Salon

Fall is nearly here (technically this is the last weekend we’ve got before the first day of fall). You can definitely feel it in the weather around here, though it’s about 80 degrees out today. I spent most of yesterday working out the details of appliances for my new apartment; and then in the evening I went out with my parents and grandparents for dinner in Chinatown. I work up this morning with a cold, though, and spent part of this afternoon napping. I’m a little high on cold medication right now, so this is going to be a short post…

As for reading this week, I finished four books: The Poison Tree, by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, Every Secret Thing, by Emma Cole, William: An Englishman, by Cicely Hamilton, and Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris and Mrs. Harris Goes to New York, by Paul Gallico. This morning I started The Tortoise and the Hare, by Elizabeth Jenkins; but due to my cold, my concentration isn’t so great right now.

Labels:

Comments

Danielle said…
It's feeling very fall-ish here as well! I loved the Jenkins book when I read it--it was one of my favorite books last year. I also have Mrs Harris on my pile--so many books to read and I feel like I am making s-l-o-w progress!
September 19, 2010 at 9:58 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Another giveaway

This time, the publicist at WW Norton sent me two copies of The Glass of Time , by Michael Cox--so I'm giving away the second copy. Cox is the author of The Meaning of Night, and this book is the follow-up to that. Leave a comment here to enter to win it! The deadline is next Sunday, 10/5/08.
194 comments
Read more

A giveaway winner, and another giveaway

The winner of the Girl in a Blue Dress contest is... Anna, of Diary of An Eccentric ! My new contest is for a copy of The Shape of Mercy , by Susan Meissner. According to Publisher's Weekly : Meissner's newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost loves or fallen-away family members to tell them that all is forgiven and that life is too short for holding grudges. Achingly romantic, the novel features the legacy of Mercy Hayworth—a young woman convicted during the Salem witch trials—whose words reach out from the past to forever transform the lives of two present-day women. These book lovers—Abigail Boyles, elderly, bitter and frail, and Lauren Lars Durough, wealthy, earnest and young—become unlikely friends, drawn together over the untimely death of Mercy, whose precious diary is all that remains of her too short life. And what a diary! Mercy's words not only beguile but help Abigail and Lars
115 comments
Read more

Six Degrees of Barbara Pym's Novels

This year seems to be The Year of Barbara Pym; I know some of you out there are involved in some kind of a readalong in honor of the 100th year of her birth. I’ve read most of her canon, with only The Sweet Dove Died, Civil to Strangers, An Academic Question, and Crampton Hodnet left to go (sadly). Barbara Pym’s novels feature very similar casts of characters: spinsters, clergymen, retirees, clerks, and anthropologists, with which she had direct experience. So it stands to reason that there would be overlaps in characters between the novels. You can trace that though the publication history of her books and therefore see how Pym onionizes her stories and characters. She adds layers onto layers, adding more details as her books progress. Some Tame Gazelle (1950): Archdeacon Hoccleve makes his first appearance. Excellent Women (1952): Archdeacon Hoccleve gives a sermon that is almost incomprehensible to Mildred Lathbury; Everard Bone understands it, however, and laughs
6 comments
Read more