I don’t know if it’s because both my parents were educators, because they read to me as a child, or because I love hanging out at bookstores and libraries, but my first word was “book.”
Like you, I read to my (almost) three year old everyday. Several times a day. Sadly, aside from children’s books, parenting reference guides, blogs and the occasional online news article, I haven’t done much leisure reading since he was born. I love reading and I miss it very much. There is nothing better than getting lost in a good book.
Books can transport you to another place and time and introduce you to interesting characters that you don’t normally encounter in your day-to-day life. Reading is relaxing, especially when hours have passed and I don’t even realize it because I’m so enthralled in a good book. Sitting quietly with a juicy epic is truly one of life’s greatest pleasures.
Love her or hate her, I believe Oprah Winfrey single-handedly got our nation reading again when she established her book club in 1996. I have read almost all of her selections. Nowadays, since I don’t have a lot of free time to read, every book I pick up has to be worth my precious time.
So, where is a busy mom to find her next great read? I get a lot of my book recommendations from friends and to be honest, People magazine.
You’d have to be living under a rock not to have heard about the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, which I read and thought was complete crap, but good good crap.
You’re probably not a blogger if you haven’t heard of Confessions of a Scary Mommy: An Honest and Irreverent Look at Motherhood; The Good, The Bad, and the Scary by Jill Smokler or Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir) by Jenny Lawson. Both are terrific and you don’t have to be a blogger to identify. Read Debra Cruz’s reviews here.
The Hunger Games movie adaptation came out this past March and while I have tried several times to read the first book in this trilogy, I just can’t seem to get into it, so on my nightstand it still sits.
Right now I’m reading Two Kisses for Maddy: A Memoir of Loss & Love by Matt Logelin, who I first read about in People. This is another blog to book and it is bittersweet.
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27 hours after giving birth to their daughter, Liz suffered a pulmonary embolism and died instantly, without ever holding the daughter whose arrival she had so eagerly awaited. Though confronted with devastating grief and the responsibilities of a new and single father, Matt did not surrender to devastation; he chose to keep moving forward — to make a life for Maddy.
In this memoir, Matt shares bittersweet and often humorous anecdotes of his courtship and marriage to Liz; of relying on his newborn daughter for the support that she unknowingly provided; and of the extraordinary online community of strangers who have become his friends. In honoring Liz’s legacy, heartache has become solace.
Next up is John Irving’s In One Person, which I am so excited to start. I’ve love Irvine since I read A Widow for One Year after seeing the movie and knowing there was way more to to the story. Boy, was I right!
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A compelling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love—tormented, funny, and affecting—and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character of In One Person, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a “sexual suspect,†a phrase first used by John Irving in 1978 in his landmark novel of “terminal cases,†The World According to Garp.
His most political novel since The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving’s In One Person is a poignant tribute to Billy’s friends and lovers—a theatrical cast of characters who defy category and convention. Not least, In One Person is an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself “worthwhile.â€
What are you reading (and recommending) these days?
