My Interests

I've realized that I mostly talk about just a few things: my kids, food, the business...I guess that's it. There is more to my life, actually. I've been immersed in a shiny new pile of library books this week, since we promised to take the kids while they were on break.

One interesting book I'm reading now is "Reading Lolita in Tehran," written by a woman who led a small group of women in reading and discussing banned books in Iran. I love how the subtitle is "a memoir in books." I'm still working in it, but the book is divided into sections by which book they were working on and how it relates to life under the brutal totalitarian rule in Iran. I've read enough to know that Lolita sounds like one messed up book. I'm really looking forward to the last section, in which they read and discuss Jane Austen.

I'm not one for resolutions, much, but I'd like to read more good, classic books and less fluff this year. Not that fluff is bad, mind you! There are some books that it seems everyone else has read that I haven't, despite years of voracious reading. Sometimes, I think that's a good thing. I didn't read the Lord of the Rings until just before the movies came out, because I wanted to have read the books first. And I'm glad I did. Most of my other favorite comfort reads came to me when I was in junior high or high school, so I've read some of them (ahem, Robin McKinley) at least every year for a long time. It was nice to come to it fresh and as an adult.

So here's a list of some things I'd like to read this year:

Thomas Hardy
Charles Dickens
The Little Prince
Marcel Proust (He's always being referenced as a very sensory food writer, plus they make fun of him on Monty Python a lot)

I need to figure out some lady writers. I'm always open to suggestion.