Sunday Salon - Ramblings

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and hopefully got some bookish  items under the tree this year. I did get the main book that I wanted, which was A Little Life.  I got some other things that I wanted, which was a Vancouver Canucks jersey and a Fitbit One.  It was nice to see my sister again and was nice to get back on the hill again; my ankle was fine, but ended up terribly sore in my upper thighs.

I also ordered a bunch of books and a Christmas CD, which should arrive shortly before the New Year. I hope to have some more reading challenges up in the next few days.  I hope you have had some time to catch-up with family and friends over the last few days.

Sunday Salon - Almost all caught up

I am sorry if this is coming in late, but better late than never.

I was working on my book reviews this afternoon and realized that I am getting closer to getting caught up with my reviews for this year.  I don't know how much longer it will take me to complete them, but I should be able to get fully caught up within the next couple of weeks.

And to top it off, I have been getting closer to my goal of completing 75 books; only four more and I will have achieved my goal, even if one of them is a DNF.

Here are the reviews since my last Salon post:
• All the Bright Places by Jennifer Nivens (review)
• Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar (review)
• All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (review)
• Moon over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool (review)
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle (review)
• The Prime Minister's Secret Agent by Susan Elia MacNeal (review)

• A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams (review)
• Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum (review)
• Travelling to Infinity by Jane Hawking (review)
• The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot (review)
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (review)
• Jacob Have I Loved by Katerine Paterson (review)

I would have gotten more reviews done this past week, but I was a bit busy and I don't know how many reviews will be posted this coming week, due to commitments of the Christmas variety.  As for what I am planning on reading, I will concentrate on a few books, including my last Christmas book of the season, as I have other books I need to get read as well, but depending on what Christmas books I have requested, I will probably read a couple more.

Have a good week and hope to talk to you next week.

Sunday Salon - Catching Up

Some of you noticed that earlier last week, I put up something in regards to how I should go about catching up on my backlog of book reviews.  I don't know why I was possessed to start catching up on my book reviews at this time of year, but I felt the need to start up on them while it was still 2015.

So I have spent the last few days working on book reviews rather than on my reading.  But I did get about a number of them posted and hope to work on get more during the week.

Here are the reviews that I posted this past week:
• The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber (review)
• Ru by Kim Thúy (review)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (review)
• Such a Pretty Face by Cathy Lamb (review)
• Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy by Karen Abbott (review)
• And Nothing But the Truth by Kit Pearson (review)
• Wolf Hall by Hilary by Hilary Mantel (review)
• The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham (review)
• Shadow of Darkness by Deborah Harkness (review)
• The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan (review)
• Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix (review)
• The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (review)
• Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins (review)

There will be a bunch more that I hopefully will post this coming week and make more inroads on my book reviews.  Happy Sunday and reading!

Sunday Salon /Sunday Post - Christmas Spirit Sign-up #csreadathon and Thankfully Reading Weekend

I realize that its been a few weeks since I have posted a Salon post and at least a couple since I posted anything at all. I've been busy reading books and watching videos and hence my blogging has suffered.

I know that 2015 is coming to a rapid end and I have made a few decisions, especially in regards to my reading challenges.  I am thinking that I am going to back down on the number of reading challenges that I participate during 2016, at least at the start.

I am also signing up for Michelle @ True Book Addict's Christmas Reading Challenge and Christmas Spirit Readathon.

For the reading challenge, I am going go for the Mistletoe level, in which I am hoping to read 2-4 Christmas books and I am also going to do Fa La La La Film challenge as well.  I hope that you can join as well.  And to kick things off, Michelle is hosting a read-a-thon for the first week.  I hope to read at least one or two books during this time.

And to add to that Jenn at Jenn's Bookshelves is hosting the Thankfully Reading weekend.  I hope to spend a bit of time reading during the weekend.  

I will get back to my reading and hopefully I can start to catch-up the book reviews that have been piling up this coming week.

Hope you have a great rest of the day and a great week of reading.

Sunday Salon - Getting back on the reading bandwagon

Don't know why, but for some reason I got off the reading bandwagon. It felt odd and different and even though I wanted to read, I just didn't have the urge to pick up a book and even if I did read, it wasn't for long periods of time and it was things that I had to read for a few book review tours that I had signed up for during the summer.

But for whatever the reason, the 24-hour Readathon a couple weeks ago energized me to start reading again on a regular basis.  I guess what I needed was some sort of focus in my reading for a sustained amount of time and that really jump started me again into reading on a more regular basis and to enjoy reading again and less of a chore. It's kinda of funny, but I sense another lull coming, but I suppose it depends on how many required books I have to read and whether I am enjoying the books that I am reading for enjoyment. And how I am feeling physically.

I am also hoping to make a vegetarian lasagna today that I will split up and freeze on a cookie sheet before I put them in containers or ziploc bags for easy lunch (don't know how I missed the mozzarella when I went to the grocery store the couple times I made trips).

Here is what I finished this past month:
• Yellow-Billed Magpie by Nancy Schoellkopf (review)
• Port of No Return by Michelle Saftich (review)
• In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume
• Birds of Passage by Joe Giordano (review)
• The Dead in their Vaulted Arches by Alan Bradley
• Mãn by Kim Thúy
• Bone: The Complete Cartoon Epic in One Volume by Jeff Smith

Here is what I am hoping to finish in November:
• The Buried Giant
• Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell
• The Orphan Master's Son
• The Accidental Empress
• Circling the Sun

Hope you have a wonderful Sunday, however you choose to spend it.

Sunday Salon - Happy Thanksgiving

I know that the vast majority are wondering why I am saying Happy Thanksgiving in the middle of October.  The reason is that I am Canadian and hence I celebrate Thanksgiving in the early part of October rather than in November.  If you wish to know more about the  history of Canadian Thanksgiving, you can find it here.

I realize that I have been invisible the last little while on the blog and the reason is that I have been working like crazy since I started work at the school that I am at about a month ago.  That week was insane, as I have a second job working as a cashier at a local trade and convention centre and that particular weekend I worked three shifts there in addition to my job at the school (I help out in an elementary school's library a few days a week).

And hence I have not read much either.  I have been quite tired and most of my time is spent either going to work (I take transit majority of the time to my school job) or at one of my many church activities.  And hence I am exhausted.  This weekend has been a blessing, in that I have been able to rest and relax and catch up on sleep. I was so tired last night that pretty much when I hit the pillow, I was out and slept for a good 9 hours (I have been also staying up late catching up on TV shows and watching TV DVDs; watched the first season of Fargo last week and really enjoy the show and have been watching The Americans this week and am enjoying that one as well).

But I am hoping that this coming week will be a tad more productive, as I have a book review coming up for a tour that I am part of that is due on Tuesday.

Hope you all have had a good weekend and hope that you get lots of reading done today!

Sunday Salon - Right Now

Time 12:09 pm

Place My living room

Listening to… podcasts (specifically Marek vs. Wyshynski)

Eating...  Nothing at the moment, but I am feeling a bit hungry

Watching...  the morning show from a local station in Vancouver

Reading... I will hopefully finish up Tell the Wolves I'm Home, start Shoeless Joe and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Planning... Nothing at the moment, just what I might want to eat so I don't starve this afternoon. Probably start to plan what I need to do for Bloggiesta, which starts this coming Thursday.

Feeling... Relaxed and a tad tired due to an early morning today

Loving... the fact that its a fairly nice day, but not too hot.

Wanting... the hockey season to start; as much as I like the stretch drive in baseball and the start of the NFL season, I want some NHL hockey

Thinking... how much I would like a nap and how not to fall asleep at my computer

Looking forward to... the kickoff at church this afternoon, the Ladies Bible Study group I am attending this coming year on Monday evenings and an author reading at a library in a nearby town this coming Wednesday.

I also signed up for a fall reading challenge that is being hosted by Jenn at A Daily Rhythm.  It's a fairly easy reading challenge and am not putting too much pressure on myself to get everything done. Hope you have a relaxing Sunday and happy reading :)

Sunday Salon - 20 Books of Summer wrap up and other things #20booksofsummer

Finally it seems that the summer storm of 2015 in Southwestern BC (which also affected the Seattle area) is being left behind and moving on to more typical late summer weather and I intend on taking advantage of it and going to a local park and parking my chair and reading for a bit outside.

For those that don't know, there was a major wind storm that came through last weekend that downed power lines and trees (and some pretty big trees were uprooted, one I heard was about 200 years old, due to the dry summer we had in the Pacific Northwest; had no significant rain until this week since about late April/early May) and left over 500,000 BC Hydro customers in the dark at some point during the storm and some didn't have power for several days.  Fortunately, I only had my power out for about 5 hours, but still I was worried that my power would go out again during Saturday (wind gusts were over 90km/hr in Abbotsford; that's over 56 miles/hr) as there are several large trees near where I live and could have potentially come down on power lines or apartment buildings.

As for my reading this week, it was pretty good.  Got Letters to the Lost completed and have made a lot of progress with The Odyssey, especially last night.  I am hoping to finish it by tomorrow, as I am hoping to use it for a square for BOTNS Bingo.

But 20 Books of Summer was a bit of a bust for me.  I had scheduled these books and only read three of the books.  I thought I had put TKAM and Go Set, but unfortunately I didn't.  Oh well, nothing I can do about it now.

This week I also signed up for R.I.P X, hoping to get at least one book done for the challenge.

Am hoping to blog a little more this coming week.  Happy reading and have a good week.

Sunday Salon - A bit of everything: #boutofbooks update, #BtHreadathon books, and so forth

Today's post is a bit of a hodgepodge of stuff, so bear with me.

First off, the Bout of Books Readathon isn't going so well for me.  I finished To Kill A Mockingbird and that was all about I really read for the week, even though I have a quite a bit to read.  But I know that there are going to be other readathons coming up and I will be able to get books done and that this is a stress-free readathon.  I did start reading Go Set A Watchman and so far the book is okay (I'm only 2 chapters in and every now and then you can hear Reese Witherspoon's southern accent come through, although you really heard Sissy Spacek's more clearly during To Kill).  I don't know why I didn't read as much as I had hoped to, but I think it just amounted to the fact that I was concentrating on one book and I felt really tired at times during the readathon).

As for Beat the Heat Readathon, this one might be a bit more successful, just due to the length of it, being 2 weeks instead of 1.  So here are the books that I plan on working on are for Beat the Heat are:

• Go Set a Watchman (my dad wants to read this and would like to get it done by Thursday)
• The Odyssey
• Letters to the Lost

And these are maybes:
• Jacob Have I Loved
• The Book of Life

As for me not blogging this past week, it was just a busy week and I anytime I remembered to blog, it was too late for something or other and I didn't really have the energy to blog this week, but hopefully I will have more energy this week to blog.

Now I will get off my computer and start doing some reading.  See you next week!

Sunday Salon - A relative busy week of blogging

It has been a relatively busy week of blogging for me,  I don't really know why, but maybe because I had taken a break from blogging since May to a degree (there were 11 posts in June & July), I think I have finally gotten my groove back, but once September hits, I don't know how both of my jobs will affect my blogging, but we will see how things go.

Last Sunday, my parents and I and my parents friends went to a local winery in Kamloops to taste some wine. They are a fairly new winery in BC and what they had on hand was pretty good and I quite enjoyed it.  And we got a nice drive out of it.  On Wednesday my parents and I went to Kamloops to do some things and while we were there we all had an adult Pirate Pak (if you don't know what I am referring to, here are some images to look at), which was pretty cool (it's mainly a kids thing, but one day a year White Spot, a well-known family restaurant in BC and Alberta, allows adults to get their own Pirate Pak), and then went to see Mr. Holmes, which should get some Oscar nods come the new year.  It was a really good movie.

The rest of the week was fairly quiet and laid back for me.  And included reading and blogging.

Here is what appeared on the blog this past week:

Memes:
 • Musing Mondays
 • It's Monday!  What are you reading?
 • WWW Wednesdays
 • Book Beginnings & The Friday 56

Sign-ups:
  • 3rd Annual Beat the Heat Readathon
  • Bout of Books 14

Book Reviews:
 • Madame Picasso by Anne Girard
 • Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
 • After the War is Over by Jennifer Robson

Here are the things that I completed but didn't make it on to the blog:

Books completed:
• Travelling to Infinity by Jane Hawking
• The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot

I also got a number of book review rough drafts worked on and hope to have a number of them up on the blog sometime during the week.  I also hope to complete To Kill A Mockingbird this week as well and start The Odyssey.  Hope you all  have a great week!

Sunday Salon - Short and sweet

I realize that this is going up later than most of the other posts, but better later than never.

For whatever reason, I have started to get back into my blogging routine.  Maybe its because I finally feel comfortable into my blogging routine or its just that I miss writing here. Its also that the last little while hasn't been as busy as July was.

While I didn't get any books completed, I am starting to get back into my reading routine a little more, which means that I'll probably finish something sooner rather than later.

I did a bunch of posting this past week on the blog including a bunch of memes and reviews for Ella Enchanted and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

If you wish to view the stuff that I posted last week, you can go to the main page and view the stuff posted from last week.

As for my plans for this coming week, I am hoping to do the same memes plus a few more book reviews and also linking up them reviews with the various challenges I am involved with for the coming year.