Summer Bookworm Update

I had lunch today with one of my favorite bloggers whom I've been reading for years and years. The Diamond in the Window was visiting a friend in town and was kind enough to meet me for a couple of hours at a neighborhood cafe. Our brown rice bowls were secondary to the conversation as it was all about books -- what we loved, what we disliked, what we're reading now and what we read in our childhoods. It turns out that we're the same age and read many of the same things, had many of the same favorites and -- well -- I'm pretty positive we would have been great friends in the early to mid-seventies, moving into middle and high school in the eighties and perhaps rivals for the Reading Rainbow Greatest Number of Books Read in the Summer contest. Honestly, I could have jumped in her lap when she recalled the creepy china dog in No Flying in the House, because my very tattered, taped copy sits right above my desk in the Most Treasured Childhood Books spot. No offense to my beautiful and brilliant boys, but our reading tastes are wildly dissimilar, and I just never took to baseball biographies and that stinky kid series. Lunching and talking with The Diamond was like being with a friend from fourth grade after the bookmobile came to our school.

I just finished another read of Sigrid Nunez' memoir Sempre Susan, a memoir of Susan Sontag -- even better the second time since I spent a week with her at Hedgebrook. I'm also nearly orgasmic over William Finnegan's Barbarian Days A Surfing Life -- not only is it a literal romp, but it's got photos of surfers and waves and you know how I feel about such things. Diamond insisted that I read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, so I picked that up at the bookstore, and when I got home Pleasures of the Table, A Literary Anthology was waiting for me, a gift from a friend. I am gearing up for a September Books & Bakes, toying with assigning Toni Morrison's Bluest Eye (all about hunger), and one of my favorite of hers, or a new book called Dietland that Diamond recommended that sounds weird and edgy and wild. If you were going to come to Books & Bakes, which would you prefer, and if it's neither, what book would you like to discuss and hopefully, eat from? The books don't need to have menus specifically or even something food-related, but hopefully, there's something culinary that can be drawn out of them -- something sensual and worthy of celebrating.

Go check out The Diamond in the Window if you haven't already, and mine your brains for book suggestions for my salon. Tell me what you're reading and what's on your night table.