Of Crocodiles, Crawdads, and (trying to be) Being Completely Fine

The Sunday Salon, What I'm Listening To, What I'm Reading

I told you last week that I would let you know what I decided to read last Sunday afternoon and so here I am telling you: I read Crocodile on the Sandbank, the first Amelia Peabody mystery, by Elizabeth Peters. It wasn’t what I expected and while it started slow, by the end of the book, it picked up and earned a five-star rating from me. That makes a perfect 7-for-7 for me so far for the books I’ve read this year. To see what most of them are, visit my Goodreads 2019 shelf. The only one not included there, because I’m reading it as part of a compilation, is All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriot.

So now what will I be reading this afternoon? I’m still not ready to jump back into nonfiction, especially political nonfiction, so I will be escaping again into fiction. I have two choices this afternoon: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. I didn’t plan it this way, but both were selections for Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club, which started last year. I didn’t realize it at the time, but when I read The Library Book by Susan Orlean for my First Book of the Year, it also was the book club’s selection for January.

I probably will read Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine first since I have that one checked out on ebook from our local library district. Someone donated a print copy of Where The Crawdads Sing at our library for our book sale, but unfortunately the copy isn’t in great shape (a few torn pages in the front, but still readable). I grabbed it since I had it on hold in ebook at the Free Library of Philadelphia and I didn’t want to have to wait several weeks to get it. Now I can read it whenever I want.

As for life otherwise, work at the library has been busy, especially with a change that is coming in the Spring, but which I can’t discuss yet completely since it hasn’t been announced publicly. All I will say is that as a result of this change, work has been slightly stressful and I’ve been trying to remember my One Word for 2019: Breathe. This album has been helping me through:

For more about the album, see Pitchfork’s review of it.

So how about you? What did you read this past week? What are you planning to read this coming week?

Published by Bryan G. Robinson

Blogger formerly known as Unfinished Person. Still an unfinished person...

Published

13 thoughts on “Of Crocodiles, Crawdads, and (trying to be) Being Completely Fine”

  1. I was terribly stalled with my reading when I read An Anonymous Girl. It was good but not the page turner I envisioned and it was a little long which turned me off to picking other books up at the same time. I don’t know. I was in a funk. But then when I read Crawdads my reading mojo came back. I am almost done with it and then will finish The New Me and then I think I should read The Hate U Give because I have a discussion coming up for that one.

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  2. 7 out of 7 is great, I’ve only had 2 so far. I’ve never read any of Elizabeth Peters books. I always think I’d enjoy them though.

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  3. I’m intrigued by the change happening at your library, as we’re going through a pretty big change ourselves. We’ll have to chat about that sometime…

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  4. Still plugging away at a mystery I started a couple of weeks ago. It’s the second book of the Lady Hardcastle series and it’s a little less engaging than the first, so far. However, I’m also catching up on the third book in The Mitford Series, which I thought I had read, but don’t actually remember. I have that one in paperback and it’s fun to hold an actual book again and smell the pages, remembering how I used to hide under the covers as a kid and read Little House, even though I was supposed to be sleeping. I can’t be the only one who smells books. Can I?

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  5. Wow. Seven of seven, eh? That’s an excellent run.

    I thought Eleanor was a compelling and intensely real picture of a human being. That said, it was hard to read Eleanor. Of course that could just be me. I tend to feel strongly for others, even book characters.

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