Sunday Salon 6-15-25 & It’s Monday, What Are You Reading? 6-16-25

Another travel day today — a 4-hour drive home from New York (visiting in Long Island and Manhattan). I wish I could read and type at length in the car to have gotten this post finished during my stint as a passenger!

Today (Sunday) we visited with our daughter in New York for Father’s Day.

After a delicious gluten-free brunch at Friedman’s at Battery Park, we walked around for a bit and viewed two somber memorials — the Irish Hunger Memorial and the 9/11 Memorial.

The Irish Hunger Memorial was dedicated in 2002. It commemorates the time of famine in Ireland with quotations from a wide swath of countries, cultures, and time periods having to do with poverty and resources, all of which resonate and are unfortunately still applicable today.

We felt guilty viewing this memorial about the tragic famine in Ireland right after eating a two-course brunch and felt the need to immediately donate to Food for the Poor. Ironically, there was also a little farmer’s market right beside the memorial.

We had visited the 9/11 Memorial before but not for many years. The South Pool was undergoing repairs so the water wasn’t running. Still, it was very moving just from the size and all the names of the dead engraved on the memorial. The North Pool with the water running down all four sides was even more impressive. The park wasn’t crowded, probably because of the unsettled weather, but the people who were there were respectful. It seemed as even kids recognized it as a place to be still, at least for a time.

The whole of the Northeast has been seeing rained-out or rained-on weekend events and activities for a while now. (Boston actually broke a weather record yesterday, with the 13th consecutive rainy Saturday!) In both Boston and New York, it was cloudy and rainy on both Saturday. And everyone knows it rained in Washington, DC on Saturday, with flood warnings, even! In New York, we had clouds and misting rain until we got in the car to leave. (Of course, Friday was beautiful and warm everywhere!)

I only got to participate vicariously through friends and family and social media posts from all over the country on the big “No Kings” protest day yesterday, but what amazing crowds! Such a tragedy to have the politically motivated murders and attempted murders in Minnesota on a day of otherwise mostly peaceful mass protests!

Due to all the political upheaval and uncertainty since January, my “Currently Reading” doesn’t change as often as it used to.

I’m also behind on all 2025 goals and challenges, but I have started my Big Book Summer reading this month with The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt. (Bought used in an Oxfam bookstore in London this past January.)

Please let me know what you’re reading in the comments and/or share your blog link! (If you can’t see where to comment, try clicking/tapping on the title of this post to open it in full.)

Currently Reading

The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt

Famous author Olive Wellwood writes a special private book, bound in different colours, for each of her children. In their rambling house near Romney Marsh they play in a story-book world – but their lives, and those of their rich cousins and their friends, the son and daughter of a curator at the new Victoria and Albert Museum, are already inscribed with mystery. Each family carries its own secrets.

Trouble Ahead by Bill Fleming and Joe Peters

Amidst the crisis of the global pandemic, a veteran MBTA transit police sergeant must navigate politics and protest while being on the lookout for a madman back from the dead. This latest edition of the Morris Fitzgerald series continues the journey above and below the streets of one of the country’s oldest and most iconic cities. For Morris, the trouble ahead of him may be the past that he can’t escape, but if there is something he knows for certain, it’s that in Boston, a crime story isn’t a whodunit. It’s a “how did they get away with it?”

Currently Listening To

Jeeves in the Offing by P.G. Wodehouse

The assembled company of Miss Roberta Wickham, in herself a beauty chorus; that tick of ticks Rev. Aubrey Upjohn; an American female novelist whose son is suspected of being a screwball; and the looniest of all doctors, Sir Roderick Glossop, masquerading as a butler, is too much for Bertie Wooster, especially without Jeeves, who has taken himself off to a distant resort. From there, jeeves holds a watching brief, advising and encouraging young Bertie to make of the situation what he can. The result is a riotously funny story in the traditional Wodehouse manner.

Road trip audiobook we didn’t quite finish! My husband and I both love the Jeeves & Wooster books on audio (and loved the TV series!)

This post is linked up to Sunday Salon hosted by Deb Nance at Readerbuzz and It’s Monday, What Are You Reading, hosted by The Book Date. I did it all from the phone, so I hope there aren’t too many formatting errors! (Actual formatting errors, that is. This post was not written by AI.)