The Sunday Salon: Back from the Dead

It's been a while since I checked into the Salon. Actually, I haven't done much blogging or reading for the last three weeks or so. I haven't sworn off it, or anything. Just been busy with other stuff. Mainly family history stuff. One of M's aunts had a request from one of the other older members of the family for some genealogy information, and since I now seem to be the repository for that kind of data, I agreed to put together a package of photos and other leaves from the family tree. It's been a lot of work pulling it all together, but fun, too – I'm a hopeless family history freak. But by the end of the project, I did start to feel all those ancestral ghosts crowding in on me!

So my summer reading has been somewhat curtailed. But I still managed to finish two books this week – Ariana Franklin's Grave Goods (aka: Relics of the Dead), and an ARC of Fear the Worst by Linwood Barclay. That last one is due out this week, so I just got it read in the nick of time. Hope to get reviews of both posted tomorrow, but for now I'll just say I loved both of them. In fact, I was a little surprised at how much I enjoyed Grave Goods because I'm not usually terribly fond of historical fiction. But I've also just recently finished Sarah Dunant's Sacred Hearts, another historical fiction work, which I also thoroughly enjoyed. (Oops! Need to get a review of that one up, too.) So maybe an old dog can learn new tricks – or at least learn to enjoy new things.

But this week, I'll be back to old friends. I'm starting John Updike's Rabbit Is Rich – reading it for the Battle of the Prizes Challenge. I've always enjoyed Updike, although I've mostly read his short fiction and essays in the past; this will only be the second of his novels I've tried. And then I'm also getting back to a book I started a couple of months ago and put aside for other stuff – Dance of Death, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Now that's one I know I'm gonna like – after reading Brimstone earlier this year, I have fallen deeply in love with Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast. And since I last saw him being apparently killed off by his evil brother in the earlier book, I'm looking breathlessly forward to his resurrection in this one.

Oh, and please don't tell my husband about that "deeply in love" bit.