When Jesse bought me a Kindle for Christmas this year, I was delighted.  (Give him credit for listening – I’d been whining for it for over a year).  I had no idea, however, that in the three short months I have had it, it has become as indispensable an electronic device as my cell phone and laptop.  They’re gonna yank my hippie credentials any second now.

I’m a voracious, ferocious reader.  When I was a little girl, my family would vacation in the car, like everyone else in the 60’s, and I would position my book under my leg to sneak reads while I was supposed to be sightseeing.  When I was in high school, I had several books stashed in my locker just in case I finished one during the day and needed another one before I could get home or to the library.  As an adult, I keep books all over the place – in my car, at work, in the bathroom, in the laundry room, in the kitchen, so that I’m never without the ability to grab a quick read when I have 90 seconds or so.

When my kids were little, I made them a simple promise about books:  anything they wanted to read, I would buy for them.  (I didn’t factor in porn, and I guess they were too young to see that loophole!).  When we designed our house, in a very real sense, I structured the inside of the main living area around the bookshelves, upstairs and down.

All this to repeat:  I love reading.

Here is a non-comprehensive list of the books I’m currently reading:

On the Origin of the Species, by Charles Darwin

Walden, by Henry David Thoreau

The Problems of Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell

The Vegetarian Myth:  Food, Justice, and Sustainability, by Lierre Keith

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce

Eat, Pray, Love:  One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia, by Elizabeth Gilbert

Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond

The Greatest Show on Earth, by Richard Dawkins

The Chalice and the Blade, by Riane Eisler

Those include books on my Kindle and traditional editions, but they don’t include those books I have already read, to which I’ll occasionally go back for a chapter or two; that list is enormous.

the pile by the bed

I’ve just reread the list and I realize I don’t have any fiction in there.  I enjoy fiction – I’ve recently been devouring Nelson DeMille, especially his John Corey novels.  I’m just not reading one right this red hot second.

Share your books with me – I like nothing better than to have a book recommended to me!

Thanks for reading!