Sunday Salon - August 21

How can we possibly be nearly the end of August (and, therefore, the end of summer)? What a blur this summer has been! I feel like I haven't done much reading but I know by most people's standards, I've read quite a lot. I'd like to think that I'll get more read this fall. But those of you who know anything at all about me by now know that I'm going to spend quite a lot of the next few months in front of a television watching football. My beloved Cornhuskers will kick off their inaugural season in the Big 10 soon and every fall starts with high hopes for my Oakland Raiders. Perhaps I need to work in some football reading this fall.

We went to a wedding last night, the first of Mama Shepp's boys to get married. I can't believe my boys could possibly be grown up enough to be getting married although the youngest of them are all 22 by now, the same age I was when I got married. Still, all of "my boys" will forever be goofy high school kids, hanging out in my kitchen, forgetting that I'm a grownup and making me laugh so hard.

New York Press has a article about mom-and-pop bookstores this week. Much as I love knowing that I can walk into a Barnes & Noble and find almost any book I'm looking for, I love the idea of walking into an indie bookstore and finding a book I didn't even know I was looking for.

"There’s a word in Danish that doesn’t translate to English. Google Translate will tell you that “hygge” means “cozy” or “coziness,” but it really means much more than that. Hygge, pronounced “hue-gah,” is the happy, satisfied laziness you feel when it’s raining outside and you’re curled up on the couch. It’s the feeling of being at home—of being comfortable—that all humans crave.

Hygge is exactly the feeling you get in tiny bookshops that smell like paper and dust and feature leaning towers of good reads. And it’s the feeling on which the owners of those bookstores count to stay in business."

There's nothing but cleaning (and, of course, some reading) on my schedule this afternoon. It might just be a good day to head off to downtown Omaha and visit Jones Street Booksellers.

Happy 90th birthday to Winnie-The-Pooh today! He looks pretty good for 90, doesn't he?!

This week I'm finishing up "Cocktails Under The Tree of Forgetfulness" by Alexandra Fuller (loving this one!) and then I'm actually ahead of reading for my scheduled reviews. What to read next? What are you reading this week?