Welcome to my Sunday Chat where I ramble about what’s been going on in my world, what the rest of the family and I have been reading, watching, listening to, and what I’ve been writing.

Last week our weather started to warm up after two weeks or more of nasty cold. That meant going outside didn’t feel so daunting. We still didn’t go too many places because we are currently down to one car and because – well, it is still winter and we don’t have a ton of motivation to go anywhere.

We all have some cabin fever, though, so we will need to leave the house soon.

Hopefully, we can get to the library or somewhere else for fun next week.

It still doesn’t want to warm up, though, as proven by the horribly cold temps from last night and how our back porch, once again, couldn’t handle it and popped like a gunshot. This has been happening a lot this winter. When the temps drop below —say 15 — the wood on our porch contracts and it sounds like a gunshot, making us jump inside the house.

This time, though, I was walking on the porch, last night, heading to the driveway to move our car. If I hadn’t heard this exact thing happen from inside the house all winter long I might have thought I had been shot. I took another step and it fired off again and it was crazy how loud it was. I actually messaged our  next door neighbor to let her know what had happened so she didn’t think we were next door shooting each other.  

I rambled about what went on last week in my Saturday Afternoon Chat post.

I am determined to finish Christy by Catherine Marshall this weekend, possibly today. The book is very good, but so long. I think it could have been split into two books, really. There is so much information in it and so many more stories about the people in this rural area of the Smokie Mountains of Tennessee that could have been told. This is not a complaint, by the way. I love the book, and I would have loved if there had been more stories from it.

I am still reading the oral biography of Anthony Bourdain and while it was a little uninteresting at first, it is picking up and capturing my attention, especially as we move toward when Kitchen Confidential came out and he began to become more famous. I am absolutely dreading the end of the book, of course.

This week I hope to listen to Frankenstein on audio. I keep saying I am going to start it and I truly am this week. As I mentioned before, it is being read by Dan Stevens.

I haven’t done great with the books I planned to read for this winter.  I have read five of the 17 books I had initially listed as books I would choose from December through March . I substituted some of the books on the list with other reads that caught my eye instead. For example, I was going to read World Travel by Anthony Bourdain but instead chose the oral biography of Anthony Bourdain because my husband read it and said it was good.

I would still love to finish Little Men and The Thursday Murder Club …we will see how that goes.

Little Miss is reading Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban. We are also reading The Sign of the Beaver together for school.

The Husband is reading the latest book by Bob Woodward. He just finished Up Country by Nelson Demille.

Last week I watched The Young In Heart with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and loved it.

I also watched a new episode of All Creatures Great and Small and several episodes of Edwardian Farm.

As I was preparing Douglas Fairbanks Jr. gifs to use to make memes for Instagram this week, I found it funny that a Paul Newman gif popped up without me even looking for it. See, I love Paul Newman and have always called him my old-time actor crush, but lately Douglas has been replacing him. I guess Paul didn’t want me to forget him, so he popped a gif of himself in there. (Disclaimer: This is a joke. I do not actually believe Paul Newman is speaking to me from the grave.)

Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree will be out soon and I hope to start writing the fourth book in the series later this month. I’m so excited for both!

Last week on the blog I shared:

• Saturday Afternoon Chat: Staying warm in the winter in the 80s and an unusual cure for my knee pain
• Fiction Friday: Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing Chapters 1 and 2
• Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot: Come Link Up With Us!
• Winter of Douglas Fairbanks Jr.: The Young In Heart
• Top Ten Tuesday: New-to-me Authors I Discovered in 2024
• Sunday Bookends: Cold weather (still), planned reads for February, and a lot of Edwardian Farm

I am going to be listening to Frankenstein this week. I swear. I totally am.

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

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This post is linked up with The Sunday Post at  Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, Stacking the Shelves with Reading Reality, The Sunday Salon with Deb at Readerbuzz, and Book Date: It’s Monday! What are you reading hosted by Kathyrn at The Book Date.