Sunday Salon: This is me in a flurry of activity

I'm intent on getting my house in order this weekend. So far I have:

1. Made a list of things to do
2. Made ham & egg English muffins for breakfast
3. Praised Evan for his stellar job of vacuuming the rug
4. Finished reading Do-Over by Robin Hemley
5. Prevented the cat from peeing in an open drawer

Only one of these things was on my list of things to do (can you guess which?).

I enjoyed Do-Over. It's one of those gimmicky memoirs whose subtitles are reminiscent of those old National Inquirer headlines: Family spends a winter living in a tunnel! Mother deals with grief by rescuing child slaves from Ghana! Girl eats only tofu for a year! Man travels the world to find out where his clothes were made!

I'm a sucker for these. I don't know why.

The gimmick of Do-Over is that Mr. Hemley decides to go back and relive the experiences that hold regret for him. So, at 48, he spends a week as a kindergartener, a week as a camper at summer camp, a week attending the boarding school he dropped out of before Prom, and so on. I'll be reviewing it next week, for now I'll just say, gimmicks aside, this was a good read.

Next on my reading list is Ron Carlson's The Signal. So excited about this one! Ron Carlson is one of my favorite authors of both short stories and longer fiction. When I learned he had a new novel coming out, I was just about as close to squeeeee! as I get. But before I can get started on that, I must get to my to-do list. Item #1: Draw giveaway winners.

This week's drawing for the Parenting & Nutrition Book giveaway:

Dr. Sears' NDD Book: Pam
The G-Free Diet: Teddy Rose and Marion (I have an extra one this week because Jen, who won last week, also won the book in another contest)
If Your Kid Eats This Book: Gaby317 and last week's winner, SpiralMama (still waiting to hear from you, SpiralMama!)

Winners, please email me at Worducopia/at/gmail/dot/com with your mailing address so I can pass it on to the publicist at Hachette Book Group and get your book to you. If you haven't won yet, you'll have another chance each Sunday until mid-June, and I'm taking new entries through then.