nomadreader

I am not a fan of Valentine's Day as a romantic holiday, but since having Hawthorne, I'm re-embracing Valentine's Day as a celebration of love (all types of love.) I'm not a fan of roses, jewelry or chocolates. I am a fan of a good meal, wine, bourbon, and a good book, and my Valentine's Day weekend will include several of each. But as I sat thinking about my valentines, I began to think about what my book valentine is this year. I've read a lot of great books lately. Some I expected to love and others were surprises. I spend a lot of my time reading, and yet I don't always enjoy what I read. Then there are those books that come along that are both so good and touch me so deeply, and they make me say, "This. This is why I read." I had a hard time just picking one title, but I finally settled on Euphoria   by Lily King, which was my favorite book of 2014 . I cannot get this book out of my head. It's both literary and accessible to pop fictio...

narrated by Xe Sands and Simon Vance The backstory: The New York Times  named Euphoria a 2014  Notable Book, as well as one of the ten best books of the year . Euphoria  also won the 2014 Kirkus Prize . The basics: Set in 1933 New Guinea,  Euphoria  is the story of thee young anthropologists, Nell, Fen and Bankson. Nell and Fen, a married couple working together, seek the help of Bankson, an expert in the area, to identify a tribe worth studying. My thoughts:  Longtime readers of this blog know I'm a huge fan of fiction about real people, so when I heard  Euphoria  was inspired by the life of Margaret Mead, more specifically a 1933 New Guinea expedition Mead took with her second husband. On this expedition, they collaborated with the man who would become Mead's third husband. It's a trip that's ripe for fictional speculation, and King takes this tantalizing set up and explores its possibilities beautifully. I realized as I listene...

2014 was quite a year. I had a baby . And I kept reading (it's possible! It wasn't even hard!) I somehow managed to read 139 books this year (and no, that doesn't count any of the children's books I read to Hawthorne.) I read (significantly) more books in 2014 than I did in any other year in which I've kept track of my reading. In September, I hit 100 books . I've spent a lot of time thinking about why  I managed to read so many books this year, and I think it comes down to making reading more of a priority. I didn't watch nearly as much television in 2014 as I did before. And I didn't even see as many movies. I read. If a book wasn't working for me, I set it down and picked up another one. Sometimes I picked it back up again, but sometimes I didn't. And I gave up review obligations. I still read plenty of books from publishers, but I didn't commit to reviewing them on specific days. When I picked up a book, it was because I wanted to read it...