The Sunday Salon: The Joy of Blue Polka-Dotted Piggy Squeak Toys

 

Welcome! I am delighted that you joined us here at the Sunday Salon. 

What is the Sunday Salon? 

The Sunday Salon is a place to link up and share what we have been doing during the week. It's also a great opportunity to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

What I Read Last Week:

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

What I'm Reading Now:

Stillmeadow Daybook by Gladys Taber

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

What I Posted Last Week Here at Readerbuzz:

The Sunday Salon: A Classics Club Spin

SciFi and Fantasy and Other Book Series I Might Like to Read

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

I began to list 3 Good Things every day during the pandemic. Now I've established a regular routine of writing down my 3 Good Things. Here are 3 Good Things from last week:

Good Thing #1:

We went to see The Odyssey. 

Good Thing #2:

A Mississippi Kite in our backyard.

Good Thing #3:

I accidentally bought 

two blue polka-dotted piggy

squeak toys for dogs,

and my husband is finding it quite amusing to

make the pigs grunt.

Weekend linkup spots are listed below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

        

I hope you will join the linkup for Sunday Salon below.

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

Today's Featured Book: 

The Day of the Triffids

by John Wyndham

Genre: Science Fiction/Horror

Published: December 1951

Page Count: 241 pages

Summary: 

Bill Masen undergoes eye surgery and awakes the next morning in his hospital bed to find civilization collapsing. Wandering the city, he quickly realizes that surviving in this strange new world requires evading strangers and the seven-foot-tall plants known as triffids—plants that can walk and can kill a man with one quick lash of their poisonous stingers.

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY is hosted by Rose City Reader. What book are you happy about reading this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) on BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY! Add the link to your blog or social media post and visit other blogs to see what others are reading.

Happy Friday and welcome to the FIRST LINE FRIDAY, hosted by Reading is My Superpower! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line.

When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere. 

I felt that from the moment I woke. And yet, when I started functioning a little more smartly, I became doubtful. After all, the odds were that it was I who was wrong, and not everyone else—though I did not see how that could be. I went on waiting, tinged with doubt. But presently I had my first bit of objective evidence—a distant clock struck what sounded to me just like eight. I listened hard and suspiciously. Soon another clock began, on a hard, decisive note. In a leisurely fashion it gave an indisputable eight. Then I knew things were awry.

Wyndham, John. The Day of the Triffids, p. 1. Kindle Edition.  

THE FRIDAY 56 is hosted by Anne of Head Full of Books. To play, open a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% on your e-reader). Find a sentence or two and post them, along with the book title and author. Then link up on Head Full of Books and visit others in the linky. 

I said: “I wonder just how many of us have escaped and can still see? I’ve come across one other man, a child, and a baby; you’ve met none. It looks to me as if we are going to find out that sight is very rare indeed. Some of the others have evidently grasped already that their only chance of survival is to get hold of someone who can see. When they all understand that, the outlook’s going to be none too good.”

Wyndham, John. The Day of the Triffids, p. 56. Kindle Edition. 

The Day of the Triffids is my Classics Club spin. I'm delighted that the spinner stopped on this book. Jinjer of The Intrepid Angeleno rave-reviewed it last November here and I could not resist buying a copy and then adding it to my latest Classics Club list. 

The Day of the Triffids is not what I expected. I'm a scifi book and film person from childhood, and I thought this would be a standard scary-monsters-invading-earth sort of story. It's not; instead, it's scifi integrated skillfully into literary fiction. 

I am about halfway through with the book, so forgive me if I stop now and go back to my story...I need to find out what's going happen next...

The purpose of THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, and befriend other bloggers. THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.    

Do you follow book trends and bestsellers, or do you prefer hunting down lesser-known titles? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee-Addicted Writer)

I am a person who loves to find little-known, beautifully written books. If you have titles of books you've loved that no one else has read, I'd love for you to share them with me.

  

SciFi and Fantasy and Other Book Series I Might Like to Read

When I first became a school librarian, I had to play catch up. And fast.

So I read the first book of every series. I wanted to be able to familiarize myself with the books my students were reading. 

This has become a way of reading for me. I read book one. I don't read on.

The truth is that book two is a disappointment. The author carefully worked out book one. Perhaps she never even planned to write book two. Or she wrote book two as a bridge to the far-better book three.

But now I see that I've missed a lot of great books. I'm starting a list of book series I might like to read. 

What would you recommend to me?

Here are a few that have been suggested so far:

Xanth by Piers Anthony. My aunt recommended this.

Fourth Wing (The Empyrean Book 1) by Rebecca Yarros

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

If you have other suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.   

The Sunday Salon: A Classics Club Spin

Welcome! We're glad you're here at the Sunday Salon. 

What is the Sunday Salon? 

The Sunday Salon is a place to link up and share what we have been doing during the week. It's also a great opportunity to visit other blogs and join in the conversations there. 

What I Read Last Week:

The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact, and the Fateful Final Voyage by Captain James Cook by Hampton Sides

The Otherwhere Post by Emily J. Taylor

I Eat the Stars: How to Live Fully and Beautifully in a Collapsing World by Sarah Wilson

What I'm Reading Now:

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

The Classics Club has issued the announcement of the Classics Club’s 43rd CC Spin.

What is the Spin?

It’s easy. At your blog, before next Sunday, August 16, 2026, create a post that lists twenty books of your choice that remain “to be read” on your Classics Club list.

This is your Spin List.

You have to read one of these twenty books by the end of the spin period.

On Sunday, August 16, The Classics Club will post a number from 1 through 20. The challenge is to read whatever book falls under that number on your Spin List by Sunday, October 4th, 2026. 

Let's see who can make it the whole way and finish their spin book!

I have a lot of books to read on my latest Classics Club list. Let's see where the needle stops.

So here is my list. I picked the ten books from the list that I most want to read and listed them twice.

1, 11. A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym

2, 12. So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell

3, 13. The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright

4, 14. Emily of the New Moon by L. M. Montgomery

5, 15. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

6, 16. Indian Summer by William Dean Howells

7, 17. Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton

8, 18. The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

9, 19. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

10, 20. Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym

Have you read any of these?

Do you recommend any of these?

And the spin lands on...

The Day of the Triffids!

What I Posted Last Week Here at Readerbuzz:

The Sunday Salon: Two Wonderful Re-reads; Persian Food; Jury Duty; and a New Ukulele

Books I Was Reading On This Day Over the Last Ten Years

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

I began to list 3 Good Things every day during the pandemic. Now I've established a regular routine of writing down my 3 Good Things. Here are 3 Good Things from last week:

Good Thing #1:

I experimented with some new 

chocolate chip cookie recipes.

Good Thing #2:

Our book club read The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency this month,

so I reread the book and watched the series in prep for leading

the discussion.

Good Thing #3:

I was delighted to see my first

Julia Heliconian butterfly

this week.

Weekend linkup spots are listed below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

        

I hope you will join the linkup for Sunday Salon below. 

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

Today's Featured Book: 

Project Hail Mary

by Andy Weir

Genre: Science Fiction

Published: May 4, 2021

Page Count: 476 pages

Summary: 

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.

Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.

Or does he?

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY is hosted by Rose City Reader. What book are you happy about reading this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) on BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY! Add the link to your blog or social media post and visit other blogs to see what others are reading.

Happy Friday and welcome to the FIRST LINE FRIDAY, hosted by Reading is My Superpower! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line.

"What's two plus two?"

Something about the question irritates me. I'm tired. I drift back to sleep.

A few minutes pass, then I hear it again.

"What's two plus two?"

The soft, feminine voice lacks emotion and the pronunciation is identical to the previous time she said it. It's a computer. A computer is hassling me. I'm even more irritated now.

"Lrmln," I say. I'm surprised. I meant to say "Leave me alone"---a completely reasonable response in my opinion---but I failed to speak.

"Incorrect," says the computer. "What's two plus two?"

THE FRIDAY 56 is hosted by Anne of Head Full of Books. To play, open a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% on your e-reader). Find a sentence or two and post them, along with the book title and author. Then link up on Head Full of Books and visit others in the linky. 

The candidate pool wasn't deep. There just weren't many coma-resistant people out there who had "the right stuff" and were willing to go on a suicide mission.  

When all of the copies at my library are requested from now until the end of next year, and even used copies are selling for full price, sometimes you have to look around in unlikely places. Happily, I was able to join a bookring at BookCrossing a few months ago, and this book arrived for me yesterday. 

Yes, I've seen the movie. I liked it a lot.

The purpose of THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, and befriend other bloggers. THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.    

Is there a book you keep coming back to, reading it more than once?   (submitted by Billy @ Coffee-Addicted Writer)

I'm not sure how many times I've read and listened to and browsed through Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I've written posts about ZAMM and included ZAMM on lots of my lists over the years.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: Quotes

Chataquas: Education and Uplift

Most Memorable Books I Was Forced to Read

Books I Almost Put Down But Didn't

Books I Loved Much More Than I Thought I Would

Books I Enjoyed That Are Outside My Comfort Zone

Thankful: Six Books That Changed My Life

Can Books Improve Your Happiness?