Book Sale Bounty

Book sale season has arrived! On Saturday afternoon, I made an impromptu trip to the Friends of the Tompkins County Public Library book sale. This is easily the largest sale around. Boasting a warehouse  filled with over 250,000 titles, I could happily browse for hours. We had all sorts of activities planned for Mother's Day weekend and a trip to Ithaca wasn't on our agenda, but around mid-afternoon it was beginning to look like a possibility and we were on our way shortly after three.

The crowd had thinned and browsing was easy by the time we arrived around 4:30. I was hoping to find something by Angela Thirkell or Barbara Pym (for Pym Reading Week), but it was not to be. There was nothing at all by Thirkell, and a single well-worn trade paperback of Excellent Women was the only Pym available.

My first thought was that Thomas had scooped up the Thirkells earlier in the day, but he struck out, too. Either nobody in upstate New York is reading Angela Thirkell, or they all sold the first weekend of the sale. As for the Pyms, Thomas left a couple of hard covers and several trade paperbacks, so there are obviously more fans in the area... and they all arrived ahead of me!

There were still thousands of books to peruse and I left with a very nice stack (from the bottom):

Abide with Me by Elizabeth Strout
Strout is always a favorite. I recently finished The Burgess Boys (fingers crossed for a review this week), loved OliveKitteridge, and enjoyed Amy and Isabelle  years ago, too. This is a pristine hardcover edition of her second novel.

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
Book blogger favorites are irresistible.

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle
Prize winners always catch my attention, too, and this won the Booker Prize in 1993.

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton
I enjoyed The Forgotten Garden  and thought this might be a good summer read.

Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernieres
Corelli's Mandolin  is a favorite. I've wanted to read this for years.

Old Filth by Jane Gardam
I've been meaning to read Gardam for some time and snapped this up in light of a recent New York Times book review.

God on the Rocks by Jane Gardam
A beautiful Europa Edition of Gardam's 1978 first novel

Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey
I can never pass up a Persephone Classic.

Snow Angels by Stewart O'Nan
After reading four of O'Nan's novels, I want to read them all.

Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark
I seem to be reading a lot of British novelists lately...

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
It seems everyone in the world has read these books, but I'm afraid they may be too gruesome and have continued to avoid them. Yet another friend raved about the series during a recent dinner party and convinced me to give it a try. We'll see...

Any thoughts on these books?

Sunday Sentence: The Thirteenth Tale

Sunday Sentence, inspired by author David Abrams at The Quivering Pen, is "simply put, the best sentence(s) I've read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary."

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.

The Thirteenth Tale
by Diane Setterfield

Two Spring Salads and a New Salmon Recipe

With the twins home from college and interested in choosing a few new seasonal recipes, our spring Pin It and Do It Challenge moved into high gear this week. I even created a new Pinterest board, Super Salads and Sandwiches, to aid in planning lighter summer meals.

Early in the week, with warm weather and an especially hectic day, we opted for a quick, cold supper. Apple Pecan Chicken Salad from Smells Like Home appealed to all of us. Picking up a rotisserie chicken and fresh croissants on the way home made things even easier. The sandwiches were delicious - a definite "keeper" recipe that would be perfect for a summer luncheon, too. The above photo is from Pinterest; my original pin is here.

Encouraged by success, we tried the Southwest Black Bean Salad from skinnytaste.com - another winner! It is excellent as a side salad, but could also be used as an appetizer or salad topping. We needed to plan ahead and allow the avocado time to ripen to perfection, but I'm sure that won't be an issue as the season progresses. Here is my original pin.

Next up was Baked Dijon Salmon, adapted from allrecipes.com and found on What's Cookin' Chicago? blog. This is my new favorite salmon dish and it has definitely earned a spot in the regular dinner rotation. In addition to trying the recipe, we also ran a taste test between fresh and frozen salmon. For months I have been maintaining that Wegmans club pack frozen salmon fillets are just as good as fresh, but this side-by-side testing proved me wrong. I baked one frozen fillet along with the fresh and, of course, we could all tell the difference. Frozen salmon is still a freezer staple, but now I'll use it only when I can't get to the store for fresh. The photo of the cooked salmon is from Pinterest (I forgot to take one), but below is the salmon brushed with honey-dijon glaze and then sprinkled with the panko-pecan topping before baking. My original pin is here.

Weekend Cooking, hosted at Beth Fish Reads, is open to anyone who has a food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up over the weekend.

Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler

Calling Me Home: A Novel
by Julie Kibler
Narrated by Bahni Turpin and Lorna Raver
Blackstone Audio, 2013
13 hours and 36 minutes
source: purchased

Publisher's Summary:

Eighty-nine-year-old Isabelle McAllister has a big favor to ask her hairdresser, Dorrie. She wants the black single mother to drop everything and drive her from Texas to a funeral in Ohio - tomorrow. Dorrie, fleeing problems of her own and curious about Isabelle’s past, agrees, not knowing it will be a journey that changes both their lives.

Isabelle confesses that, as a teen in 1930s Kentucky, she fell in love with Robert Prewitt, a would-be doctor and the black son of her family’s housekeeper - in a town where blacks weren’t allowed after dark. The tale of their forbidden relationship and its tragic consequences just might help Dorrie find her own way.

My thoughts:
There are really just two things I want you to know about this novel:

1. I loved it! My second 5-star book of the year, it will surely appear on my list of favorites in December.
2.  Be prepared to shed a tear or two and plan accordingly... especially as you approach the end. After receiving questioning looks upon arriving moist-eyed at the hair salon, I decided to finish listening at home rather than on the way to the dentist's office as planned. A good decision.

A note on the audio production:
Multiple reader productions are usually a hit with me. In Calling Me Home, two stellar narrators team up to deliver an audio performance that is sheer perfection. I enjoyed Bahni Turpin in both The Help and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, but Lorna Raver, a popular reader whose name I instantly recognized, was a new narrator for me. I have since added several of her other credits to my audio wish list.

Read or listen?
If you're an audiobook fan, and especially if you enjoy dual narrators, by all means listen. However, my mother prefers reading, so I borrowed a library copy and insisted she read it. She devoured the book (as did my sister) and assures me it's just as wonderful in print.

Bottom line:
Calling Me Home  is a must read!

May #EstellaGram: Days 1 - 7

The first week of #EstellaGram for May is history. Despite going the 2-for-1 route on Days 3 and 4, I have kept up with this month's bookish photo-a-day challenge.

Day 1| close up... Penguin's Clothbound Classics are gorgeous

Day 2| currently reading 

Day 3| good & Day 4| evil... Two days, one photo!

Day 5| So #happy to find this in my mailbox! 

Day 6| sad ...I'd really rather sit by the lake and read, but there is work to be done.

Day 7| a couple #ethnic cookbooks

We'll see if I can keep up for another week.

Find me on Instagram: lakesidemusing

Tuesday Intro: The Thirteenth Tale

"It was November. Although it was not yet late, the sky was dark when I turned into Laundress Passage. Father had finished for the day, switched off the shop lights and closed the shutters; but so I would not come home to darkness he had left on the light over the stairs to the flat. Through the glass in the door it cast a foolscap rectangle of paleness onto the wet pavement, and it was while I was standing in that rectangle, about to turn my key in the door, that I first saw the letter. Another white rectangle, it was on the fifth step from the bottom, where I couldn't miss it. 

I closed the door and put the shop key in its usual place behind Bailey's Advanced Principles of Geometry. Poor Bailey. No one has wanted his fat gray book for thirty years. Sometimes I wonder what he makes of his role as guardian for the bookshop keys. I don't suppose it's the destiny he had in mind for the masterwork that he spent two decades writing."

The Thirteenth Tale
by Diane Setterfield

It seems like most people have read The Thirteenth Tale.  It is my book club's May selection, so I'm finally getting around to it now. Approaching halfway mark, I'm involved in the story and curious about the outcome, but not loving it... yet.

Have you read this one? What do you think of the opening?

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening. Feel free to grab the banner and play along.

Two More Reasons to Love May

Happy May! We have color, at last, in central New York - flowering trees are blooming, while daffodils, hyacinths, and forsythia add splashes of color to our yards. In a couple of weeks, there will be lilacs. And if that's not enough to make me smile, two of my favorite events are returning this month.

First, Trish is hosting a May edition of Pin It and Do It. You all know I love Pinterest and can never resist this challenge, but this month I'm going to add a new twist. Previously, #PinItDoIt has been all about food and, while there are still plenty of recipes I'd like to try, I'm challenging myself to branch out this time. Maybe a knitting, gardening, or decorating project, or something from my NYC board, or movies, or books... we'll see. Of course, I'll still be cooking and baking, too. All the particulars can be found in Trish's post.

#Estellagram is on again! This bookish photo-a-day challenge is so much fun. March was awesome (I didn't miss a single day), but April was a bust. Maybe those weekly roundup posts in March kept me motivated after all. We'll see what happens in May.

Will you be joining us for either of these challenges?