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Book Review: Down the Up Escalator: How the 99% Live in the Great Recession,...
Down the Up Escalator: How the 99% Live in the Great Recession, by Barbara Garson Doubleday 2013 276 pages “If you’re not a worker, not a consumer, and you don’t earn significant income from...
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The Sunday Salon: Reading Stats for 2013
Having just finished my first book (and audio) of 2014 – along with casting aside my DNF of the year – I’m thinking I’d really better wrap up 2013 before too much more time passes. I’m not sure if...
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The Sunday Salon: January Reading Wrap-Up
January 31 near Pittsburgh, PA This week has seemed like a month, and this month has seemed like a freakin’ year. I am no fan of February (hate, hate, hate that damn month), but am glad to drop-kick...
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The Sunday Salon: A Week of Author Meetings
I’m taking my daughter and one of her BFFs to meet Dork Diaries author Rachel Renee Russell this afternoon, and their enthusiasm is absolutely palpable. They’ve been talking about this for weeks,...
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Book Review: Next to Love, by Ellen Feldman
Next to Love, by Ellen Feldman Spiegel and Grau 2011 304 pages Read by Abby Craden 11 hours, 23 minutes Next to Love by Ellen Feldman is a historical fiction novel set during World War II and the...
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READIN’AT: The Girl Factory: A Memoir, by Karen Dietrich
One of the things I love about Pittsburgh is how much this city embraces the written word and the authors who bring stories to life. We’re quite the literary town. As a way to celebrate all things...
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The Sunday Salon: Currently, 8/10/2014
Time/Place: 8:28 p.m., my family room Watching: My kids are watching the Teen Choice Awards. It’s been 29 minutes and I’ve lost count of how many arguments they’ve gotten into already. I may need to...
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The Sunday Salon: Food for Thought
I’ve been awake since 3:50 a.m., and all I have to show for the past six hours is: a) a few sentences written on an essay I may or may not submit for possible publication (it’s due today); b) several...
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sunday salon: ides of march edition
Time and Place: Sunday evening / the couch in the living room. As per usual. Weekend Happenings? Not much. The Girl went to a SibShop yesterday. It’s a support group for kids who have a sibling with...
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Book Review: Under Magnolia, A Southern Memoir by Frances Mayes (37/99)
Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir by Frances Mayes Crown 2014 Narrated by Frances Mayes 9 hours, 46 minutes Anyone who has ever called the South home will likely identify with the people and...
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The Sunday Salon: Here We Go …
It’s Super Bowl weekend here in the States, and for many, this is a national holiday. Alas, not so much for us Philadelphia Eagles fans. (That’s why we had to create the absolutely disgusting and...
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I’m Still Giving Away … 2 Books (GIVEAWAY UPDATE)
I need to seriously step up my efforts to get our house ready for the market. Hence, I’ve decided to give away some books from my personal shelves to my wonderful blog readers. (Plus, it’s the month...
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Book Review: Mockingbird, by Kathryn Erskine (audiobook)
Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine Penguin Young Readers2010Recorded Books Audiobook narrated by Angela Jayne Rogers4 hours, 22 minutes With her latest book, Mockingbird, author Kathryn Erskine gives an...
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The Sunday Salon: From My Sickbed
This Sunday finds me in bed with what feels like the flu – sore throat, on-and-off fever, dizziness, overall weakness – guzzling Gatorade and sleeping for the majority of the day and night. I was...
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A President’s Day Book Review: Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain...
Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime (audiobook)by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin HarperCollins201014.75 hours Narrated by Dennis Boutsikaris “This shit...
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The Sunday Salon: In Which Simon LeBon and Rob Sheffield Pull Me Out of My Funk
There’s nothing like a little ’80s music and nostalgia to pull one out of a funk, is there? I think I might be starting to come out of the reading funk I mentioned in last week’s Salon, and I have Rob...
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The Sunday Salon
We’re celebrating The Husband’s birthday this weekend, albeit in a very non-exciting way. Among other things, yesterday (his actual birthday) he did several loads of laundry (as he does every weekend)...
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Library Loot: March 16-22
I’m having a hard time getting the official Library Loot button to appear, so apologies for that. Anyway, Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The...
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The Sunday Salon: Book Less
I missed last week’s Salon (not that anyone probably noticed) because of a solo weekend trip to visit The Husband in Pittsburgh. There was a black-tie event (a sit-down dinner! one where I actually...
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It’s a 24 Hour Read-a-Thon Weekend!
It’s that time again, folks … the spring edition of Dewey’s 24 Hour Read-a-Thon is this weekend! (For those not in the know, this is a twice-a-year event that has become a beloved tradition in the...
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The Sunday Salon: Getting Back Into the Groove, Post Book Blogger Con
It’s no secret that my reading life has been a bit stuck in neutral of late, but I have discovered the sure-fire cure for that: spend a day immersed in the bookish goodness that was this year’s Book...
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Book Review (Audio): The Box: Tales From the Darkroom, by Gunter Grass
The Box: Tales from the Darkroom by Gunter Grass translated from the German by Krishna Winston Houghton Mifflin, 2010195 pages Narrated by Stefan RudnickiBlackstone Audio, 20105 discs, 5 hours Have you...
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The Sunday Salon: Best Laid Plans
Is it wrong of me to admit that I was kind of hoping for a rainy Sunday? All my errands were done yesterday (yay, go me!) and I wanted an excuse to be a...
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The Sunday Salon: First Time for Everything
Well, this has been quite an interesting week here on the East Coast, hasn’t it? First with our first-ever earthquake on Tuesday and now with Hurricane Irene who acted like a pain-in-the-ass...
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Book Review: We’ve Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication,...
We’ve Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication by Judith Warner Read by Kirsten Potter I have to give Judith Warner much credit for her courage to write this book, which is very...
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The Sunday Salon: BBAWhere Did That Week Go?
What’s that saying about the best-laid plans? (“The best-laid plans of mice and men always go astray.”) Add “and Melissa” to the mice and men part, and that’s how I feel about the past week. I had all...
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The Sunday Salon
My girl and I are getting ready to spend an afternoon at the Carnegie Science Center, so this will be a quick Sunday Salon post. There’s a promotional initiative going on in the area with more than 50...
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The Sunday Salon:
It’s a gorgeous Indian Summer weekend here in Pittsburgh. Truly, the weather here yesterday was beyond spectacular, and today promises to deliver more of the same. Betty and I spent Saturday...
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The Sunday Salon: A Great Week for Books!
What a great week this has been for books, here in my little personal corner of the world. I refer not so much in terms of books completed (just one – the audiobook of The Secret Life of Bees by Sue...
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The Sunday Salon: Another Read-a-Thon For the Books
“I can’t believe the Read-a-Thon is already over,” Betty said to me, greeting me as I stumbled to the breakfast table. For something that lasts 24 years (whoa, there’s a wishful,...
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The Sunday Salon: Time
I hate Daylight Savings Time. HATE. IT. There, I said it. I hate the whole falling back and springing forward. Sure, I like the promise of sunlight in the morning and the “gaining an hour,” but...
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The Sunday Salon: No Judy Moody for You
What today’s plans were SUPPOSED to include: A mommy-daughter one-on-one time trip downtown to the Carnegie Library, where Megan McDonald is appearing. (Some of you might know Ms. McDonald better as...
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The Sunday Salon: A Good Reading Start to the New Year
And how has your first full week of reading gone in this new year? Good? Bad? So-so? On this end, it has indeed been a very good bookish start to 2012 and hopefully the same has been true for you,...
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The Sunday Salon: January Reading Blahs
I skipped last week’s Salon because my day was consumed with looking at several houses, which was infinitely more interesting and exciting than anything I would have had to say about my reading week....
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The Sunday Salon: Back in the Game
Anyone else hear anything about there being some sort of football game on TV later on today? Heh. I kid. Regular readers know we’re a big football family here and on normal Sundays, we’d already be...
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The Sunday Salon: A Million Book Bloggers Can Sometimes Be Right
I’m not usually one who jumps on the latest book bandwagon and reads something just because everyone says it is the most amazing book ever. In fact, I’m actually the opposite. If everyone is raving...
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The Sunday Salon
I should be packing instead of blogging this morning, since there are a mere 20 days remaining until we move into our new house, but … well, here I am. (Yes, in case you missed the news, we found a...
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Book Review: Baker Towers, by Jennifer Haigh (audio)
Baker Towersby Jennifer Haigh 2005William Morrow, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers7 CDs, 8 hrs. 36 minutesAudiobook narrated by Anna Fields Baker Towers is the sort of novel that is often...
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The Sunday Salon: Oh, Look, I Finished a Book
I hope this morning finds everyone in the path of the Midwest tornadoes and storms safe and out of harm’s way. So incredibly scary. I’m finding it a little ironic that the book I was planning to tell...
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Book Review (Audio): American Salvage, Stories by Bonnie Jo Campbell
American Salvage Stories by Bonnie Jo Campbell W.W. Norton and Company 2009167 pages Narrated by Jeffrey Brick, Stevie Ray Dallimore, Andrea Gallo, and Ken Marks6 CDs, 6.5 hours American Salvage is a...
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The Sunday Salon: Mother’s Day Edition
Mother’s Day, which we’re celebrating today, is seared with many emotions for so many people. I’m not exempt from this, certainly not this year, as I wrote in yesterday’s post, “may 13 many years...
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The Sunday Salon – May 20
It’s a spectacularly gorgeous weekend here, and I have two days of errands and gardening to catch up on (thanks to losing most of yesterday to being in bed yesterday with a migraine). No time for idle...
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The Sunday Salon: Armchair BEA Bound!
Allow this week’s Sunday Salon to serve as a warning to my readers of this blog who aren’t book bloggers and who may not be as otherwise immersed in the goings-on of the book world: This here week...
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The Sunday Salon: The (Bookish) Week That Was
Well now, THAT was quite the bookish week we just had, wasn’t it? Between participating in Armchair BEA, and the reports coming in from folks who were at the actual BEA, and spending part of this...
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The Sunday Salon: Father’s Day Edition
Happy Father’s Day to all who are celebrating! I say to all who are celebrating because I know this can be a difficult day for some people. If you are missing a father or missing the chance to be a...
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The Sunday Salon: Randomness N’at
I can’t seem to write a coherent Sunday Salon post, so we’ll just go with a bunch of random thoughts n’at …. The WeatherThis has been the sort of day where you’re so sluggish you feel like you just...
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The Sunday Salon: Into the New Year, a DNF Must Fall
Just 13 days into 2013 and I already have my first DNF (did not finish) book of the year. Yay, me. I’m nothing if not ruthless about abandoning books that aren’t holding my interest. Still, it seems a...
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The Sunday Salon: Book Binges of the Buying and Reading Kind
I’ve been on a reading frenzy during the last two weeks. So far I’ve finished 5 books during these 17 days of February alone. Granted, two of them were rather short (not even 100 pages each), but this...
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Book Review: Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, A Young Man, and Life’s...
Tuesdays with Morrieby Mitch Albom Doubleday1997Random House Audio20073 hours, 41 minutesYeah, I know. Everyone in the world knows what Tuesdays with Morrie is about, so this hardly needs an...
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The Sunday Salon: A Rollercoaster Reading Week
Oh, I was on such a roll there with my reading, friends. We’re talking three 5-star reads in a row, which is unusual to begin with, but is somehow even more delicious when it happens during these...
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