Tag Archives: Books

The Sunday Salon: Love Spring. Hate Spring Forward.

Today is just gorgeous! That’s why this post is coming to you so late. I’ve been out and about soaking up the sun and loving every minute of it. EXCEPT, I do not love Spring Forward at all. I’ve been battling a tiny head cold all weekend and although it’s just a head cold, I am going in for a test that will have to be canceled IF I cannot ditch the cold so waking up to the sun, streaming into my bedroom window was a bit jarring to my NyQuil induced state. I do feel much better though, now that I’ve adjusted to the time change a bit. It will take me all week to feel like normal though.

After doing a few chores around the house, my family and I drove to Old Town Pasadena and had a lovely brunch at Russell’s. It was really good! I had breakfast while everyone else had lunch but it was really nice to just sit down and enjoy a nice, leisurely meal. You see, people were still stumped by the time change so waiting for a table only took about ten minutes. That’s the plus side to Spring Forward.

We did some window shopping, sampled a sweet treat (or two) and then headed to Vroman’s Bookstore. Sigh. Going to Vroman’s is like dying and going to heaven. I picked up a few items:

Ethan Frome (for book group later this year. It’s scheduled for much later this year but for some reason I had to buy it today).

The Dead and the Gone (Hello! This is the follow-up to Life as We Knew It. Had to have it since book three comes out soon).

Rules (My son starts junior high in August and this is the book that they need to read over the summer!).

The Book Thief (This is my club’s pick for April. I won’t be there for the discussion since I have open house that night,  but I’ll read it anyway as I’ve always wanted to).

Someone at a Distance (Yes! It’s a Persephone Book! I’ve not read any of Whipple’s work so I was excited to find this).

I think I scored! I mean, they weren’t on sale but when you walk into a store and find everything on your list, you sort of feel good about it.

We just finished dinner so I’m about to curl-up with the last 20 pages of The Help. That is, if I can tune-out Miley Says Goodbye which has been seen in this house FIVE times since we got home. You’d think that the “goodbye” in the title would actually mean GOODBYE but nope. I’m not that lucky.

AWARDS

I also want to take a moment to thank Kristin from Always with a Book,  for the awards that she’s passed to me:

I am horrible with the rules for each award but I always appreciate getting them. Thanks so much for sharing them with me!

My Top 5 Books for 2009

 

 A lot of you are in the process of picking your top books for 2009 and many of you are choosing books that came out in 2009. Well, for me… this list is made up of books that I read in 2009. A couple of them (I realize) came out quite a bit before then.

Here they are, in no particular order:

The Terror by Dan Simmons [my review]
The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff [my review]
The Prudent Mariner by Leslie Walker Williams [my review]
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon [my review]
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson [my review]

I chose these books mainly because of the characters, but they are also very atmospheric and really took me to another time and place. They’ve all earned a permanent spot on my bookshelf.