Sunday, January 8, 2023

Sunday Salon, starting off in 2023

Madame de Stael's Salon

New Year

My first book of the new year was the recently released biography of Shirley Hazzard by Brigitta Olubas, an Australian professor. A very good start to the year. It made best biography of 2022 on at least one list.


It's likely to start me off on a Shirley Hazzard bender, and in fact I'm halfway through rereading The Transit of Venus, her masterpiece.

Also last week I read Boris Dralyuk's My Hollywood and other poems. There's some pretty fun stuff in it.

Challenges

It's the time of year for wrapping up old challenges and signing up for new ones. (And maybe starting doing Sunday Salon blog posts again on a regular basis?) I've done the European Reading Challenge hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader for years, and signed up again. I've also decided to return to Bev's Vintage Mysteries challenge after not doing it for a couple of years. They're both fun ones & I recommend them.

On the Stack




Our host Chuck is demonstrating:

Plautus/The Rope and Other Plays (January readalong here)
Ngaio Marsh/Death at the Bar (first mystery of the year!)
Shirley Hazzard/The Transit of Venus (that one has the most progress in it)
Michael Hingston/Try Not To Be Strange (the kingdom of Redonda)
Paul Muldoon/To Ireland, I (could be thinking about travel...)
The Kural (tr. Thomas Pruiksma) (Tamil wisdom poetry)

The race is on. Which will get finished first?

On the Table

As a Chicago native no longer living there, I can't do without deep dish pizza. So I learned to make my own. Saturday night's dinner:

Spicy chicken sausage and onion

How was your week?

14 comments:

  1. Nice to see Plautus there.

    And I love the pizza casserole.

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    Replies
    1. Don't let a Chicagoan hear you call it that...oops...

      Kirk & Raven was off the shelf, too, and I was already thinking about it, but we'll see...

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    2. I was a Chicagoan for 16 years and ate my share of deep dish. I miss Italian beef sandwiches more.

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    3. I sort of knew you'd lived in Chicago for a while. I ate more deep dish while in Chicago than Italian beef sandwiches, but I miss those, too. Toronto does have a decent Italian beef place, though not that convenient to me.

      Hot dogs are the other food, but meh. You can get good ones (and bad ones) anywhere. I would never put ketchup on one, though.

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  2. This is the charm of Sunday Salon: I arrived at your post an hour and a half ago. I saw your commitment to the European Reading Challenge. That sent me to take a look at the challenge. I added it to The Classic Club events page. I decided to join it. This is how blogging expands our reading lives in good ways.

    I hope you will join in the Sunday Salon as often as you can or wish to do so.

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    Replies
    1. It's fun that you're doing the European Reading Challenge. I'll look forward to what your read.

      It is a nice community all around, isn't it?

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  3. Argh! I have a list of books and more books and then you keep adding to them. I should have a Reese's TBR list! And funny ...... I made a pizza from scratch on Sunday night but a thin crust Italian one. It was delicious! I must make them more often!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's what we're all here for, isn't it? ;-) Which ones got added?

      Mmm, pizza...we had the leftovers for dinner tonight. Not quite as good, but still good. I do like a good flat pizza, too, and make those pretty often as well.

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    2. Shirley Hazzard. I don't know why. Usually, I can resist! 😁

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    3. Shirley Hazzard, both the biography and her best novels, are awfully good. I've just about finished rereading Transit of Venus.

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  4. I recently watched a cooking competition show called Best in Dough that’s all about Pizza. It was a lot of fun and I finally learnt what a Deep Dish Pizza actually was.

    Wishing you a great reading week

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    Replies
    1. Thanks!

      Pizza in all of its forms is one of my favorite things to make. Best in Dough sounds like fun.

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  5. Gilion also has a TBR Challenge which I probably need. I've never heard of a deep dish pizza.

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    Replies
    1. Ha, well, a TBR challenge. I could use one, too. I've done Bev's at My Reader's Block TBR challenge in the past, but once you become a regular, you have to get new books for the next year's TBR, don't you? Sigh...

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