Skip to main content

The Sunday Salon

Happy Sunday! How is everyone holding up after the Read-a-Thon? I didn’t participate, but I was watching from the sidelines. I did, however, manage to do about four hours of reading yesterday. I finished an ARC of The Overnight Socialite, by Bridie Clark (author of Because She Can), coming out in mid-December. I’m now about 150 pages into an ARC of Barbara Kingsolver’s new book, The Lacuna, which is set in Mexico in the 1930s and ‘40s. Although it took a bit to get into at first, I’m absolutely entranced by it.

Also read this week was Miss Buncle’s Book, by DE Stevenson, another Persephone, this one about a woman in a country village who writes a satire about her neighbors. It was delightful reading.

I’ve also had some blogging issues—not with this one, but with my review index; the formatting went a bit weird and now I’ve had to completely redo it. It’s time-consuming, seeing as I’ve got about 320 reviews up here on this site. But it’s not terrible.

How’s your Sunday going?
Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
My Sunday is going very nicely! I didn't participate in the Read-A-Thon either- instead I had to jump through hoops to get a new library card. Such is life.

I can't wait to hear about the new Kingsolver!
October 25, 2009 at 11:37 AM
Anonymous said…
I guess we were all standing on the sidelines of the Read-A-Thon... hmm... were you the one who bumped into me and spilled my hot cider? ;-)

How is The Lacuna? I loved Barbara Kingsolver's last two novels - The Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer - and have high hopes for this new one. I've never really been able to get into her NF as much.
October 25, 2009 at 6:41 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

Review: The Piano Teacher, by Janice Y.K. Lee

The Piano Teacher is a complicated novel. On the surface, it’s about a love affair between two British ex-patriots in Hong Kong in 1952-3. Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong with her husband Martin at a time when the world is still recovering from WWII; Claire takes up work as a piano teacher for the daughter of a wealthy Chinese family, where she meets Will Truesdale, the Chens’ enigmatic chauffeur. The book jumps back in time between the 1950s and the beginning of WWII, when Will is interned in Stanley, a Hong Kong camp for enemies of Japan. On “the outside” is Tudy Liang, Will’s beautiful Eurasian lover. There’s no doubt that Lee’s writing is beautiful. But there’s something lacking in this short, terse novel that I can’t quite put my finger on. First, I think it’s the tenses she uses when taking about each story: that which is set in the 1950s is in the past tense, while the war scenes are talked about in the present tense (confusing, no?) The interpersonal relationships of the m...
12 comments
Read more