Literary Love

From the time I was little, I wasted nighttime hours of sleep to read. When I was in middle school, it would be under my blankets with a flashlight. When I was in high school, and came home from some adventure with friends, instead of turning on the TV, I'd always have a book to pop open. The smell of book pages and the life of the characters warped me into a different world. I was enamored with the love stories, couldn't keep my hands off the page turning vampire type series at one point, and with brief breaks in grad school and residency when things really piled up, I've never put books down.

I stand by the fact that so much of my "innate" intelligence that gets me through the adult world is not innate at all- it came from books. I cannot even begin to count the number I've read. In the past month, I've been through four novels. I read on so many topics by the time I was eighteen I felt like I personally knew heart surgeons, mothers who had lost their children, exotic travelers. I was transported to their worlds through the words of authors I admire. And that's not to say all of my reading is serious- that couldn't be further from the truth. I love a good chick lit book. In fact, I think that they always showed me the reality of life versus the fairytale. I relied on female writers to challenge the norms of society; they gave me different ways to think about things when all I knew was Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.

Since my days of reading old books by flashlight, I've come around to my kindle. I miss the pages of a book, but they are cheaper and easier to carry this way.  It also somehow, enables me to power through books more quickly, because I can just set it down as I dry my hair (yep, did that this morning to finish up a good one) or read it in the car when Sienna unexpectedly passes out on the way home from the store and I find myself sitting in the driveway with idle time. Recently, I posted on facebook asking for book recommendations. I loved the onslaught of comments. I think it was up to 33 last time I checked. My friends, like me, know the power of a good book.

And just in case you're in need of a good escape from reality, here are a few of my top picks:

Me Before You (came recommended from my friend, Sarah, and I couldn't stop texting her throughout it and making excuses to read it when I should be doing other things)
The Husband's Secret
The Fault in our Stars
The Next Best Thing

Happy Reading.