Sunday Salon: Summing Up.

It seems as if most everything I picked up to read this past week was quickly determined, by yours truly, to be not quite the thing I actually wanted to read. Another blah week of reading. Well, except for the last book I picked up late last night: SHOOT TO THRILL by the mother/daughter writing team known as P.J. Tracy. This is a real page-turning thriller (and only their latest book in years) and I might or might not review it for Monday Review. My hesitation? The crimes in it are pretty ugly and this is the Christmas Season, after all. Do I need to keep that in mind for my reviews? Should I save the review for the New Year? Maybe I will. What do you think, at this time of year, about books which feature crazed maniacs committing mayhem? Is it okay to review them despite the season? How do you handle it? Any opinions?

• Thanksgiving passed by quickly this year - as it always seems to do - and why am I always surprised? It was a smallish, quiet celebration at my brother's: NFL football (which I love) and turkey (which I less love). Delicious pecan pie for desert. (The rest of our family - with the princess Julianna - were in upstate NY, near Syracuse, visiting with other family there.)

• This coming Christmas, though, everyone will be in New Jersey - looking forward to that! Julianna's FIRST CHRISTMAS! You will probably be bombarded with pictures on Facebook and elsewhere. And rightly so. Ha!

• I'm doing my best to feature some interesting and personal Christmas shopping ideas on my blog, probably because it's such fun for me to conjure them up for you. When I was younger and more energetic, I was always a very eager shopper. Not so much anymore, hence my idea of fun: finding stuff online and in my personal library to recommend to you. Most everything I list, I either own or have seen, read or researched mightily. Hopefully there will be a few things you won't find listed elsewhere.

• November 22 came and went as it always does. The sad anniversary of the tragedy that defined my generation - the murder of a President.

• This coming week I'll finally be posting my 10 Favorite Books of the Year. (Well, 10 plus Honorable Mentions.) Not necessarily all books published in 2010, but all read by me for the first time this year. It was a great reading year, so it's tough trying to whittle the list down to manageable proportions. I'm sure you're all having the same problem. I'm going to try and link to other Best 10 Lists as I come across them.

• I thought I'd explain how my reading (and reviewing) policy works, sort of bringing everyone up to date. On the lower left side bar of my blog, I have one or more small boxes titled: CURRENTLY READING. There you will usually find the title of the book or books (and the covers) I'm reading and hoping to review. BUT if the book should mysteriously vanish from that box and NOT appear in the LAST TEN BOOKS READ listing box, then that means I've given up on the particular book for whatever reason: dislike, ennui, exasperation or plain GAK! Since I NEVER review books I dislike, draw your own conclusions. (Sometimes though, I simply will not finish a book because my mood has changed and I've decided to put it off until I'm more receptive - that happens too. ) Also, I really can't review EVERY book I read, so there's that to consider as well. I review books I like but also books I think will make good copy. If you're interested you can always check my separate Page which lists all the books I've read this year - that's as up to date as I can make it.

• We've gotten a few more entrants in the Short Story Challenge and I really can't wait to see what we all come up with, come February 14th. As I've said before: I'm hoping this will be lots of fun. It's great sometimes to be handed a topic and told: well, write something up - even if all it does is stretch your writing muscles. You gotta' keep those things in fighting form.

• Link to AT HOME WITH BOOKS' Sunday Salon Post.