Summer Reading List

My husband gave me a Kindle for Mother's Day last year and the pace of my reading has rapidly increased! I wonder if this is the case for other e-book readers?  I love that I can view the first chapters of a book from the comfort of my bed.  I am a night reader and thus, the ability to browse the Amazon bookshelf at 2 a.m., brings me great joy and a bounty of possible purchases for nary a cent spent!  The fact that I have to put a book light on this device does not make me happy, but I'm starting to get over it.  As someone who NEEDS to have every book that I actually LOVE, physically be present on my actual bookshelf, the Kindle has not saved me any cash when it comes to my favorites, as I now I have a digital and hardback copy of the same book.  I do appreciate the fact that if I don't love the book, no paper or precious space on the actual book shelf has been waisted.  I am also finding that I am reading quite deep on various subjects and from certain authors, due to the recommendations based on my puchases.

Food has been a huge theme for me this year! 

I began with Julie and Julia, by Julie Powell. After I saw the movie, I wanted more of Julia Child, which led me to the autobiography she wrote with Alex Prud'Homme, My Life in France.  I fell in love with this book!  It was pure delight hearing the tale of her magnificent journey.  I really loved that she didn't figure things out for herself until later in life. It was a long book, but I really missed it when it was over, so I read a little deeper and picked The Tenth Muse, My Life in Food, by Julia's editor, Judith Jones.  The two women had very similar backgrounds and I enjoyed this book, too.  I still hadn't had enough of the foodie books and moved on to Ruth Reichl's books.  I started with Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table, and thoroughly enjoyed this food critic's adventures with the young and barely known, Alice Waters and Wolfgang Puck, among others. I was hungry for more so I moved on to her next book, Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise.  As the critic for the New York Times, learning about the efforts she went to in keeping herself anonymous as she dined in some of the finest restraunts in the city, was really interesting!  These are two of the books I liked so much I bought in hardback.  She's got one more I want to read, but haven't gotten to yet, called Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table.

I have totally switched gears this month, and am currently trying to understand the situation in the Middle East.  It doesn't make sense to me and I don't like being completely ignorant about a subject that is demanding so much of our world's attention and books have always been where I turn when I have questions.  I began the process with  Greg Mortenson's books, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time and Stones into Schools.  Its pretty easy to relate to the need to educate children and the value of educating girls in particular!  The events in these two books take place in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  It is heartbreaking to learn how little money it actually takes to provide schools and teachers for these children and yet the governments of these countries are unwilling to do so.  Mortenson's books are non fiction, but Khaled Hosseini writes fiction whose characters touch my heart while at the same time give me a glimpse of the history of political events taking place inside Afghanistan.  The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. are beautifully written novels that are an easy way to get a little more familiar with the kind of people whose lives we are fighting to protect.  There are three other books on my list so far, which I hope to finish by the end of the month; Gertrude Bell, Queen of the Dessert, by Georgina Howard, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom, by Qanta Ahmed and What Every American Should Know About the Middle East, by Melissa Rossi.  These last three were reccommended by a woman I just met who is working at a hospital on an American Army base in Saudi Arabia.  I can't wait to finish A Thousand Splendid Suns and move on to these three!

I realize my reading list is erratic.  From Julia Child to Afghanistan is a stretch for any reader but I find myself intriqued by any number of things on any given day.  My hope is that I am a little smarter about food, France, politics, the Middle East and myself, as a result of what I have read in the last few months. We'll see!