Sunday Salon: A Jackson Kind of Awesome

 Finally, some cold weather!  I woke up this morning with a cold nose.  Some arctic wind blew through here and left us, finally, with some sweater weather.  


Not that I'm going to allow myself to get used to it.  It is supposed to be 80 by Thursday.  I've never seen such a winter as this, in the 23 years I've lived in Florida.


But enough about that.  I had myself a decent week...some productivity, a lot of busy.  I've been continuing my workouts with the Angel of Death/uber-trainer as well as counting every last crumb that I put in my mouth.  I no likey.  It's hard work.  But I'm down 16 pounds and I feel good.  


We had our Heathrow Literary Society book club meeting this week, discussing "The Zookeeper's Wife" by Diane Ackerman.  Everyone seemed to like it - in a synopsis, the premise is amazing.  Within the details of the prose however, some of us felt the protagonist felt distant, and the narrator didn't do anything for me.  That review will be up next week.  We are reading "Cold Sassy Tree" by Olive Ann Burns next month.


Last night my daughter had her confirmation, after months of classes.  Now we will have our Thursday nights back, and I'm quite sure we will find some way to fill them.  Over the next month we will be starting our volunteerism at the animal shelter, we'll have my daughter's birthday, the beginning of volleyball, the Adult Literacy League Reading Between the Wines event, my participation on the panel at Sleuthfest, and a trip to Kiawah Island and Charleston.  I need to fortify myself!!!


In reading this week, I finished (and loved) Sarah Pekkanen's "Skipping a Beat".  On Friday, I started "Praying For Strangers" by River Jordan, who attended SIBA and will be at the UCF Book Festival.  22 pages into it, I was already emotional.  This feels like a book that could change my life.


On audio, I finished "To Be Sung Underwater" by Tom McNeal, and Holy Moses did it level me!  It got off to a slow start, but the last third of that book had me under its spell.  Then I listened to "Jacqueline Kennedy:  Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy", which was extremely INTERESTING.  Recorded four months after the President's assassination, Jackie lets it all hang out, dishing on various historical figures, who she liked and who she despised and why, and the day-to-day life of Camelot.  After I finished that audio, about two minutes passed before I started on Joshilyn Jackson's "A Grown Up Kind of Pretty", her newest release.  I could not be denied any longer.  Jackson will be here in Orlando for the UCF Book Festival at the end of March, and I'm going to do a big feature on her sometime before then.  There aren't many authors whom I've read everything they have written, but she is one of them.  Her books always feature strong, Southern women, and are full of her brand of humor.  She is pure joy to my ears.  She is some kind of awesome.


Today we'll be churching and horsing as usual, and then we've got friends coming over for dinner.  It doesn't bode well for reading, but I am going to try to sneak in a few minutes here and there.  Hope you all have a great day!