What are you Reading?

It's raining in NYC, which is quite welcome considering how extremely hot it has been the last few weeks. Days like these make me feel like staying home and curling up with a good book and a cup of coffee.  In fact, our new house has a porch (wish list item), so I'm looking forward to spending some time out there under a blanket with a cool breeze blowing over me with a glass of wine, book in hand (not sure how I can do this with two toddlers running around).  Wow! I'm really getting into this porch scenario.  You can tell I've obviously thought about this.. A LOT.

This would be a good place to curl up.



Love the grey and yellow theme to this window seat/reading nook



  

Insert me here:



Image via Pinterest via google

 

  

I usually like to read something serious then follow that book up with more light-hearted reads.  A few years ago, I read War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.  I have a thing for literature by Russian novelists.  With reading about an hour each day- subway rides to and from work- and occasionally on the weekend, it took a looooong time to read.  I needed a lot of lighter books to read after I finished reading it and here are some of the books I read (yes, you can laugh).

Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer (yes, I am still a teenage girl at heart)

Room by Emma Donoghue (great suggestion, Christina. heart wrenching especially if you are a parent.)

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

(great book. made me appreciate the relationship my kids have with their nanny more than I already did.)

The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins (I said I was a teenager. lol. loved it.)

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

(I liked this book a lot more than I thought I would. I think I might have even read another book in the series. There are a ton of these books.)

Are you There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea. by Chelsea Handler (hilarious!)

My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler (seriously laughing out loud)

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (love him. his book The Corrections is one of my favs.)

Bossypants by Tina Fey

(she's awesome. quite funny though I have to say the Chelsea books were probably funnier though it was probably due to her over the top, hilarious antics that were all alcohol and sex related. sorry, tina.)

Then I started to feel badly that I hadn't read a serious book in a while, though a few of these aren't what I would call 'light reads', so I started reading The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  I was 3/4 through and I got interrupted by an urgent request by my sister to read 50 Shades of Grey by E.L James.  Yes, I read the series.  Yes, I enjoyed it.  Fastest read ever.  So many sex scenes I started to skim them, though I did appreciate the parts of the book that dealt with first love.  It always nice to read about that over and over again (see Twilight and Hunger Games above). 

I have to say that I've read most of these books because my sister suggests them.  I always resist, thinking that I'm not going to like what she suggests, but I always do.  Now, I know just to read what she tells me to.  Thanks, sis! 

So, I haven't made by way back to finishing up The Idiot, don't worry I will soon.  I started reading another book called The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.  So far, so good.  It's a book about nostalgia- looking back on the past, childhood friends and lovers past. 

Here are a couple of quotes that I like from what I've read so far: 

"She sees only what's gone, I see only what's stayed the same. Her hair is no longer halfway down her back or pulled up in a French pleat; nowadays it is cut close to her skull and the grey is allowed to show. Those peasanty frocks she used to wear have given way to cardigans and well-cut trousers. Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it's still the eyes we look at, isn't it? That's where we found the other person, and find them still. The same eyes that were in the same head when we first met, slept together, married, honeymooned, joint-mortgaged, shopped, cooked and holidayed, loved one another and had a child together. And were the same when we separated."

one more:

"But I've been turning over in my mind the question of nostalgia, and whether I suffer from it... But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions-and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives-then I plead guilty."

 Let me know what you are reading now and what's on your summer reading list. 

I'm always looking for the next good book.

Happy Weekend!

xo,

Ris