Summer Reading

Why is that I feel less guilty about reading thrillers and "lighter" fiction in the summer? I do though. I have read so many fabulous books the last few weeks.

I read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Pretty great thriller for those of you in the market. Also liked Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan. These are perfect iPAD or Kindle reads. I also bought Harry Potter for my iPAD. It feels right. I usually reread Harry in the winter but this time summer seems better. On Order of the Phoenix. Teared up last night when Mrs. Weasley gives Harry a hug at the end of the hellacious Triwizard tournament in Goblet of Fire. For the twentieth time. 

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter – please read this. It's kind of everywhere right now. Costco even has it. It's beautifully written, I actually reread whole paragraphs because they were so beautiful and true, and the author lives in Spokane. And funny too. I feel like many male novelists lead with their ego but not Jess Walter.  

I read the best motherhood book I can possibly imagine – Making Babies: Stumbling Into Motherhood by the Irish novelist Anne Enright. I have read a couple of her novels (dark, beautiful, lots of drinking, dark) but I was unprepared for her nonfiction book on motherhood. I kind of cried/laughed through the whole thing. It's one of those books where I wondered where it's been the last few years because I needed it a long time ago and it's finally here and now I can reread it whenever I need to. Note: If you do pick this up, you might skip the first essay. It's doesn't really fit.

One quote: 
And on the plus side – a family, a marriage, this deliberate happiness. I sit in my garden and am profoundly grateful. And I never underestimate how hard people work at being ordinary. 

Coming up: Another Jess Walter – The Financial Lives of the Poets. And then maybe The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker. It came to my doorstep from the very magical Powell's Indiespensable subscription.

And one last thing. I, like so many others, are so very saddened by the death of Nora Ephron. I loved her. Her essays and her movies and her novel Heartburn. Telfer and I had been in a Nora Ephron movie-watching kick right before her death – we just have to rewatch When Harry Met Sally. I think this was the best article I read after her death.