Sunday Salon - Welcome to Summer

The Sunday Salon.com

Good afternoon and Welcome to my Sunday Salon. Happy Father's day and Happy Summer Solstice to all of you in the northern hemisphere and Happy Winter to those of you on the southern side of the world. My unplugged week went rather well, but I'm pretty brain dead at the moment. I managed to work on my novel the first three days, but then my midterm for Modern Literature was this week. I just spent the past four days working on it. I had to write 8 short essays answering questions about Modern Literature, themes and symbols in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Oh, my brain!!!

I think it's great that one of the first blog articles I came across today was "How to stop Digital Fidgeting and Start Writing" on Write to Do by Mary Jaksch. She talks about exactly what I end up doing a lot of times: checking and reading emails several times, checking stats and following the links; tuning my blog; and surfing the net. Networking I don't do so much, but the rest are time wasters for me. Hence the reason for the unplug week. I didn't blog at all, except for having some auto posts and I was 97% successful in staying off the blogs for the week. I fell off the wagon for a short time while I was at work on Thursday. :)

Another article was "When paper works better than a word processor" By Samar on The Writing Base. I've discovered this to be very true and Samar is so right - there are no distractions - just me, some paper and a pen. And the benefit - I can write anywhere, including out in my lovely secluded, green leafy, allergy free, backyard. Yes, allergy free. When we planned the backyard, I found this wonderful book "Allergy Free Gardening" by Thomas Ogren and it saved my life. Our landscaper thought I was slightly nuts, but I am enjoying my garden without sniffles, water eyes and sneezing.

During the week I finished "The Angels Game" by Carlos Ruis Zafon and will posting a review of it tomorrow. I also got on a romance kick this week and read the next two books in the Virgin River Series by Robyn Carr, "Hero under Cover" by Suzanne Brockmann and Cherry Adair's "Night Fall" in the Men of Tflac series. I'll be doing mini reviews for those.

I just started a new book today that I have been promising Father it would be the first book I read for summmer - Walls of Phantoms by Courtney Thomas.

It is a huge book of 1320 pages - longer than War and Peace and supposedly the third longest book ever written. I can see why as I'm barely 35 pages in and the writer gets quite detailed, including everything that is in one of the character's refrigerators. According to the author

Walls of Phantoms retells Homer's Odyssey in a modern setting. At it's core though, it is a seductive story of two young people - a financial analyst and an aspiring filmmaker - who seek love from each other despite their many differences. Included in every chapter is the accurate day to day news events of 1989, Boston, which is presented in a way never seen before in a novel. Walls of Phantoms is symbolic on so many levels, it is one of the most ambitious novels ever penned.
Wish me luck!

Later in the week I'll also be posting a final wrap up on the Spring Reading thing 2009 hosted by Katrina of Callapidder Day's. My theme this year was First Time Author Reads and I enjoyed the majority of books and discovered some authors that are going on to my keeper list. I have one last review to do for it on "Sarah Palin: A New Kind of Leader" by Joe Hilley, so will try to post it first.


That's it for now. I'm off to make home made stuffing to go with the roast chicken baking in the oven. Father's request for Father's Day.


Happy Father's Day

5 comments:

  1. Goodness gracious, you're a busy girl! How do you manage to do so many things and still be sane? Is there a secret I should know about;-)

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  2. I'm a fan of writing with paper. I find it helps me see things that I don't when working on the computer.

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  3. Lily: I guess the secret would be organization and I hardly ever watch television. That's the only thing I can think of.

    Lotusgirl: Exactly. My mind seems to flow differently when writing on paper.

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  4. No television? You are a woman of unusual disciplined! Sometimes I find myself hoping for a cable outage so I can pull myself away from the TV and the internet. I don't have much luck doing it voluntarily. Even when I'm in the mood to unplug, seeing my husband and kids watching TV just sucks me right back in :-).

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  5. Good luck! (I think the longest book written was Clarissa, but I'm not entirely sure on that. Scary thought anyhow.)

    I'm glad to hear that your unplugged week went nicely and that your paper is now done and your brain can relax a while!

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