Sunday Salon: I'd Better Write Fast

Has Blogger been on psychedelic drugs lately??? For some reason, half of my comments and various activities on my website yesterday and today have crashed and burned, so I'm going to try to make this a quick recap before it is pulled out from beneath my busy fingers.

The theme of the week was a lack of productivity. It started out with a sick kid on Monday and a few long but necessary errands on Tuesday, and nothing was getting done. I quickly made peace with my inactivity by remembering the yard work, pool maintenance and pressure washing I did last week. Right about this time, I realized that I hadn't written any reviews in awhile and freaked out a little when I saw that I only had a week of posts in the hopper. I cleared my schedule and did a little catching up.

We had book club this week (now hailed as Books, Babes and Bordeaux) and had a very LIVELY discussion on The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It was universally loved by all, in fact the whole evening was basically seven women all talking fast and loud, all at the same time. It was crazy fun. Next month we will be reading the wildly-popular and Booker Shortlisted "Room" by Emma Donahue (which I just won from Frances at Nonsuch Books and received this week - yay!).

I must have been generally pop culture-deprived this week, because I found myself geeking out over multiple headlines in my Entertainment Weekly. I'm excited about the movie The Social Network (they gave it an A). I am excited about the US remake of Let the Right One In called Let Me In (and I swear I'm going to read that book soon). I'm excited about the new trio for American Idol - Kara can kiss it. I'm excited to see a stunning new documentary about the Warsaw ghetto called A Film Unfinished (my sister gave it the two thumbs up). Did anyone know they are making Wicked Lovely into a movie???? (I swear I'm going to read that book soon). I'm kicking myself for not grabbing the book "Bloody Crimes" (about Lincoln's killer) at SIBA, because it is on the Must List! Mario Batali has an iPhone app!!!! Somebody give me a Prozac quick!

Sigh. OK. Deep breath. What of reading? Well, you will all be so proud of me that after two weeks plus, I finished the ever-entertaining "Peyton Place". Now James and I have to put our clever brain cells together and decide what to do with it. I started "The Financial Lives of Poets" which I have to review in about week so I need to get hopping. I have to say it is so totally clever. Really.

On the audio book front, I finished "Homer and Langely" by E.L Doctorow. What a story. I was enchanted and at the same time emotional. It reminded me a little of Middlesex, in ways I will describe in my review later. I am about halfway through "Ravens"...who recommended this one to me? It has been on my iPod for at least four or five months. I'm not sure where it is going, and I'm not sure I love it, but it is certainly keeping my attention.

Then there is "MOCKINGJAY". We've been listening for how long now? A month? We are on Disc 8 out of 10. I really really want to get to "White Cat", so why can't we just put ourselves out of our misery? It is becoming a sick joke. Mother Mary.

I'm still trying to decide whether I will participate in the 24-hour Read-a-thon next Saturday. We have kids' sports until mid-afternoon, but I could still put in a good 8 hours of reading if I tried. My biggest issue last time was that I spent way too much time blogging and not enough time reading, so I would definitely try to stay away from the computer. I'm thinking it would feel really good to blast through a few of the shorter books I have on my bedside table...

So what is in store for your Sunday?