Sunday Salon: February Wrap up


The sounding refrain seems to be where did February go?  It passed far too quickly in my opinion.  Spring is approaching and hopefully with the beginning of Daylight Savings Time new week and the arrival of spring, my writing mojo will come back. I've not been feeling very inspired lately and more into reading about writing, rather than writing.  However, my guys have been at me to write and James is wanting me to get back to writing Green Cross so I can write a scene which includes my Hero talking to a bikini clad beauty on the beach who will do acrobatics for him.  Yep, he's 13. What can I say.  Plus hubby is wanting me to finish editing Eyes in the Ashes.  Will work on getting into an inspired mood this week.  

February reading wise, I discovered Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville series and devoured most of the series reading up through #9 Kitty's Big Trouble.   Kitty is a werewolf with a talk show and she gets into all kinds of trouble - great characters and the storyline is addictive. I've also fallen for Dean Koontz Odd Thomas series and read the next two books in series  - Forever Odd #2 and  Brother Odd #3.  Also working on Robert Jordan's  Wheel of Time series which are chunksters so reading one a month at this point and finished # 3 The Dragon Reborn.  I've had City of Ashes in Cassandra Clare's Immortal Instruments series sitting on the shelf for quite a while and finally got around to reading it.  It took me a bit of time to get back into the characters, but once I did, the story went smoothly.  Not sure if I will continue the series at some point.   

Dusty books wise finished Death and Restoration by Iain Pears in his Art History Mystery series. Have enjoyed reading all of them and think this is the last. Will have to go back and check. Also read Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop which was about a Catholic Bishop establishing a church in the new established territory of New Mexico and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Plus Deborah Crombie's Scotland yard mystery about a drowned rower in No Mark Upon Her. Lots of twists and turns in this one.   And new to me author Hallie Ephron (what took me so long) and her psychological suspense mystery Never Tell a Lie which was creepy good.  Finally read the novella Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson which wasn't much a comedy but a dark story about a dutch couple hiding a jewish man in their home during the war.  Small book but packs a wallop.


Non fiction wise I finally finished Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the vocation of Writing - edited by  Robert Inchausti.  It was a mixture of various essays from all of Merton's books and his correspondence with various writers and his thoughts on writing which varied depending on his mood. It was interesting and made me want to read all his other books.  Which lead to me now reading New Seeds of Contemplation which has much to comtemplate so taking it slowly. 

In my A to Z challenge have progressed through the D's and now working on the E's.  I'm currently reading another dusty book Never Let You Go by Erin Healy which is a small town christian supernatural psychological and scary good. 

And I signed up for a coursera class that just sounded really intriguing which will begin tomorrow called Know Thyself:
An investigation of the nature and limits of self-knowledge from the viewpoints of philosophy, psychoanalysis, experimental psychology, neuroscience, aesthetics, and Buddhism.  Readings are drawn from classical Western, non-Western, and contemporary sources.


For the 52 Books challenge, we are taking our armchair travels down into South America and will be doing a readalong starting March 10 of Hopscotch by Julio Cortozar which is a free wheeling, stream of consciousness book in which you can read in chapter order or follow the random pattern set out by the author, hopscotching around.  Should be interesting. 

Cheers to March and Happy Reading! 


The Sunday Salon.com



1 comment:

  1. You have been reading some great books lately!!! Several that you listed are ones that I want to read myself!!!

    ReplyDelete

Unfortunately due to being spammed, all comments will be moderated and will appear after approval. At least I'm not using the dreaded captcha. Thank you for dropping by!