What I've Been Reading

Reading is hands down my favorite hobby.  Fortunately it also bodes well for my lifestyle on the run.  I always carry a large handbag and it's because there is at least one book inside.  If I have to kill some time while the girls are at their activities, I can just pull out my book. It is also the perfect activity to do alongside the girls as they are working on school work.

B-Real teases me about my love of reading.  On our first year wedding anniversary we went to Vail, CO.  It would be time to go out to dinner and I'd tell him I just needed to finish one more chapter before we could go. The worst, in my opinion, is a vacation in which he does not have anything to read.  Then he wants to talk the whole time we are on vacation!  Geez!  I have been known to stop at a random CVS to desperately find him something to read so I can read!

1.  The Mermaid's Chair -- Sue Monk Kidd

Have you read "The Secret Life of Bees"?  This book is the follow-up to Kidd's first novel.  The main character must return to her small hometown to care for her ailing mother.   During her stay she becomes romantically involved with a monk, which leads her to question her stale marriage back home.  It is a story about love, deep friendship, secrets, and forgiveness.  I enjoyed this one quite a bit.

2.  Best Friends -- Martha Moody

Best Friends was my favorite of the books I read this month.  The book begins with two girls starting college together at Oberlin in Ohio.  The girls come from very different backgrounds but forge a bound during their first year at school.  Their relationship continues through the years, even though they live in different states, and continue to have very different lives.  Neither seems to have any other friends, or at least close friends, so they are each other's support through marriages, divorces, deaths, job changes.  I feel better for having read this book.

3.  The Guardian -- Nicholas Sparks

This book was an easy to read love story but is also Nicholas Spark's first suspense novel.  Sparks said he wanted it first and foremost to be a love story but to supplement it with mystery.  Personally I think he does love better than fear but it was an o.k. book.  My favorite part was the relationship between the main character and her dog.

4.  Where We Belong -- Emily Giffin

Historically I have liked Emily Giffin's books.  Someone compared them to a modern version of Jane Austen but I would categorize them as a bit classier form of chick lit!  Unfortunately, this was a slow Giffin novel surrounding a birth mom and her daughter becoming reacquainted after 18 years.  You learn the birth mother never told the birth father she was even pregnant and there is guilt and lingering questions about his whereabouts.

5.  The Art of Dancing in the Rain -- Garth Stein

If you love dogs, this is a great book for you.  Might I also suggest "The Dog's Purpose".  That's a tear jerker!   "The Art of Racing in the Rain" is about a relationship between a race car driver and his dog.  They go through so much together and the one constant in the man's life is his dog.