Last weekend we took a last-minute overnight to the La Quinta/Indio area of Palm Desert, our favorite family destination. This time we tried a new (and way less expensive) hotel, which was a fun if not as fancy of a time had by all. While I was excited to get out there with the boys to chill and hang out in the pool, I was also pretty stoked about sitting poolside and reading my new issue of Real Simple I’d just received in the mail and attack the new book I’d just started the week before.

The weather ended up being perfect for laying in the desert shade and reading. With a G & T in one hand and a trashy novel in the other, I was having my form of fun in the sun while the boys splashed about and putted around (literally putted – the hotel had a putting green, too). Granted, I also did my fair share of splashing and putting, but I enjoyed watching the two of them have some excellent one-on-one, Dad-and-Son time while I got to marinate in my literary lap of luxury.

Yes, I heart reading. Big time. Brain stimulation, getting lost in a story and a set of new friends, and peace and freaking quiet: What’s not to love really?! But the irony is that pre-T, I wasn’t a big reader so much. So it’s not as if I am finally getting back to a hobby that I used to love; reading for me is a new-found love. I think it’s because of the fact that I truly enjoy quiet time much more now than I ever could before because now it’s just way, way more appreciated. Reading time equals quiet time inside of my head-space even if not around me environmentally. And transitively, well, there you have it.

Oh, and I like actual, physical books. I cannot wrap my brain (hands?) around a media-reading device, or whatever they are called these days. Give me paper, ink, the published page smell, the texture of a book cover, the feel and sound of the turn of a page… all of it, please. And I adore a cute, friendly, independent bookstore, too; while I do purchase the bulk of my pages online or at Costco, I’ll still throw my bucks to the local bookseller if I wander in and find something I (or T) just have to have. As for the library, I’d love to explore it a little more since we tend to find ourselves there more and more as T grows up, but then again, I like to own the books I read for a lot longer than I can legally borrow them. That and there’s nothing like a good old book swap amongst friends – we moms are like our own library branch of sorts.

 

As for what I like to read, well, here’s a reading list of just some of my books so far in 2011 (no particular order):

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto – Michael Pollan

Just Tell Me What to Say – Betsy Brown Braun

Naturally Thin and A Place of Yes – Bethenny Frankel

The Happiness Project – Gretchen Rubin

Chasing Harry Winston and Last Night at Chateau Marmont – Lauren Weisberger

Trading Up – Candace Bushnell

Playful Parenting – Lawrence J. Cohen

Wear This, Toss That – Amy E. Goodman

Good Germs, Bad Germs: Health and Survival in a Bacterial World – Jessica Snyder Sachs

The Mind at Work – Mike Rose

 

Whew – I admit that since I am a mom that I was a little concerned that I was going to wind up listing a lot of Curious George or Thomas the Train books instead of actual adult lit. Thankfully, a nice percentage of reading I have been doing this year appears to be me-centric as well.

And the lovely bonus to my new reading habit? T loves books, too. Actions do speak louder than words, even in this instance.

Happy reading, RMT’ers!