Sunday Dinner... or The Sunday Salon and 3 "Dinner" Books to wet your appetite.

Welcome to The Sunday Salon and Chick with Books! It's been beautiful weather here in South Carolina. The evenings are starting to be a little cooler and we've been able to enjoy dinner outside after a long day of doing "stuff". "Stuff" still includes unpacking moving boxes, but it also includes finishing up planting a butterfly and bird garden that I started a few months ago when we first landed here. Slowly I'm getting back to having some time to read, which got put on the back burner during all this moving chaos. My Mom came for a visit a few weeks ago and we lounged around a few days reading the books we picked up while on a shopping trip. Mom's book was The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, which she really enjoyed, and mine was The Stand by Stephen King, which at over 1000 pages I have not finished, but am enjoying quite a bit. This is the expanded edition, or what you may call the "unedited" version, where King expands some of the storylines he "abbreviated" in the original book because the publishers thought it was too long...

A few weeks ago I also read about The Dinner List by Rebecca Serle, which made me think of another book I read called Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent, which made me hungry for more "Dinner books", and so for this weeks Sunday Salon I thought I would share some "Dinner" with you...

First course... 

The Dinner List by Rebecca Serle... "When Sabrina arrives at her thirtieth birthday dinner she finds at the table not just her best friend, but also three significant people from her past, and well, Audrey Hepburn. As the appetizers are served, wine poured, and dinner table conversation begins, it becomes clear that there’s a reason these six people have been gathered together... At one point or another, we’ve all been asked to name five people, living or dead, with whom we’d like to have dinner. Why do we choose the people we do? And what if that dinner was to actually happen? These are the questions Rebecca Serle contends with in her utterly captivating novel, THE DINNER LIST."

What a fun premise for a book! Protagonist Sabrina has 5 people at her dinner, who would your 5 people be? This is one my nightstand waiting for a spare moment to dive in for dinner. (I might have to put Stephen K. down to read this now!) I gave you a teaser friday with the first lines, but from what I've read about The Dinner List, this is worth a full reading! Rave reviews!

Second course...

Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent... "When Isabel meets Edward, both are at a crossroads: he wants to follow his late wife to the grave, and she is ready to give up on love. Thinking she is merely helping Edward’s daughter--who lives far away and has asked her to check in on her nonagenarian dad in New York--Isabel has no idea that the man in the kitchen baking the sublime roast chicken and light-as-air apricot soufflé will end up changing her life."

I happen to pick this up at the library as I was looking through the new book shelves one day. This was a while back because it is now in paperback and I read the hardcover. I have to tell you I was absolutely charmed by this book and loved it! The friendship and love that grow between Edward and Isabel is wonderful, the dinners Edward cooks are amazing to read about, and the story is just perfect. I read this in a few sittings because I wanted to savor it. It's a mere 240 pages, but I would definitely tell you to pick up a copy if you love "foodie" books and romances. This is not fiction though, it's 100% the real deal!

Final course...

Dinner with Georgia O'Keeffe by Robyn Lea... "chronicles the artist’s lifestyle and work through food. That it coincides with the “Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern” exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum is happenstance. While the show links Ms. O’Keeffe’s strong fashion sense to her art, the book goes further, adding the aesthetic of her homes and dinner table to the equation. Early on, the artist was a devotee of health foods. At a time, about 60 years ago, when the trend was hardly on the radar, she insisted on whole grains, some of which she ground herself; yogurt, which she could make; and organic ingredients. “She is quite a cook,” her husband, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, once wrote."

Who would not want to have dinner with Georgia O'Keeffe?! An amazing bold artist who made a statement with every painting she did, who had an incredible sense of fashion and who we now learn was ahead of her time in the kitchen. The book contains 50 of her favorite recipes, with notes and quotes. Love the idea of her handwritten notes about the recipes are included. And from what I can tell, the photography is beautiful. This is on my wish list!

Do You Like to Read "Foodie" books... 

Books that have stories that include recipes or talk about food?

That about does it for this week...

Happy reading... Suzanne

First Lines Friday...

“We’ve been waiting for an hour.” That’s what Audrey says. She states it with a little bit of an edge, her words just bordering on cursive. That’s the thing I think first. Not Audrey Hepburn is at my birthday dinner but Audrey Hepburn is annoyed.”

                                                       ...The Dinner List by Rebecca Serle

Think of 5 people, dead or alive, you'd like to invite to dinner... Then read Rebecca Serle's book and find out the 5 people her protagonist Sabrina writes down on a list to have at her dinner... and show up! I've got this one on my nightstand waiting to crack the spine. Sounds like a fun read and has gotten rave reviews!

The Sunday Salon and "Southern Living"...

Welcome back to The Sunday Salon and Chick with Books! It's been a little bit since I've posted, but as most of you know it's because of "the move". AND NOW, the move is just about finished! We are settling in, unboxing as aposed to boxing, and loving our new home in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains!

The photo you see next to the beginning of the post is the view from our deck in the front of the house. It's very relaxing and quiet. Sitting on the front deck you can hear the water flowing down the creek that's across the street and the occasional chiming from my wind chimes. Life is good...

So, what's a girl going to do in a new town that she calls home now? Find books of course! And I'm not talking about the zillion books that I moved with me ( I figure by the end of the year I'll find them all, along with some desperately needed kitchen equipement), I'm talking about other sources of reading material... my local library and indie bookstores.

My new library is really a "library system". What that means is that I have access to all the libraries that are in the county I live in! So, I have 4 "local" libraries in Pickens County, SC! I have visited 2 of those libraries, but the Village Library in Pickens, SC is the closest and the branch I have been patronizing. Such friendly staff and a very nice library. I am also able to search for available books online and then reserve them. And a plus for having "4" libraries is that I get to search for a book from 4 branches and being able to check out the book at my local branch! More on my "libraries" in future posts...

Now for independent bookstores...

There are quite a few Indie bookstores "near me" (and "near me" is a relative term)... The first one I visited was Poor Richards Booksellers and is about 10 miles away in Easley, SC. Poor Richards can feed my addiction with all the latest plus they have a nice collection of used books in the back of the store. The next Indie I visited was Fiction Addiction, which is about 24 miles away in Greenville, SC and is not only a great source of books, but has some great author book signings, which once I'm settled in I'll be taking advantage of. There are 6 more Indies within a 25 mile radius that I'll be planning to visit too!

And the books...

I did pick up some "Southern" reading as I walked thru Fiction Addiction (of course!), and here what's I picked up...

Low Country Boil by Susan M. Boyer who is a local author, having a home in Greenville, SC. The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy, another wonderful South Carolina author. Under a Cloudless Sky by Chris Fabry, and Daisy Cakes Bakes by Kim Nelson, a cookbook (bakebook?!) from the famed Southern mail order bakery, which I can't wait to try because I now have a new convection oven!

So as I settle in, get the books put away and the boxes unpacked 900 miles or so from where I started life, I'll be getting back to posting regularly on Chick with Books. Thanks for sticking around for the transition because we have so many more books to talk about...

Happy reading... Suzanne