Somehow: Thoughts on Love by Anne Lamott: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

I went to hear Anne Lamott speak at Christ Church Cathedral in Houston last Wednesday night, and I came home with Somehow: Thoughts on Love as well as a thousand wonderfully refreshing Anne Lamott-isms on life and human beings and writing and parenting.

Today's Featured Book 

Somehow: Thoughts on Love by Anne Lamott

Genre: Nonfiction

Published: April 9, 2024

Page Count: 208 pages

Summary: 

"Lamott explores the transformative power that love has in our lives: how it surprises us, forces us to confront uncomfortable truths, reminds us of our humanity, and guides us forward. 'Love just won't be pinned down,' she says. 'It is in our very atmosphere' and lies at the heart of who we are. We are, Lamott says, creatures of love.

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY is hosted by Rose City Reader. What book are you happy about reading this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) on BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY! Add the link to your blog or social media post and visit other blogs to see what others are reading.

Happy Friday and welcome to the FIRST LINE FRIDAY, hosted by Reading is My Superpower! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line.

"Even in the darkest and most devastating times, love is nearby if you know what to look for."

THE FRIDAY 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice, but Freda is currently taking a break and Anne of Head Full of Books is filling in. To play, open a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% on your e-reader). Find a sentence or two and post them, along with the book title and author. Then link up on Freda's Voice and visit others in the linky. 

"With no man and no money, love pushed back its sleeves and took over...I got therapy to learn to let people take care of me. What a concept. Love poured over me, into me, under me, buoying me up. It was a little hard to take, but I had no choice."

The purpose of THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, and befriend other bloggers. THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.    

April 25th-May 2nd - You are in a dilemma: stream your favorite TV show or movie, or read your favorite book. Which one do you pick? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer)

Reading. Every time.

Unread Books on My Shelves: In Which I Make (Yet Another) Plan to Read Books That Have Sadly and Patiently Awaited Me for a Long Time

I would almost be willing to bet money that no one else has a single one of these books on their own list.

What do I hope to read? 

Three cookbooks/cookbook-ish books:

Gordon Ramsay's Uncharted: A Culinary Adventure with 60 Recipes Around the Globe

Poilâne: The Secrets of the World-Famous Bread Bakery

The Art of Mindful Baking by Julia Ponsonby

Four nonfiction books:

City on Fire: The Forgotten Disaster that Devastated a Town and Ignited a Landmark Legal Battle by Bill Minutaglio 

(Yes, this is a library book, but it's only because I finally gave away my copy of this book after I had it on my shelf 

for such a long time.)

The Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction

Photo Ark Insects

100 Poets: A Little Anthology

Three children's books:

Catwings by Ursula K. LeGuin

Some Writer! The Story of E. B. White by Melissa Sweet

Simon Sort of Says by Erin Bow

One novel:

World of Pies by Karen Stolz

Two classics:

The Thurber Carnival by James Thurber

Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information. 

The Sunday Salon: Anne Lamott Comes to Houston

Welcome! I'm happy you joined us here at the Sunday Salon. What is the Sunday Salon? The Sunday Salon is a place to link up and share what we have been doing during the week plus it's a great way to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

Busy! Going here and there, volunteering, meeting up with friends, seeing authors...but I did actually finish some books...

What I Read Last Week:

Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder by Kenn Kaufman (Birding)

What It's Like to Be a Bird (Adapted for Young Readers) by David Allen Sibley (Birding)

The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins (Poetry) 

On Love and Barley by Basho (Poetry)

What I'm Reading Now:

The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers (Nonfiction)

The Time Garden by Edward Eager (Kids' Book)

God on the Rocks by Jane Gardam (Novel)

Somehow: Thoughts on Love by Anne Lamott (Happiness)

The Emerald City of Oz by J. Frank Baum (Book #6; Ozathon)

What I Posted Last Week Here at Readerbuzz:

A Novice Birder: Four Years of Birding Photos

Ah! It's Time for Another Classics Club Spin!

The Sunday Salon: Eclipse!

Anne Lamott on the Today show.

Anne Lamott: 12 Truths I Learned from Life and Writing

I began to list 3 Good Things every day during the pandemic. Now I've established a regular routine of writing down my 3 Good Things. Here are 3 Good Things from last week:

Good Thing #1:

Anne Lamott in Houston!

Good Thing #2:

Dinner with friends of forty-nine years!

Good Thing #3:

The first Kemp's Ridley sea turtle nests 

found on Padre Island!

Weekend linkup spots are listed below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

        

I hope you will join the linkup for Sunday Salon below.

A Novice Birder: Four Years of Birding Photos

I wasn't always a birder; before the pandemic, I couldn't identify more than two or three birds. But when we began to isolate at home, I spent more and more time staring out our back window, and before long, our one feeder morphed into a half-dozen feeders and a bird bath.

I'm still not a knowledgable birder. I prefer a camera to binoculars, mainly so I can look up what I'm seeing on iNaturalist when I get home from birding. All the various iterations of the appearances of birds---juvenile, breeding plumage, male and female---it often feels overwhelming to me, and I have no interest in memorizing all the markings. What I like to do is look at birds, watch them, take photos of them. And that's enough for me.

According to iNaturalist, I've made 1,015 bird observations and I've seen 176 species of birds. Here are a few of my favorite bird captures in the course of my birding adventures in the last four years.

The results of my first few months of taking bird photos were blurry and out-of-focus and taken from far away. How iNaturalist knew this was a Snowy Egret amazes me.

It was easier to take photos of birds that came to my feeders, just outside my back window. I grew more confident as I saw that I could eventually get a pretty clear shot of a bird, like this one of a Pine Warbler.

Gradually, I came to know these year-round residents of my yard: Tufted Titmouse, Carolina Wren, Carolina Chickadee.

I began to take my camera along to look for birds at places we hiked, like the Quintana Neotropical Bird Sanctuary: Lincoln's Sparrow, Hooded Warbler.

If I watched carefully, I was surprised to see the birds that appeared in my own backyard: Painted Bunting, Indigo Bunting, Scarlet Tanager.

As the restrictions of the pandemic were lifted, I established a practice of taking a camera everywhere I went. Here are some of my favorite photos.

Great Blue Heron

Belted Kingfisher

Wood Duck

Crested Caracara

Yellow-crowned Night Heron

American Avocets

(Guess which bird I identify with?!)

Whooping Cranes, surprising me by flying over unexpectedly

Red-breasted Merganser

Bald Eagle

White-tailed Kite

Red-bellied Whistling Ducks

Snowy Egret

Forster's Terns

My bird list of birds I have seen or heard.

Photographs of birds I've taken.

My iNaturalist account.

For more photos, link up at Wordless Wednesday, Comedy Plus, Messymimi's Meanderings, Keith's Ramblings, Create With Joy, Wild Bird Wednesday, and My Corner of the World.

Ah! It's Time for Another Classics Club Spin!

"Read the best books first, 

or you may not have a chance to read them at all."

                ---Thoreau

The Classics Club has issued the announcement of the 33rd Classics Club Spin.

What is the spin?

It’s easy. At your blog, before next Sunday, April 21st, create a post that lists twenty books of your choice that remain “to be read” on your Classics Club list.

This is your Spin List.

You have to read one of these twenty books by the end of the spin period.

Try to challenge yourself. For example, you could list five Classics Club books you have been putting off, five you can’t WAIT to read, five you are neutral about, and five free choice (favourite author, re-reads, ancients, non-fiction, books in translation — whatever you choose.)

On Sunday April 21st, The Classics Club will post a number from 1 through 20. The challenge is to read whatever book falls under that number on your Spin List by Sunday, June 2nd. 

Let's see who can make it the whole way and finished their spin book!

I haven't read many classics this year, and I'd love to get back to working on my list, so I will be joining in this spin.

So here is my list.

   

1. Hunger by Knut Hamsen

2. Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes by Robert Louis Stevenson

3.  Summer by Edith Wharton

4. Sanditon by Jane Austen

5. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

6. Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

7. Lost Horizon by James Hilton

8. Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis

9. I Am a Cat by Natsume Sōseki

10. Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor 

11. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

12. Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter

13. Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton

14. Pigeon Post by Arthur Ransome

15. Justine (The Alexandria Quartet) by Lawrence Durrell 

16. The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham

17. The Thurber Carnival by James Thurber 

18. Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges

19. Village School by Miss Read

20. Zen and Zen Classics by R. H. Blyth

 Have you read any of these? 

Are you doing the Classics Club Spin? 

Which book would you like to read?

UPDATE!

The spin pick is #8.

Elmer Gantry it is!