St. Nick and Champagne #SundaySalon
Happy Sunday! Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at ReaderBuzz. Check out her post and the links to see what other bloggers have been up to in the last week.
How’s the weather?
We still have some snow on the ground, although a lot more disappeared today when the temperature went to 47 degrees. We sometimes go the whole winter without snow-cover for a week, much less this early in the season.
What are you reading?
I finished Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism by Eve L. Ewing just in time for our book club meeting. We highly recommend it to anyone who cares about education or, really, about the America that we want to build in the future. I hope to write a review this week.
I’m back to reading Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley as we near the 250th birthday.
What are you watching or listening to?
We really enjoyed the second season of A Man on the Inside on Netflix. The best part was the interaction between Charles (played by Ted Danson) and his love interest, played by Danson’s real-life wife, Mary Steenburgen.
I had a good run of holiday rom-coms on Netflix.
Champagne Problems was mentioned by other bloggers, so that was an obvious pick for my holiday viewing. What a lovely way to vicariously spend the Christmas season in France! We start off in Paris, but we also get to visit a chateau and a village festival. The characters are charming. I especially loved Roberto who was comic relief but also a reminder to enjoy the moment and the season.
If you want to spend some Christmas time in London, check out Jingle Bell Heist. I don’t always like heist movies because it feels like I’m being manipulated into rooting for the bad guys, but this one had many twists in the plot and, in the end, I was very happy that I watched. A plus was seeing Connor Swindells (Sex Education) in a romantic lead role.
Does Pentatonix usher in the Christmas Spirit for you? Check out Meet Me Next Christmas. Our heroine is desperate for a ticket to the Christmas Eve show so that she can re-enact the An Affair to Remember / Sleepless in Seattle romantic magic. But the show is sold out. A concierge is willing to go to great lengths to grant her wish. Some of those adventures involve encounters with the goofiest characters in New York. Meanwhile, the Pentatonix group members are following his efforts via the DMs he sends hoping that they will come up with a ticket. For pure fun, this one is my pick of the week.
Speaking of Pentatonix, this 2025 offering is a little different from their norm:
What are you doing?
The Charles Dickens’ themed virtual tour that I mentioned last week was great fun! I wrote a whole post about it for British Isles Friday: The London of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.