Sunday Salon: July 26

It's been awhile since I've done a weekly update but this seems like a good time to sit back and recap what's been happening. I've had a wonderful week with visitors from Maryland and Virginia. My sister Cheli (of Cheli Can't Live without Books) escorted my granddaughter Kyla up to visit her Tutu and Tampa (when she was little she couldn't say "grandpa" so he became Tampa--it stuck). We all had loads of fun discovering books on Tutu's shelves and in Tutu's attic, going shopping (for books of course), eating ice cream, and visiting General Henry Knox's estate. Cheli returned home to Maryland yesterday, but T&T have another week with Kyla to attend the annual Lobster festival this coming week.It's been amazing to watch a young child who loves to read. She even brought with her a 'reading journal' to write down the books she had read!! Discoveries for this 8 year old this week include Carl Hiaasen's Hoot, Anne of Green Gables, The Little Prince, Dear Dumb Diary, The Prince Mammoth Pumpkin, Dewey the Small town Library Cat (the book actually fell off the shelf and landed at her feet!), and The Scarecrow and His Servant. And yesterday......... Tutu had to sheephishly approach the front desk at the big box bookstore in Portland to ask that we page G-girl so I didn't have to call her parents and say she'd been kidnapped! She'd disappeared into the puppet section. Talk about a moment of panic! So during the week while she was reading and Cheli was redesigning her blog, I was busy trying to catch up on a rapidly growing pile of ARCs that have been arriving almost daily now for the past week. I want to finish non ARCs Dear Fatty and The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop to close out 2 of my last 3 categories for the 999 challenge. Gods Behaving Badly is the current audio. I'm thoroughly enjoying all three of them. When they're done however, I'm putting all challenges on hold (none of them has a deadline before the end of the year) to catch up on reviewing ARCs. Oops....there's also the ILL Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu that I have to read. I always feel obligated to return inter-library loans on time, and this one looks way to good to send back unread. Books in the ARC pile appear in the sidebar widget labelled "Waiting to be Reviewed." Cheli took one or two to do for a guest blog appearance later this month, hubbie is going to appear reviewing two, and I'm going to settle in for a lovely bunch of reading. We're going on a two week vacation to Europe the end of August, and while I'd love to drag them with me, I'm not. The luggage weight limit won't allow it, and I know I'll be too involved in sightseeing, wine tasting, and soaking up the cruise atmosphere celebrating a long marriage to worry about reviewing books. I also want to reformat my blog into a three column template (I'm working and testing it now) but the rest of this Sunday is going to be spent reading. I hope your summer Sunday is full of lemondade, sunshine, loving hugs, and good reading.