Skip to main content
Every summer I get giddy thinking about the sweet, sweaty hours to come immersed in mindless books.  Oh I know, mindless is a bit strong, but summer reading has a flavor that sets it apart from other more intellectual seasons. As school ends and the temperature rises, I escape into new worlds, meeting interesting characters who keep me company through the long lazy days of sunshine.  Thus far I have plowed through three books, The Gift by Lois Lowry, The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen, and most recently The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (positively lovely).  I recommend all three with enthusiasm and although I have no intention of penning a literary description of any kind I will say, that each book left me feeling a bit lighter, not smarter but certainly lighter.  I'll keep you posted as my hefty stack of unread books continues to shrink.  Just imagine what enthusiasm I will garner for my literary pursuits once the weather outside no longer looks like this:
Can anyone say "ENOUGH ALREADY!!!"?

Comments

wind said…
I love receiving book referrals....as for the gushing river on your street, you are the envy of my town who has not had a drop all year....boo hoo.
May 30, 2011 at 10:59 PM
Rose Turner said…
'The Dogs of Babel' by Carolyn Parkhurst
A love story of the highest order; complete with images you cannot shake, no matter how hard you try, or want to...and a feeling of loss when the last page is turned. It's wonderful :)
June 1, 2011 at 5:50 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Coraggio

When everything looks bleak and the darkness cramps against the cold, it takes courage to simply look out from imagined isolation toward the wide horizon of beauty available in every moment.  It takes courage to lean into the sea of life and trust the tide. When weary limbs no longer support us, it takes courage to trust our inner buoyancy and float.  It takes courage, in the face of darkness, to remember the light and sit in all our apparent blindness and listen, silently, to the still, small whisper within.  It takes courage, in that dark hour, when nothing else remains.  Eyes closed.  Eyes opened.  A glimpse, a memory, a fleeting vision of a light so bright it blurs the borders of things seen and things perceived into a comprehensive wholeness of being.  It takes courage.
4 comments
Read more

tree digging

Yes, I know it doesn't look like much.  It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall.  The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep.  But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why) . I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy.  I am a woman who loves the spring.  I nearly live for it.  When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis.  I gorge.  This year has been hard.  Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally.  The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter...
2 comments
Read more

grief

Grief is defined as a deep or intense sorrow. I have been thinking a lot about grief, about it's wide and sticky reach, about the watery quality of it's absorption and the agonizing effort of swimming to shore. Intense sorrow happens. It is a part of life. Yet we press against it. We try to eradicate it. How? We encapsulate our grief in a story, thus effectively removing us from the immediacy of the pain. The mind promises salvation and begins to tell a story, over and over and over. We listen to the inner ramblings, the constant diatribe, the neurotic attempt to avoid the experience. When someone is hurting we listen to their story, we talk about it, we recount our own story, but we certainly don't jump in the waters of sadness, instead we sit on the bank of our familiar longing. Once, when I was floundering in deep grief, my youngest brother knelt next to me and held me for over an hour. He didn't speak. He didn't commiserate. He just jumped in the ...
4 comments
Read more