The Sunday Salon

I’ve spent most of my Sunday on the couch (what else is new?) watching Ugly Betty. Since the Very Last Episode Ever was recently aired on TV, I’ve been watching past seasons of the show on DVD—I’ve reached the beginning of the second season. (why did I never noticed the subliminal similarities between it and Sex and the City before?).

I also managed to get in a bit of reading this weekend—I finished Valerie Anand’s Gildenford, a novel about the events leading up to the Conquest. I finished, nearly in one sitting, a review copy of Jen Lancaster’s My Fair Lazy, which will be coming out at the beginning of May. This one’s about her addiction to reality TV, and how she essentially got up off her ass to experience real culture for a change. Very funny, as you might expect from Lancaster’s books—and much better, in my opinion, than her last. As part of her “cultural Jenaissance,” she attempted to read or re-read the classics, including Aldous Huxley. There’s a great story in there about her trying to find a “novel written by a woman whose initials are E.W.,” picking up Edith Wharton, and realizing that she meant to ask for Evelyn Waugh instead… never mind that Waugh was a man!

Also read this week were The Confessions of Catherine de Medici, by March LTER book; and The Royal Griffin, by Juliet Dymoke. I just began reading a review copy of the reprint of The Brothers of Gwynedd Quartet, which I’m reading for a sort of book club that the publicist at Sourcebooks organized. It’s rather dense, but very good. I’m glad that the read-a-thon has been divided into section, otherwise, I don’t know if I’d have the courage to finish it!

I did a bit of book buying, too. I bought the two Mary Stewart books I don’t own (Thunder on the Right and Airs Above the Ground); and I was in the mood for some more Dorothy Sayers, so I bought Clouds of Witness and The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, as well as dusting off my copy of Unnatural Death, which I’ve owned for ages but not actually read yet. For some reason I associate Mary Stewart and Dorothy Sayers's books with spring and summer reading, so this will be perfect. In 2008 around that time of year I went on a Dorothy Sayers kick, where I read Murder Must Advertise, Whose Body?, and The Nine Tailors. Somehow, while folding laundry this afternoon, I suddenly got the urge to read more Lord Peter Wimsey! Do you ever get weird urges to read or re-read books at the most inappropriate times?