Late Sunday Salon and Early It’s Monday, What Are You Reading 9-30-24

It’s Sunday! After a beautiful warm day yesterday. fall is making its presence known in New England today by the chill in the air, an overcast sky, changing foliage colors, and the Canada geese flying south.

I saw this Onion article on Facebook that made me laugh; maybe it will make you laugh, too!

September is almost over, and it flew by, trying to catch up on things after two weeks of vacation at the end of August and being sick for the first week of September. But it was a good month, bookishly speaking!

In addition to having a number of five-star reads in a row, I had two author events in September. The second one doesn’t happen until tomorrow night, when my library will host a Sisters in Crime: New England panel discussion with three local mystery authors, so I’ll save that for a future post.

A library in my area hosted an author event on September 17th with J. Courtney Sullivan, whose most recent book I’m reading now, The Cliffs. (I wrote a little about The Cliffs in last week’s “It’s Monday” post.)

The author event was especially fun, because it was held at the library in the town of Milton, Mass., which was where she grew up and has recently moved back to with her family, so it was “her” library. The room was packed with family from the area and friends she’s had for years, as well as with fans of her books (such as myself).

The event was set up as a conversation between J. Courtney Sullivan and a childhood friend of hers, whose name I’m sorry I don’t remember – Patty (?) – who’s the president of the Friends of Milton Public Library, the group that sponsored the event. The two women belonged to a group of neighborhood friends who were known as the “Garden Street Girls” – several of whom were also in the audience. When she introduced the featured guest, Patty put the name “J. Courtney Sullivan” in air quotes, but didn’t reveal what name she went by when they were growing up together. (According to Wikipedia, “Julie” is the author’s first name, but I don’t know which name she goes by in her daily life. )

In a Facebook post, the morning of the event, Courtney said she had coincidentally done an author event at the Milton Public Library on the same date six years ago – which had just popped up in her Facebook memories – but that time, she had driven to the event from her home in Brooklyn, New York, and this time, it would be just down the street. The post included a photo of the grown-up Garden Street Girls taken at the event six years before. (Here’s J. Courtney Sullivan’s post, if you’re on Facebook and want to see it: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/dpqHaAEY72UoUmts)

Questions were gathered from the audience ahead of time, and there was time for a few more. It was an entertaining hour of conversation, focused on the topics and themes in The Cliffs, but ranging widely as well, due to all the research the author did for this novel (as she has done for pretty much all her books, she said.)

After the talk, there was a book signing. It was a long line, but J. Courtney Sullivan was so friendly and chatty that nobody got impatient.

If you want to know more or to feel like you were there at the author talk with me, there’s a nice author profile in Publishers Weekly that mentions several things that J. Courtney Sullivan talked about. (No spoilers in the profile or at the event!)
The Haunting of J. Courtney Sullivan – Publishers Weekly

Currently Reading

The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan

REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • A novel of family, secrets, ghosts, and homecoming set on the seaside cliffs of Maine, by the New York Times best-selling author of Friends and Strangers

Tomb Sweeping by Alexandra Chang

A playful and deeply affective short story collection about the histories, technologies, and generational divides that shape our relationships—from the award-winning writer of Days of Distraction

Dancing Between the Raindrops: A Daughter’s Reflections on Love and Loss by Lisa Braxton

A powerful meditation on grief, a deeply personal mosaic of a daughter’s remembrances of beautiful, challenging, and heartbreaking moments of life with her family

Recently Read

A Reason to See You Again by Jami Attenberg

A Reason to See You Again was an advance reading copy through NetGalley. I liked it, and wrote a bit about it last week. A Reason to See You Again got a rave from The New York Times. (I love the headline of the review – This Family Is Miserable. You Should Meet Them Anyway.)

Currently Listening To

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Somehow I didn’t know Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver had the subtitle “A Year of Food Life”, indicating it’s a stunt memoir. One of my favorite nonfiction genres! I was finally brought around to this book by some of the Top Ten Tuesday lists from a couple of weeks ago, when the topic was books about food that aren’t cookbooks. (I think I thought it fell under the category of nature, science, or animals, not food!)

The audiobook I’ve borrowed from the library is the original. It was published in 2007, and a tenth anniversary edition has been released. It deserves its status as modern classic! It’s so good, both on a personal level and a informational level, if you’re interested in food, cooking, eating and all that goes into making those things possible for the average person. Maybe there will be a 20th-anniversary edition in a few years.

As with Stephen King, I only started reading Barbara Kingsolver recently with a couple of her newer books, so I have a lot of catching up to do.

Recently Listened To

First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston

REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK | #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Evie Porter has everything a nice Southern girl could want: a doting boyfriend, a house with a white picket fence, a tight group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist.

First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston is a good choice if you like this very popular genre of suspense, where information that the narrator knows is deliberately withheld from the reader in order to make narrative twists possible.

Even though I usually find the books (and their narrators) annoying, the hype keeps luring me in, and I keep on reading them! 😉

Thank you for reading! This post is linked up to Sunday Salon and The Book Date:

Sunday Salon is to encourage conversation about books and bookish things, but can expand into many other topics. The weekly link-up and Facebook group are hosted by Deb Nance of Readerbuzz.

The link-up for It’s Monday, What Are You Reading is hosted by Katherine at The Book Date.