Sunday Salon: How I plan to spend the Super Bowl

Today's a big day for a lot of people. Not for me. I really honestly couldn't care less about the Super Bowl, or any football for that matter. Now when the Olympics start this month, all bets are off because I LOVE the Olympics. My reading will take an enormous hit. But today, meh; not so much. I have a long history of reading during the game and only looking up for the commercials. My then boyfriend, now husband, invited me to come to his off campus house in college to watch the big game. His team was even playing. Being a good girlfriend, I went but I took a book with me and spent the duration of the game reading and writing letters to friends from home. He never could claim that I didn't walk into our relationship acting differently than I meant to go on but he is still amazed by my lack of interest, twenty plus years further on. He didn't change me on that and he didn't change me on the book buying obsession (also clearly on display long before we married). I just shrug and suggest that opposites attract. So while huge audiences are gathered around tvs all across the country, I'll be holding my own Super Bowl, pitting books against each other, deciding what to read next.

Regardless of your football allegiance, which of my books should emerge victorious?

The Daring Ladies of Lowell by Kate Alcott
The Last Enchantments by Charles Finch
The Race Underground by Doug Most
Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen
This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash
The House of Memories by Monica McInerney
The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating by Carole Radziwill

Only one of them can emerge victorious to be read to the accompanying noise of Seahawks and Broncos fans caring a lot more than I do about the outcome of the game. Then again, all of the books will eventually be winners and the same can't be said of both football teams today.   Just another reason books are the best.  ;-)

So leading up to today's game, my reading adventures have taken me all over. I went back to Yorkshire during Edwardian times to see what was becoming of the families dependent on the mines in the village of Netherwood. I watched as a displaced Southern belle learned to listen to her amazingly sensitive bees in matters of the heart. I traveled all over the world with writers chronicling their real life adventures. I went along as a young woman joined up to fight in the Civil War beside her husband. Where did your reading travels take you this past week?