Reading.....

I love to read and I have loved reading as long as I can remember. My mom has an adorable picture of me fast asleep at the age of 6 or 7 with a book half covering my face. When my mom needed to discipline or motivate me she simply took my book away. When Nathaniel and I traveled I think I read over 40 books, possibly more. It was wonderful! Now that I am a mother I do not have as much time to read but I still love it as much as ever and it provides a delightful little escape/treat at the end of a long, monotonous day. A good book is a hundred times better than a movie and I often recall scenes or situations from books far more often than I do from movies.

Here is just a FEW of a few of my favorite books: (meaning I have read them numerous times)
"Gift From The Sea": by Anne Marrow Lindberg
"Echo in the Darkness": by Francine Rivers
"Woman Power" by Dr. Laura Schlessinger
"The Birth House" by Ami McKay
"The Mask of Motherhood" by Susan Maushart

There is a long list of books that I would like to read - at some point in my life. At the moment I am interested in getting my hands on the books "The Hunger Games" and "The Room". I am also interested in checking out some classic literature by author's such as Mark Twain, and Edgar Allan Poe.
I was reading a post written by one of my favorite bloggers "Clover Lane" and she had shared a paragraph from a book she had recently read called "The Hand That First Held Mine". It resonated with me and I decided to share it with you as well. I Here it is....

"We change shape, she continued, we buy low-heeled shoes, we cut off our long hair. We begin to carry in our bags half-eaten rusks, a small tractor, a shred of beloved fabric, a plastic doll. We lose muscle tone, sleep, reason, perspective. Our hearts begin to live outside our bodies. They breath, they eat, they crawl and-look!-they walk, they begin to speak to us. We learn that we sometimes walk an inch at a time, to stop and examine every stick, every stone, every squashed tin along the way. We get used to not going where we were going. We learn to darn, perhaps to cook, to patch the knees of dungarees. We get used to living with a love that suffuses us, suffocates us, blinds us, controls us. We live. We contemplate our bodies, our stretched skin, those threads of silver around our brows, our strangely enlarged feet. We learn to look less in the mirror. We put our dry-clean only clothes in the back of the wardrobe. Eventually, we throw them away. We school ourselves to stop saying 'shit' and 'damn' and learn to say 'my goodness' and 'heavens above'. We give up smoking, we colour our hair, we search the vistas of parks, swimming pools, libraries, cafes for others of our kind. We know each other by our pushchairs, our sleepless gazes, the beakers we carry. We learn how to cool a fever, ease a cough, the four indicators of meningitis, that one must sometimes push a swing for two hours. We buy biscuit cutters, washable pains, aprons, plastic bowls. We no longer tolerate delayed buses, fighting in the street, smoking in restaurants, sex after midnight, inconsistency, laziness, being cold. We contemplate younger women as they pass us in the street, with their cigarettes, their makeup, their tight-seemed dresses, their tiny handbags, their smooth, washed hair, and we turn away, we put down our heads, we keep on pushing the pram up the hill."
- Maggie O'Farrell, The Hand That First Held Mine

Can't wait to check that book out!