Thursday, November 8, 2012

The ADD Bookworm

Lately, I've been having trouble staying in a committed relationship with a single book. There are just too many books that I want to read! Here are the books that have been stacked on my nightstand (and the coffee table ... and the dining table ... and the kitchen island):

  • Girl in Hyacinth Blue, by Susan Vreeland. A lovely novel that traces the history of a possible Vermeer painting. This is the sort of book that I would normally inhale in 36 hours, but I read it leisurely over the course of two weeks.
  • Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. I recently downloaded a free copy to my Kindle after a member of my book club jokingly suggest we read this for our next meeting. It's a doozy, but it's always been on my To Read list; and I imagine it will be easier to keep the characters straight now, when I'm pregnant, as opposed to next spring, when I'm busy cuddling a baby (and stupid from sleep deprivation).
  •  Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White. Now that I'm 20 weeks pregnant, Baby Girl can actually hear my voice, so I'm slowly reading this aloud to her.
  • Where The Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein. Sometimes, instead of reading about Wilbur's porcine adventures, I just read a few poems out loud for Baby Girl.  
  • By The Shores of Silver Lake, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I bought the complete set of the Little House On the Prairie series on eBay several months ago. I have a lot to say about this series, which is best saved for a separate post. Whenever I'm a little tired or cranky, I just breeze through a few chapters of Laura's latest adventures, and that always lifts my spirits.
  • The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, by Deb Perlman. My favorite cooking blogger recently released her first cookbook, and it is beautiful. This is the rare cookbook that I plan on reading from cover to cover.
  • Fire in My Belly, by Kevin Gillespie and David Joachim. Kevin is my favorite Top Chef contestant of all time, and his new cookbook is making me love him even more. I constantly laugh out loud while I'm reading this cookbook; then I make Nathan pause his football game so I can read aloud a choice passage.
  • The World of Downton Abbey, by Jessica Fellowes. I have been slowly reading this book as I wait for Season Three of the BBC series to arrive in the U.S. It's filled with tons of beautiful photographs from the show, but there's also a lot of written material about the time period. It's part history book, part "pornography for Downton Abbey Addicts."
  • We're Just Like You, Only Prettier: Confessions of a Tarnished Southern Belle, by Celia Rivenbark. The title sums up this collection of essays better than I can. I often read an essay or two while I'm eating lunch.
I clearly need help. Is it possible to stage an intervention for an ADD Bookworm?