Sunday Salon: Right here, right now, July 7

Time: Sunday morning, between 7 and 8 AM


Place: In bed. Tall Paul is trying to sleep in a little more, so shhh!

Eating: Nothing yet, but contemplating breakfast…yogurt with granola, berries on a shortcake biscuit, and tea instead of coffee today, I'm thinking.

Drinking: Right now, water from the bottle on my nightstand. After trying it out during our vacation, I've begun drinking Mighty Leaf Chamomile Citrus herbal tea in the evenings–best chamomile tea I've ever tried, and I think it may be helping me sleep a little better, too!

Reading: I have two TLC Book Tours this month, and am about halfway through The Exiles by Allison Lynn for the first of those dates…and that's it. It feels a little odd to be reading only one book right now. But I've kept current on my blog reading for the whole first week of the Post-Google-Reader Era, so it's been a good trade (although I suspect that the July Fourth holiday caused feed updates to be less than normal, and that probably helped). I'm still playing around with feed-reader apps on my mobile devices. I've reinstalled Reeder on my iPhone since it's integrated with Feedly now,
and I'm really liking Mr. Reader on the iPad–great integration with my favorite sharing apps, plus the ability to comment on posts without leaving the app. As a result, the iPad's becoming my favorite place to read blogs,

Watching: It's a slow time of year for TV, and we're using that break to start watching Supernatural on Netflix. Most if our “Netflix catch-up* recommendations come from my stepdaughter Kate, but we're open to other sources, so if you have any, please leave them in comments! (And the show doesn't literally have to be on Netflix–our Blu-Ray player connects to several streaming-video services, so just tell me where to find your show if it's on one of the others.)

Listening: I started on a piece of recent history during the week of Independence Day: The Astronaut Wives Club by Lily Koppel, read by Orlagh Cassidy–I'm about halfway through and expect to finish it this week.

Blogging: I'm still contemplating the next-to-last season of Mad Men, two weeks after it ended, and want to make some time to record those thoughts soon. I'm also working on a few more little photo essays on places we visited on our vacation to New England. Between those, several book posts, and Wordless Wednesdays, I think the July blogging calendar is pretty well covered.

Pondering/Planning: A massive book giveaway, including ARCs read and unread, books I've finished and don't foresee re-reading, and the "regrets” collection–that is, books to be liberated from TBR Purgatory because I've regretfully decided that I probably never will read them after all. The catch is that they'll have to be claimed in person. Details will be announced here and on Facebook once I know what they are!

Promoting: Much as I'd love to, I don't think I'll be able to swing the trip upstate for Beth Kephart's memoir-writing workshop in Corte Madera, CA in September, but if you can go, I think you should!

Enjoying: Ending a four-day weekend that hasn't been overly busy with a day that has no plans at all yet.

Anticipating: Making some sort of plans to get out of the house today–it looks like another one that will be too nice to spend inside!–and doing some reading while I am inside.

Gratuitous Photo of the Week

Portland Head Light, Maine, June 2013

How's your weekend going?

 

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Pictures from the Revolution: Historic Boston

The 237th anniversary of this country's birth seems like the perfect day to share some of the historical sites we photographed in Boston last month.

One of the remarkable things about the Boston cityscape is the juxtaposition of old and new architecture. The Old State House wasn't old--or surrounded by glass-walled skyscrapers--in 1776, but it was already the center of Massachusetts colonial politics, and of revolutionary ideas.  In one of the first acts of colonial rebellion, five men were killed by British soldiers outside the State House in 1770 in what became known as the Boston Massacre. After the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia on July 4, it was first proclaimed publicly from the balcony of this building, and a new country was born.

The Old State House is 300 years old this year!
(My photos, edited with Snapseed and collaged with PicFrame)

Boston's North End is the oldest part of the city today, and as the Freedom Trail makes its way from Boston Common, it passes by the Old North Church, where two lanterns hung in the steeple on April 18, 1775 told Paul Revere to ride out and give the word that the British soldiers were advancing on the city by boat. Formally known as Christ Church, it originally opened in 1723 and is still an active Episcopal church. And Paul Revere still rides--when we saw him in June, he was supporting the city's commitment to "Boston Strong"...and the hometown Bruins as they contended for the Stanley Cup.

Old North Church/Freedom Trail/Paul Revere statue
(Original photos by Paul Vasquez, collaged with PicFrame)

Faneuil Hall has combined commerce and politics for much of its 270-year history (although the big business happens in the Marketplace just behind it, site of Quincy Market). The first floor of the building has been occupied by shops and vendor stalls since it opened, while many of the debates that led to colonial independence took place in the second-floor meeting hall. A statue of statesman Samuel Adams, a key figure in those activities, stands in front of Faneuil Hall. (Adams is better known to some today as the patron saint of microbrews.)

Sam Adams remains a fixture at Faneuil Hall
(My photos, edited with Snapseed and collaged with PicFrame)

Please celebrate safely, my fellow Americans--July 4th isn't really about the blowing stuff up--and wish our country a happy and hopeful birthday! 

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WW: Cheers for the Red, White, and Blue

The 13-star "Betsy Ross" flag, first flown in 1777, as seen in Boston, Massachusetts in June 2013 

Happy Fourth of July (a day early!)

my photo, edited with Snapseed

An InLinkz Link-up

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From across New England: Hello, it's me!

Tall Paul got some decent pictures of me as we wandered around New England, so I thought I'd share a few with you.

All photos by Paul Vasquez; collage made with PicFrame

Top left: On the steps of the Rauner Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire
Top right: Off the Kancamagus Scenic Highway near Lincoln, New Hampshire
Bottom left: Outside the New England Aquarium and Simons IMAX Theater, Long Wharf, Boston, Massachusetts (and yes, we did see Star Trek Into Darkness there, again!)
Bottom right: Inside the New England Aquarium, at the Tidepool Touch Tank 

I'm working on a few more posts--editing pictures, and even writing up some words to accompany them--on the "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" theme, but Tall Paul had already done all the editing on these.

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Sunday Salon: The last days of Google Reader

Between the holiday coming up this week and the fact that tomorrow is Google Reader's not-so-grand finale, I'm thinking that the blogiverse may be on the quiet side for the next little while--so it seems like a good time to post some vacation photos! If you like that sort of thing, there will probably be plenty of it around here for the next couple of weeks, while I catch up on reading and writing.

I only succeeded in dragging the family into one bookstore during our trip to New England, but if there had to be only one, the Village Book Store in Littleton, New Hampshire was worth it, so I'll start by sharing my pictures from there.

I bought one book there--supporting indie bookstores, of course!--and admired the Staff Recommendations shelf, where someone had the good taste to include Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow.

I did manage to write two reviews and read one entire book during vacation, but has been too much the norm lately, blog-reading fell by the wayside. But I've made some progress on that front during the last couple of days, and I hope to be back in step with that before too long. (If the blogiverse actually is quiet for the next little while, it'll help!)

On that note, have you decided on what you'll use to keep up with your blog subscriptions once Google Reader retires on July 1? (Yes, that really is happening, and it really is happening tomorrow!) I switched over to Feedly a couple of years ago as a GR interface/overlay--and so I guess I was more prepared to lose GR than some were--but it's now developed its own independent infrastructure and is officially supporting all my feed subscriptions. It's also supporting other apps running on its cloud, and although I like Feedly Mobile, I'm giving one of those new partners, Newsify, a try on my iPhone and iPad (it's iOS only). It's not quite as pretty as Feedly, but it integrates with more services that I use regularly--most notably Evernote, Readability, and Buffer--and that's giving it an edge for me right now, although it may not end up being my top choice on the tablet. Lifehacker recommended Mr. Reader as a "power user's RSS app" (and with my hundreds of subscriptions, I probably qualify) for the iPad, and although I'm just getting acquainted with it, it's looking like the winner right now.

I'm officially 3% behind on my 2013 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal, but it's too hot to spend much time out and about in Southern California this weekend, and I have a book-club read and two blog tours this month, so I think I'll get in some reading time today. How about you?

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Book Talk: MAINE, by J. Courtney Sullivan

Maine
J. Courtney Sullivan (Facebook) (Twitter)
Vintage (2012), Paperback (ISBN 0307742210 / 9780307742216)
Fiction, 528 pages
Source: Purchased
Reason for reading: Personal, vacation

Opening lines: “Alice decided to take a break from packing. She lit a cigarette, leaning back in one of the wicker chairs that were always slightly damp from the sea breeze. She glanced around at the cardboard boxes filled with her family’s belongings, each glass and salt shaker and picture frame wrapped carefully in newspaper. There were at least a couple of boxes in every room of the house. She needed to make sure she had taken them all to Goodwill by the time the children arrived. This had been their summer home for sixty years, and it amazed her how many objects they had accumulated. She didn’t want anyone to be burdened by the mess once she was gone.

“She could tell by the heavy clouds that it was about to rain. In Cape Neddick, Maine, that May, you were likely to see a thunderstorm every afternoon. This didn’t bother her. She never went down to the beach anymore.”

Book description, from the publisher’s website: 

For the Kellehers, Maine is a place where children run in packs, showers are taken outdoors, and old Irish songs are sung around a piano. As three generations of women arrive at the family's beach house, each brings her own hopes and fears. Maggie is thirty-two and pregnant, waiting for the perfect moment to tell her imperfect boyfriend the news; Ann Marie, a Kelleher by marriage, is channeling her domestic frustration into a dollhouse obsession and an ill-advised crush; Kathleen, the black sheep, never wanted to set foot in the cottage again; and Alice, the matriarch at the center of it all, would trade every floorboard for a chance to undo the events of one night, long ago.

Comments: I took the perfect novel with me on a trip to New England. I picked up J. Courtney Sullivan’s Maine based on good word from some of my most trusted blogger friends, and it’s been hanging around TBR Purgatory for almost a year. When I decided that I wasn’t bringing any books associated with review responsibilities on our family vacation this month, it seemed an obvious choice--we were spending ten days in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. Reading this novel on its home turf--and on the plane back home from my visit there, in between editing photos that I took there--certainly made it more of an experience; the type of novel it is--lengthy but fast-moving, propelled by family drama and complicated, conflicted characters--is made-to-order vacation reading.

Credit: theus50.com, via Google Image Seearch

The state of Maine’s license-plate motto is “Vacationland,” and for many New Englanders, its southern coast defines the concept of summer: cottages near small beach towns, long days of family gatherings for barbecues and water play, picnics and the freshest berries and seafood. Three generations of the Kelleher family have spent their summers this way, at their property in Cape Neddick, for sixty years. However, the family dynamics have shifted since patriarch Daniel died a decade ago, and his widow Alice is making plans for the home he left her. So are her son Patrick and his wife Ann Marie. Meanwhile, her daughter Kathleen has made a new life on the West Coast and hasn’t come back to Maine since her father died, although Kathleen’s daughter Maggie finds a sense of home there.

While the central action in Maine occurs over several weeks in early summer, the backstories of these characters are explored at length, and by shifting focus with each chapter between the perspectives of Alice, Ann Marie, Kathleen, and Maggie, Sullivan strengthens her characterizations with the women’s views of one another. It’s a device that rounds them out and helps render each of them more sympathetic, and since none of them really comes across as terribly likable on her own merits, I thought it added depth, interest, and a distinct sense of realism.

My own personal history includes about a decade of Northeastern summers--I grew up in coastal Connecticut, but my extended family were more New Jersey lakes than New England beaches people. That said, I think I would have appreciated Maine s sense of place anyway, but reading the novel in the midst of being there myself definitely made the whole thing more affecting for me, and I think it helped me plunge more deeply into the lives of the Kelleher family. I don’t feel much need to know what else might become of them after the last page of the novel, but I do think I need to read some more of J. Courtney Sullivan’s fiction, even if I’m not going on a vacation.

Rating: 3.75/5

Other reviews, via the Book Blogs Search Engine

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Wordless Wednesday: Family/Love on Vacation

The red-haired girl is off to college in New Hampshire this fall. We took a family trip to get acquainted with her new locale, and we saw a lot to love.

Top left: father and son; Botton left: granddaughter and grandmother; Right: sister and brother

My photos, edited with Snapseed and collaged with PicFrame; text by Phonto

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