Look what my new cat did

Becoming: A Guided Journal for Discovering Your Voice ~ by Michelle Obama, 2019, journal, 208 pages, 10/10

What's your journey of becoming?  This journal features an intimate and inspiring introduction by the former First Lady and thought-provoking questions and prompts to help you discover — and rediscover — your story.  “It’s not about being perfect.  It’s not about where you get yourself in the end.  There’s power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice.  And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others.  This, for me, is how we become,” Michelle Obama says.

Michelle Obama shared her own extraordinary journey in her memoir to help create space for others to tell their stories and to give people the courage to discover the power of their own voice.  With this journal, she now provides you with the encouragement to find value in your own journey of becoming.  It includes thought-provoking prompts designed to help you reflect on your personal and family history; your goals, challenges, and dreams; what moves you and brings you hope; and what future you imagine for yourself and your community.  She writes in the introduction:  "I hope you’ll use this journal to write down your experiences, thoughts, and feelings, in all their imperfections, and without judgment. ... We don’t have to remember everything.  But every-thing we remember has value."  As you journal, take heart in the experiences that brought you to where you are today, and also feel empowered to take those next steps, wherever they might lead.

What my new cat did

What my cat did astounded me.  I finished reading Barack Obama's book, that I wrote about HERE, and went to bed.  The next morning, I discovered she had shoved some books off my desk in the other room.  This was one of them.  Did she really "notice" I'd been reading about Barack Obama, and while I slept had gone into the other room and noticed the book by his wife?  Weird.  And no, I'm not making this up.  I guess she really IS going to follow in the footsteps of my other cats blogging about books, if she's that smart.  Otherwise, what an uncanny coincidence.

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Week in Review

• On Sunday, I posted one for Monday Musing, HERE, accidentally posting it too early.
• Sn on Monday, I mused again, HERE, this time about imagined experiences.
• My Wednesday Words quoted Barack Obama, HERE.
• Wednesday was also International Dog Day, so I posted again (with a dog), HERE.
• A book (and a couple of kittens) were featured on Thursday, HERE.
• Another cat was featured in my Caturday post, HERE, but this one moved in with me.

Deb at Readerbuzz hosts Sunday Salon, a place for us to link up and share what we have been reading and doing during the week.

A book for people who love words

Phraseology: Thousands of Bizarre Origins, Unexpected Connections, and Fascinating Facts about English's Best Expressions ~ by Barbara Ann Kipfer, 2008, etymology, 320 pages, 9/10

The front cover (above) has nine examples, which you may be able to read by clicking to enlarge the illustration.  Here are a few other examples from the book:

• alter ego is Latin for "other self" (p. 11)
• a captain's chair is one having a rounded back formed by a heavy rail resting upon (p. 30)
• the term flash flood only dates to 1940 (p. 109)
• flower children were hippies who typically wore flowers in their hair (p. 110)
• home page (1993) actually entered the language before website (1994) (p.139)
• kiss of life was a name used in the 1960s for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation (p. 158)
• living will, a written request that, if the signatory suffers severe disablement or terminal illness, he or she should not be kept alive by artificial means, dates to 1969 (p. 168)
• news flash (1904) originally applied to telegraphic news dispatches (p. 192)
• a red herring is something introduced to distract from a more important or controversial issue (p. 230)
• you're welcome did not exist as a polite formlaic response to a than you until 1960
  
  
  Week in Review

  • On TWOsday, I wrote about two books, HERE.
  • My book beginning on Friday, HERE, 
  • It's been a slow week for posting on my blog, it seems.

  

  Deb at Readerbuzz hosts Sunday Salon, a place for us to link up and share what we have been reading and doing during the week.

Library Loot

Arrivals and Departures ~ by Amanda Eyre Ward, 2026, literary fiction, 288 pages

The Perkins family has problems.  They’re scattered across the globe.

• Lee, a glamorous reality-TV star, is struggling with her mental health in the spotlight.
• Reagan, her younger sister, has fallen for a romance scammer.
• Cord, their charming brother, is one drink away from losing it all.
• And their mother, Charlotte, still longs for the love she let slip away a decade ago, a lover who sailed off with her heart to a remote island in Greece.

When Reagan disappears, Lee flies first-class to Athens to save her family — again.  There, against the glittering Mediterranean and the shadow of the Acropolis, Lee contends with emotional nieces, relentless paparazzi, and her own fragile heart.  Lee is desperately searching — for her sister, and for the hope and joy she thought was gone forever.  Across continents and their crises, each member of the Perkins family must face the same question:  is it ever too late to choose love?  It’s the story of a family finding the courage to say the only words that can save us — I love you.

Week in Review

• On Monday, I wrote about two kinds of people, HERE.
• My subject on Wednesday was troublesome words, HERE.
• Friday's post, HERE, was about my new book about alien encounters.

Deb at Readerbuzz hosts Sunday Salon, a place for us to link up and share what we have been reading and doing during the week.

A book and a review of my blogging week

From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life ~ by Arthur C. Brooks, 2022, aging, 272 pages

This #1 New York Times Bestseller is a roadmap for finding purpose, meaning, and success as we age.  This bestselling author is a Harvard professor and the Atlantic's happiness columnist.

Many of us assume that the more successful we are, the less susceptible we become to the sense of professional and social irrelevance that frequently accompanies aging.  But the truth is, the greater our achievements and our attachment to them, the more we notice our decline, and the more painful it is when it occurs.  So what can we do, starting now, to make our older years a time of happiness, purpose, and success?

At the height of his career at the age of 50, Arthur Brooks embarked on a seven-year journey to discover how to transform his future from one of disappointment over waning abilities into an opportunity for progress.  This book is the result, a practical roadmap for the rest of your life.

By drawing on social science, philosophy, biography, theology, and eastern wisdom, as well as dozens of interviews with everyday men and women, Brooks shows us that true life success is well within our reach.  By refocusing on certain priorities and habits that anyone can learn (such as deep wisdom, detachment from empty rewards, connection and service to others, and spiritual progress), we can set ourselves up for increased happiness.  You, too, can go from strength to strength.

Week in Review

• On Monday, HERE, I mused about butt dialing (also called pocket dialing).
• "Negative Nellie" were the words I chose for Wednesday Words, HERE.
• Book Beginnings on Friday was from a book showing a black cat, HERE.
• Saturday's post, HERE, was full of cats to celebrate International Cat Day.  So it really WAS Caturday that day!

Deb at Readerbuzz hosts Sunday Salon, a place for us to link up and share what we have been reading and doing during the week.

Sharing a book for our Sunday Salon bloggers

Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World ~ by Gretchen Rubin, 2023, memoir and self-help, 272 pages

This is a New York Times bestseller.  This is a quote from them:  "The author

of The Happiness Project discovers a surprising path to a life of more energy, creativity, luck, and love:  by tuning in to the five senses."

For more than a decade, Gretchen Rubin had been studying happiness and human nature.  Then, one day, a visit to her eye doctor made her realize that she’d been overlooking a key element of happiness: her five senses.  She had spent so much time stuck in her head that she had allowed life's vital sensations to slip away, unnoticed.  This epiphany she had lifted her from a state of foggy preoccupation into a world invigorated by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching.

In this journey of self-experimentation, Rubin explores the mysteries and joys of the five senses as a path to a happier, more mindful life.  Drawing on cutting-edge science, philosophy, literature, and her own efforts to practice what she learns, she investigates the profound power of tuning in to the physical world.

From the simple pleasures of appreciating the magic of ketchup and adding favorite songs to a playlist, to more adventurous efforts like creating a daily ritual of visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art and attending a flavor university, Rubin shows us how to experience each day by really connecting.  She found that our five senses offer us immediate, sustainable ways to cheer up, calm down, and engage the world around us — as well as ways to glimpse the soul and touch the transcendent.

Life in Five Senses is filled with profound insights and practical suggestions about how to heighten our senses and use our powers of perception to live fuller, richer lives.  Reading this book can help us become more aware of our own sensory experiences as we explore our own five senses, which I definitely enjoyed.  So check it out and tune in to your senses.  Here's a quote that made me smile, where the author was thirsty and stepped into a store.  What she bought made me smile, since I have it in my fridge right now:

Alongside the usual assortment of sofa drinks and energy drinks, I spotted a Snapple Diet Peach Tea.  I hadn't seen that label in years.  I paid and, as soon as I was back on the sidewalk, gulped down a mouthful.

The sweet, smooth, fruity flavor instantly transported me back to law school. ... I drank gallons of Diet Peach Snapple there.  By the time I graduated, I was thoroughly tired of it. 

Week in Review

• On Monday, I talked about being "booked," HERE.
• The words for Wednesday were "kinship carers," HERE.
• My Thursday Thoughts were about Black History Month, HERE.

is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Cookies and a trilogy

A friend gave me these Holiday Shortbread Cookies, which I'm eating as I type this up for my Sunday Salon post.

The Night Trilogy ~ by Elie Wiesel, 1972, 1985, 2008, memoir + 2 literary novels, 352 pages

Night is one of the masterpieces of Holocaust literature.  First published in 1958, it is the autobiographical account of an adolescent boy and his father in Auschwitz.  Elie Wiesel writes of their battle for survival and of his battle with God for a way to understand the wanton cruelty he witnesses each day.

The short novel Dawn (1960) is about a young man who survived World War II, settled in Palestine, now joins a Jewish underground movement and is commanded to execute a British officer who has been taken hostage.

In Day (previously titled The Accident, 1961), Wiesel questions the limits of conscience:  Can Holocaust survivors forge a new life despite their memories?  Wiesel's trilogy offers insights on mankind's attraction to violence and on the temptation of self-destruction.

Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) is the author of more than fifty books, including Night, his harrowing account of his experiences in Nazi concentration camps.  The book, first published in 1955, was selected for Oprah's Book Club in 2006, and continues to be an important reminder of man's capacity for inhumanity.  Wiesel was Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

• Friday's Book Beginning was posted HERE.
• On Saturday, my subject was snow, HERE.

This has been a slow blogging week, so that's it for today.  And that's it for using this 2025 calendar picture.  There are no more Sundays in this year.

is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Sunday Salon

Blue Sunset (Book 2 of 3) ~ by Gregg R. Overman, 2023, science fiction, 417 pages

The aliens just want us all to die. Two men and a Martian “Scout Bug” have other ideas.

Earth is in political and economic turmoil in the wake of an unprovoked alien attack.  NASA abandons the crew on Mars as power shifts to a reactionary political party, but they reconsider when new lights and radiation bloom on the periphery of our solar system.  NASA needs Mars to once again act as the sacrificial lamb for the incoming missiles, but the Mars’ crew has their own problems after one of the missiles strikes Mars and turns the environment from inhospitable to unlivable.  It seems their only choice is death by starvation, hypothermia, or the next alien missile.

Something on Mars awakens after millennia of stasis.  It is hungry, and the human crew on the surface is obviously food, albeit genetically damaged food.  The genetic damage will need to be corrected before the harvest.

Astonishingly, the next round of incoming alien missiles begins communicating, and the Mars Crew learns that the galaxy has been subjected to a reign of genocidal bombardment for thousands of years.  They have suffered much, but the crew on Mars and the fully awake Martians decide to go down fighting.

On Monday, I wrote about a neighbor's 100th birthday, HERE.

Wednesday's Word was "architecture," HERE.

This has been a VERY slow week, so that is all I have for today's blog post.

is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Let's talk about books in our Sunday Salon

Sketchy Stories ~ by Kerby Rosanes, 2016, art, 128 pages, 7/10

Yesterday was International Artist Day, which I learned late in the day.  So I looked around for any art books I have that I haven't written about and found this.  It wasn't my favorite book, but I enjoyed looking through it (though I'd rather have been doing my own sketching).

1. In my Monday Musing post, I was thinking about a big, heavy book of Monet's art, HERE.
2. My subject on TWOsday included two very long books, HERE.
3. Friday's Book Beginning was about a recent Oprah Book Club choice, HERE.
4. On Saturday, I wrote about my Chinese friend's birthday cake, HERE.

is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Let's talk about books in our Sunday Salon

The Cat, the Wife and the Weapon: A Cats in Trouble Mystery (Book 4 of 8) ~ by Leann Sweeney, 2012, cozy mystery, 304 pages, 9/10

When quilter Jillian Hart returns to her lake house in Mercy, South Carolina, she discovered her friend, Tom, is missing — and his estranged half-brother has moved into Tom's house.  Jillian doesn't trust the guy, especially since he allowed Tom's diabetic cat to escape.  When police officers find Tom's wrecked car with a dead stranger inside, Jillian is determined to find out what happened to Tom — before someone else turns up dead.  (I stayed up all night to read it straight through from beginning to end.)

1. Wednesday's Word was "phrase," but nobody seemed to notice the yellow cats and dogs "raining" on the people holding umbrellas on the cover, HERE.
2. Thursday Thoughts were about a thriller, HERE.
3. Friday's book beginning was about , HERE.
4. On Friday, I also posted that it was World Smile Day, HERE.
5. On Saturday, I posted the Optimistic October calendar from the folks at Action for Happiness, HERE.

is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Feminist revolution

The Book Club for Troublesome Women ~ by Marie Bostwick, 2025, historical fiction, 384 pages

Margaret Ryan never really meant to start a book club or a feminist revolution in her buttoned-up suburb.  By 1960s standards, Margaret Ryan is living the American woman's dream.  She has a husband, three children, a station wagon, and a home in Concordia — one of Northern Virginia's most exclusive and picturesque suburbs.  She has a standing invitation to the neighborhood coffee klatch, and now, thanks to her husband, a new subscription to A Woman's Place — a magazine that tells housewives like Margaret exactly who to be and what to buy.  On paper, she has it all.  So why doesn't that feel like enough?

Margaret is thrown for a loop when she first meets Charlotte Gustafson, Concordia's newest and most intriguing resident.  As an excuse to be in the mysterious Charlotte's orbit, Margaret concocts a book club get-together and invites two other neighborhood women — Bitsy and Viv — to the inaugural meeting.  As the women share secrets, cocktails, and their honest reactions to the controversial bestseller The Feminine Mystique, they begin to discover that the American dream they'd been sold isn't all roses and sunshine — and that their secret longing for more is something they share.  Nicknaming themselves the Bettys, after Betty Friedan, these four friends have no idea their impromptu club and the books they read together will become the glue that helps them hold fast through tears, triumphs, angst, and arguments — and what will prove to be the most consequential and freeing year of their lives.

This is a humorous, thought provoking, and nostalgic romp through one pivotal and tumultuous American year — and also an ode to self-discovery, persistence, and the power of sisterhood.

Now I think I should probably re-read . . .

The Feminine Mystique ~ by Betty Friedan, 1963, women's studies, 239 pages

This book, published in 1963, was widely credited with sparking second-wave feminism in the United States.  Friedan used the book to challenge the widely shared belief that being fulfilled as a woman meant becoming a housewife and mother.

Friedan conduct a survey of her former Smith College classmates in 1957 and found that many of them were unhappy with their lives as housewives.  That prompted her to begin research by conducting interviews with other suburban housewives, as well as researching psychology, media, and advertising.

She coined the phrase "feminine mystique" to describe the assumptions that women would be fulfilled from their housework, marriage, sexual lives, and children.  The prevailing belief was that women who were truly feminine should not want to work, get an education, or have political opinions.  (I can confirm this.  I got married in 1959, and my husband pointed his finger at me and said, "You're my wife now, and women don't need higher education.")

Anyway, Betty Friedan wanted to prove that women were NOT satisfied and yet were not able to voice their feelings.  Yes, I think I will put this book on reserve at my library right now.

1.  On TWOsday, I wrote about two books by Rosemary Sutcliff, HERE.
2. My Thursday Thoughts were about being surprised that the "bug man" came to spray my apartment one day, HERE.
3. When I got up on Friday, I discovered it was International Cat Day, HERE.
4. My Book Beginnings on Friday, HERE, was from Anna Montague's 2024 book entitled How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?
5. Saturday I posted I love books, HERE, for National Book Lovers Day.

Sunday Salon is hosted

by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Historical fiction about glassblowers

The Glassmaker ~ by Tracy Chevalier, 2024, historical fiction (Venice), 416 pages

This story follows a family of glassmakers from the height of Renaissance-era Italy to the present day.  It is 1486 and Venice is a wealthy, opulent center for trade.  Orsola Rosso is the eldest daughter in a family of glassblowers on Murano, the island revered for the craft.  As a woman, she is not meant to work with glass — but she has the hands for it, the heart, and a vision.  When her father dies, she teaches herself to make glass beads in secret, and her work supports the Rosso family fortunes.

Skipping like a stone through the centuries, in a Venice where time moves as slowly as molten glass, we follow Orsola and her family as they live through creative triumph and heartbreaking loss, from a plague devastating Venice to Continental soldiers stripping its palazzos bare, from the domination of Murano and its maestros to the transformation of the city of trade into a city of tourists.  In every era, the Rosso women ensure that their work, and their bonds, endure.

"This charming fable is at once a love story that skips through six centuries, and also a love song to the timeless craft of glassmaking.  Chevalier probes the fierce rivalries and enduring loyalties of Murano's glass dynasties, capturing the roar of the furnace, the sweat on the skin, and the glittering beauty of Venetian glass." – Geraldine Brooks, author of Horse

Chevalier is a master of her own craft, and The Glass Maker is as inventive as it is spellbinding:  a mesmerizing portrait of a woman, a family, and a city as everlasting as their glass.  Named a Best Historical Novel of 2024 by The Sunday Times, The Independent, and BookPage.

1. On Monday, I wrote about weird things said in bookstores, HERE.
2. On TWOsday, my book was about the etiquette of calling and the etiquette of visiting during the late 1800s, HERE.
3. Wednesday's Word was "morality" with a book about people being moral animals, HERE.
4. My Thursday Thoughts were about a book for our Crown Center library, HERE.
5. On Friday, my book beginnings choice was Relative Strangers by A. H. Kim, HERE.

Sunday Salon is hosted

by Deb at Readerbuzz.

A new book added to my stack of books

Roctogenarians: Late in Life Debuts, Comebacks, and Triumphs ~ by Mo Rocca and Jonathan Greenberg, 2024, psychology, 384 pages

This collection of stories celebrates the triumphs of people who made their biggest marks late in life.  Eighty has been the new sixty for about twenty years now. In fact, there have always been late-in-life achievers, those who declined to go into decline just because they were eligible for social security. Rocca and Greenberg introduce us to the people past and present who peaked when they could have been puttering — breaking out as writers, selling out concert halls, attempting to set land-speed records — and in the case of one ninety-year tortoise, becoming a first-time father.

This collection of entertaining and unexpected profiles of these unretired titans — some long gone and some very much still living.  The cast of characters includes Mary Church Terrell, who at eighty-six helped lead sit-ins at segregated Washington, DC, lunch counters in the 1950s, and Carol Channing, who married the love of her life at eighty-two.  Then there’s Peter Mark Roget, who began working on his thesaurus in his twenties and completed it at seventy-three.

1.  On Wednesday, I wrote about the word "musclespan" and why I keep walking, walking walking, HERE.
2. My Thursday Thoughts were about Brioche (bree-aash), a light sweet pastry or bun., HERE.  It probably should have been posted on Wednesday, as my word of the day.  Ah, well.
3. On Friday, HERE, was the beginning of a book I had just gotten.  The book's title was Shelf Respect.  As a self-respecting word lover, I have to say I got it because of the play on words.

Sunday Salon is hosted

by Deb at Readerbuzz.

National Ice Cream Day

It's late afternoon here, but I've just learned that today is National Ice Cream Day.  Luckily, I happen to have ice cream in my freezer, and it's my favorite:  Coyote Tracks.  It's vanilla flavored ice cream with thick fudge swirl and mini peanut butter cups in it.

Here is the book I've just begun reading:

The Wish ~ by Nicholas Sparks, 2021, fiction, 416 pages

1996 is the year that changes everything for Maggie Dawes.  Sent away at 16 to live with an aunt she barely knows in Ocracoke, a remote village on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, she can think only of the friends and family she left behind . . . until her aunt introduces her to Bryce Trickett, one of the few teenagers on the island.  Handsome, genuine, and newly admitted to West Point Academy, Bryce gradually shows her how much there is to love about the wind-swept beach town — and introduces her to photography, a passion that will define the rest of her life . . . as will Bryce.

 

By 2019, Maggie is a renowned travel photographer.  She splits her time between running a successful gallery in New York and photographing remote locations around the world.  But this year, she finds herself unexpectedly grounded over Christmas, struggling to come to terms with a sobering medical diagnosis.  Increasingly dependent on a young assistant, she begins growing closer to him.

As they count down the last days of the season together, she tells him the story of another Christmas, decades earlier — and the love that set her on a course she never could have imagined.

Sunday Salon is hosted

by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Report on my reading week

Pope Joan ~ by Donna Woolfolk Cross, 2009, historical fiction, 425 pages

Donna Woolfolk Cross brings the Dark Ages to life in all their brutal splendor and shares the dramatic story of a woman whose strength of vision led her to defy the social restrictions of her day.  For a thousand years her existence has been denied.  She is the legend that will not die — Pope Joan, the ninth-century woman who disguised herself as a man and rose to become the only female ever to sit on the throne of St. Peter.  Now in this riveting novel, Cross paints a sweeping portrait of an unforgettable heroine who struggles against restrictions her soul cannot accept. 

Brilliant and talented, young Joan rebels against medieval social strictures forbidding women to learn.  When her brother is brutally killed during a Viking attack, Joan takes up his cloak — and his identity — and enters the monastery of Fulda.  As Brother John Anglicus, Joan distinguishes herself as a great scholar and healer.  Eventually, she is drawn to Rome, where she becomes enmeshed in a dangerous web of love, passion, and politics.  Triumphing over appalling odds, she finally attains the highest office in Christendom — wielding a power greater than any woman before or since.  But such power always comes at a price.

Note:  After seeing the movie "Conclave" Friday, Mary told me there's a book about Pope Joan, so I went home, found it at our library, and put it on reserve (even though I don't usually read such long books these days).  Thanks, Mary.

1.  I wrote about Monday being World Chocolate Day, HERE.
2. On Tuesday, I went bananas, HERE.
3. On Wednesday, I was reading about why the world exists and came across a word I had never seen, HERE.
4. My Thursday Thoughts were about blueberry muffins, HERE.
5. My Friday book beginning, HERE, was from a book I had just put on hold.

Sunday Salon is hosted

by Deb at Readerbuzz.

A borrowed book ~ or two ~ or three ~ actually four

Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats ~ by Courtney Gustafson, 2025, memoir, 256 pages

When Courtney Gustafson moved into a rental house in the Poets Square neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona, she didn’t know that the property came with thirty feral cats.  Focused only on her own survival — in a new relationship, during a pandemic, with poor mental health and a job that didn’t pay enough — Courtney was reluctant to spend any of her own time or money caring for the wayward animals.

But the cats — their pleading eyes, their ribs showing, the new kittens born in the driveway — didn’t give her a choice.

She had no idea about the grief and hardship of animal rescue, the staggering size of the problem in neighborhoods across the country.  And she couldn’t have imagined how that struggle — toward an ethics of care, of individuals trying their best amid spectacularly failing systems — would help pierce a personal darkness she’d wrestled with for much of her life.  She also didn’t expect that the TikTok and Instagram accounts she created to share the quirky personalities of the wild but lovable cats, like Monkey, Goldie, Francois, and Sad Boy, would end up saving her home.

Courtney writes toward a vision of connectedness, showing how taking care of the cats reshaped her understanding of empathy, resilience, and the healing power of wholly showing up for some-thing outside yourself.  She takes us from the dark alleys where she feeds feral cats to inside the tragically neglected homes where she climbs over piles of trash, and occasionally animals, and then into her own driveway with the cats she loves and must sometimes let go.  Compelling and tender, Poets Square is as much about cats as it is about the urgency of care, community, and a little bit of dumb hope.

Knowing my love of cats (and books), one of my neighbors called to invite me for a chat.  She wanted to "show" me something.  Actually, she wanted to let me borrow one of the library books she'd just gotten.  This is the book she handed me.  I started it immediately, since she would want to read it herself when she finished the other book (or books) she'd checked out.  That's why I opened it the minute I went back to my apartment.  Thanks, Madeleine.

Here's what I posted this week:

1. My Wednesday post, HERE, was about a book loaned to me by a neighbor who also loves cats.  Thanks, Larry.
2. On Thursday, I didn't mention HERE that a friend from the community met me for lunch in our Café and brought a book she'd just finished, thinking it is one I'd like to read.  Thanks, Sharon.
3. On Friday, I wrote HERE about a book another neighbor let me borrow, one her daughter had given her.  Thanks, Betty.

Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.