Skip to main content

The Sunday Salon


“Spring forward, fall back!” I totally forgot that the clocks were supposed to change back today, so I ended up doing my Sunday routine a whole hour earlier today! It definitely feels like fall or early winter here, and it’s sunny, which I really love. I can’t wait for winter to get here in earnest (though I’ll probably be regretting my words when March rolls around!)

I bought a new winter coat last weekend (Banana Republic) that I’ve had a chance to break out this week and weekend. I’ve had good luck with BR’s winter coats in the past (my last one from four years ago was a BR purchase), so I was thrilled to get my new one on sale. I recently went from wearing scrubs at work to regular business attire. This has been a bit of a challenge considering that I’ve lost a bit of weight over the past two years and so most of my clothes from when I lived in New York no longer fit. I’m mildly obsessed with the clothes that Anthropologie sells, but I’m trying to restrain myself.

Meanwhile, I’ve done a fair amount of reading this weekend; I finished Lords of the White Castle, by Elizabeth Chadwick (a chunkster), and an ARC of American Rose, by Karen Abbott (also the author of Sin in the Second City, which I loved). This new book is sort of a biography of Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous striptease artist from the 1920s-40s, and the set of brothers who made her famous. Right now I;m back to Virago Modern Classics, with The Land of Green Ginger, by Winifred Holtby. I received my October LTER book in the mail this week, too (it’s Christie Dickason’s The King’s Daughter), so I must get to that soon.

Comments

I love BR too; I bet your new coat is awesome.

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.

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...

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...