Sunday Salon: Balmy Heat and Equinoctial Skies


Now spring restores the balmy heat,
now Zephyr's sweet breezes calm the rage of the equinoctial skies.

-Catullus

It's springtime in Nova Scotia, a season I had been led to believe did not exist.  When it finally stops raining in June, everyone told me, it will be summer.  But we have had an unseasonable dry and warm March.  Yesterday I was heading off to the gym when I realized how gorgeous it was, and made a detour to Point Pleasant Park, on the southernmost tip of the Halifax peninsula, to walk along the ocean and soak up the sunshine.  Stunning.

Here's hoping it lasts and lasts, and we never get that next wave of snow that I have been hearing murmurs about.

What have I been up to this week?  It has been a fairly normal week of teaching (we have moved been doing Michael Frayn's excellent play about nuclear physics and ethics - Copenhagen - in one of my classes, and the Spanish Golden Age of Drama in my other), grading, reading, and, of course, a wee bit of blogging:
What are my plans for this fine Sunday?

In addition to preparing for the teaching week ahead, I need to prepare for a paper I will be giving at a conference on Thursday.  I'd like to finish Lord Carew's Bride, the second in a series of Regency novels by Mary Balogh, about a beautiful woman who believes she will never want to marry after her heart is broken at age eighteen by a callow, handsome, charmer of a villain.  Now she is falling softly in love with a man she believes to be a good friend and (for that matter) a landscape gardener.  In fact, he is the Marquis of Carew (of course!), and he is reluctant to reveal his true identity because he wants her to love him for himself.  Why is he insecure about the allure his rank and fortune will hold for her? Because, apart from being not terribly good-looking,  he was permanently injured in a childhood accident, and is used to families pushing their unwilling daughters (unnerved by his twisted hand and obvious limp) on him in hopes of a good dynastic match.

I am also midway through the excellent medieval mystery Mistress of the Art of Death, and my basketball season reading of When March Went Mad: The Game that Changed Basketball.  I'd like to get a start on Rose Tremain's The Colour, from the 1001 Books list.  And I'd love to watch more of Satyajit Ray's Aparajito, the second film in his Apu trilogy, which I started on Friday.

Happy springtime, saloners!

2 Responses so far.

  1. Deb Nance at Readerbuzz says:
    Sunday, March 21, 2010 at 2:21:00 PM ADT

    Come on down to Texas if you are looking for cold weather....We've had more than our share this winter and I'm ready to give it back.

    I'm seeking books set in France or with French characters or with French authors. Ideas? Any mysteries come to mind?

  2. Sycorax Pine says:
    Sunday, March 21, 2010 at 2:45:00 PM ADT

    I know it, readerbuzz! All my friends and family in Connecticut, North Carolina, and DC were pummeled by snow all winter. I am wondering whether it is time to take my snow tires off and feeling like they have barely been used. (We had a couple of serious snows, but they were consistently followed by thaws.)

    Meanwhile, I am so taken with your question about French novels, particularly mysteries. I may come back to you later with more as I think of them, but off the top of my head:

    Have you read "A Very long Engagement" by Sebastien Japrisot? I haven't seen the movie, but I hear that it was a very inferior version of this stunning novel. I also really enjoyed the tremendously sad "Suite Francaise" by Irene Nemirovsky. In terms of mysteries, the most famous are Georges Simenon's Maigret books, although I have to admit I've never gotten past the first. Edgar Allen Poe's famous detective M. Dupin is also French.

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