The Sunday Salon

What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them, and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake.... That's what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual. Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book.

I have not accomplished much reading this week as I have had strep throat, and four kids with strep, and three with ear infections. Giving out medicine to five kids has pretty much taken up my free time. As for today, I have not decided what I shall read. I have nine books waiting to be read and reviewed, but as I will be home from church, and am feeling lazy and self indulgent, I think I want to read something comforting. Something familiar. Maybe...an Austen, a Bronte, L.M. Montegomery. What I would really like is something by a beloved author which I have not read yet, but I don't know if I have anything of the sort on my shelves. This much I know, today's book will not be ambitious, nor will it be meaningless. I need something that says, "life is beautiful, and this is why." Any suggestions?