TSS -Mad Dash for the Finish Line!

The Sunday Salon.com

Happy Sunday! and Merry (almost) Christmas 🙂

I have been a readin’ fool this week; I’m trying to reach my goal of 75 books by December 31st. I’ve really made progress this past week, but I’ve also been busy on Second Life, as well. I could probablyget more read if I stayed off SL, but I need balance between the two loves. At any rate, the following books were read and reviewed on Mt. TBR this week:

Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders by Neil GaimanI am blown away by Gaiman’s ability to weave magic throughout his writing. A master at creating art, the pages of a book are his canvas and words his medium. I will definitely be reading more Gaiman in the new year!

Robot Dreamsby Sara Varon A very cute and touching graphic novel that tells a story of Dog and Robot without words. Great for a family of all ages to share, Robot Dreams shows the fragile and organic nature of friendships and relationships.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Unionby Michael Chabon  In this murder mystery, Chabon uses an alternate timeline to mix Jewish culture with the Arctic setting of Sitka, Alaska. Landsman is a maverick detective with personality failings and quirks, i.e. an alcoholic afraid of the dark. Yiddish Policemen’s is a story of the love children have for their fathers, and how age never dims their desire for their fathers’ acceptance and love.

The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis  Last of the Narnias to be written, Lewis intended The Magician’s Nephew to be read first. It gives the background of the events to take place in the most widely known Narnia book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. However, I think I enjoyed reading it better having read the latter first.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis  The most widely known and read of all the Narnia tales, this book is one of my all-time favorites. This is the fourth time I’ve read it, not to mention having watched both the BBC TV production and the Disney movie version several times. Written as a Christian allegory of the work of Salvation, this story is still enjoyable without that as a reader’s focus.

Besides reading these books, I’ve also launched a second BookBucks Giveaway. After receiving a disconcerting email from Joshua Henkin about the potential narrowing of new book selection due to the decline in publishing profits, I wondered what I could do to bring this concern to more people. And what brings more people in than free money? Don’t forget to sign up for your chance to win a $25, $15, $10, and $5 gift card to your choice of Borders, Amazon or Barnes & Nobles!

In the coming week my plans for reading are: The remaining five Narnia books, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling, Brisingr(the third book in The Inheritance cycle) by Christopher Paolini, The Book Thiefby Markus Zusak, and Visions of Sugar Plums(Stephanie Plum Christmas novel) by Janet Evanovich. I also plan on finishing the books I’ve started but not completed this year: A Wrinkle in Timeby Madeline l’Engle, Bed, Bath and Beyond by J. D. Warren, and How to Be a Villianby Neil Zawacki. Okay, even without the kids here, this may be an ambitious list… lol.

As to Second Life, my vampire clan has split again and this time I’ve gone with the new family. Chosen Immortal is everything Treasured Vamps was suppose to be but has lost their way and become more about numbers, titles and politics. I’ve also moved from my old apartment to a floor in a friend’s castle. I’ve gained more space at about a tenth of the cost. I’m also going to be selling pictures and other things at a friend’s store, C&C’s Designs.

AND… due to an accidental purchase of a pregnancy pack, my avatar is now expecting. A $1500L mistake, I figured I’d just go ahead and use it… hate to spend the money and then throw it away. Currently, the little one’s name is “Mommy’s li’l Oops!”. It’s a boy (I have three girls in real life, by golly I’m having a boy this time 😉 ), and I’m not sure what to name him. Since BF is a werewolf, I had a half a thought to name him “Wolf”… lol… last name “Blitzstein”… That’s funny, because, unthinking, I made a comment the name “Wolf” worked well for the newsman Wolf Blitzer. Hahaha!

Advertisement

8 Responses

  1. You have had a busy reading week. Good luck making your goal!

  2. Good luck reaching your goal! It sounds like you’re getting pretty close.

  3. You have such a great list of books to read! I hope you get through them all. Happy Holidays!

  4. I hope you get all that reading done. 🙂 I love A Wrinkle in Time – it’s one book I can read again and again and never get tired of. Hope you enjoy it, too. 🙂

  5. My goal was to get to a 100 books, but I’m not going to make it. I’ll be just short of 75, most likely, but that’s okay. It’s not all about how many books a person reads anyway. It’s about quality, to some degree, and a good variety. Hopefully, this year I’ve done that.

  6. I love the Narnia books. I agree completely about The Magician’s Nephew. I was glad that I hadn’t read that first (despite the fact that my boxed set labels it as the first volume), because I feel like it takes a bit of the magic away from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

    Good luck on making it to 75! I surpassed my goal last month, and hope to smash it this month. I have a lot of children’s books to review for a project I’m working on, so my numbers are going to be unusually high this month and next.

  7. wow! keep up the hardcore reading. Good luck reaching your goal.

  8. Lots of reading you have going on! But yes, best of luck. Harry Potter 6 is awesome!
    I’ve read Crate and Peril, which was awesome…but not the first one Bedlam, Bath, and Beyond. I’m sure it’s just as good though!

    Lauren

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this:
https://thekoolaidmom.wordpress.com/2008/12/22/tss-mad-dash-for-the-finish-line/
thekoolaidmom.wordpress.com
CC-MAIN-2023-23
128997
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:XM232MU3DQF5KHHRESMB5OTWH32ZCOPP
<urn:uuid:1a05b305-7168-4d67-9f89-d65f12a31c5e>
2023-06-06T11:53:33Z
192.0.78.13
application/xhtml+xml
sha1:FWM7FYUDM5SYOHWDT55PHER7TY3OTP23
<urn:uuid:d6b3f81a-76c3-4e4a-b507-2c99152591e7>
https://thekoolaidmom.wordpress.com/2008/12/22/tss-mad-dash-for-the-finish-line/
response
<urn:uuid:35a71c8f-9f23-4616-a000-980a61645545>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2023-23
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for May/June 2023
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-229
software: Apache Nutch 1.19 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.4-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/