Reading lately...

These are the books I brought home with me from the library this week. Is this a form of nesting? I've had this crazy desire to have cookbooks. Lots and lots of cookbooks.

The Foodie Handbook is the sort of book that makes me wish I was a foodie, but realize I'm not. Chapter 4 has a list of fifty things every foodie should do or at least try once in his or her life. Some of them are quite accessible, while others are ridiculous. I am however, going to achieve one of them this year by having tea at Mariage Freres in Paris!

It's fun to dream, but mostly I'm just not that sophisticated. I'm more like The Pioneer Woman kind of foodie. Maybe I need to get that cookbook!

The Gentle Art of Domesticity was right up my alley though. It's funny, I'd seen the book in stores, but wasn't much interested, but I hadn't read the words. Once I did, I discovered the author is a kindred spirit. She likes yarn and chocolate and wine and books. And quiet. And baking. And philosophizing. It's the kind of book that makes me wish I could be friends with the author. It is less a practical guidebook, than a friendly dream-book full of little musings, reflections on small enjoyments in life.

In the fiction department, I recently finished Anna and the French Kiss, a YA book I've heard quite a bit of buzz about. It takes place almost entirely at a private school in France - which would have been a fantasy of mine at the age of 16. Alas, I think this whole book might have suited me better at age 16 -- another nail in my YA coffin -- even though I give it total cred for lifelike and non-cardboard teenage characters.

Which is why it totally doesn't make sense that I've been reading and enjoying the Harry Potter books. Yes, literary folks likely turn up noses. And the rest of you say, really? You're only reading them just now?! But here's the secret of late adopters. You see, I don't have to wait a year to get the next book. I know the entire series is there, waiting for me when I get around to it. They make nice light reading when that is what I need and I've needed a bit of that lately. They're stories of friends and adventures, of schooldays and heroism and wild imagination. The only thing I'm not crazy about is Quidditch. I'm not a sports fan in general and reading whole chapters that describe sports games? Gah.

I'm moseying my way through book #4 - which seems to be the book where the pages suddenly leap up from 200 pages a book to 600. Quite a jump. What I've really noticed, is that I enjoy the books SO much more than the movies. Anyone else feel this way? The movies feel like such a condensed version.

I also spent almost the whole first trimester re-reading The Historian. Re-reading is a funny thing. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But this time, I think I enjoyed the book more than the first time. I read it very slowly, lingering in the descriptions of European destinations and academic mysteries.

And in the what I can't wait to read department... The Night Circus. I hope it lives up to my expectations.

Any delicious books on your bedside tables recently?