Monday, December 16, 2013

Literary Bite: Winter Break (Fun) Reading List


Well hello friends! I greet you from the wonderful world of Winter Break, a truly magical three weeks of relaxation during which I anticipate doing not a whole lot and loving every minute of it.


After finishing my exam last Thursday, I wandered around Davis Square, slightly dazed and definitely brain-dead. I meandered my way into a bookstore (I swear there's some sort of magnetic field around bookstores), and was immediately overwhelmed. I wanted to read this one and that one and that one and that one -- basically, starved for fiction, I wanted them all. And then it dawned on me, like a marathoner at a breakfast buffet: I'm a student, school is over (for now); therefore, I can have them all! I smiled to myself (or maybe visibly, like a crazy person/student who just finished exams...same same, right?), anticipating the fiction binge upon which I was about to embark.

And here I am four days later: cuddled on our couch in Tahoe, sipping chai in front of the fire, appreciating the pretty little tree we decorated today, and already almost done with my first book (Atlas of the Unknowns).


It's a short one, just 320 pages to ease me back into the joys of fun reading, and prepare me for the deep depths of the reading rabbit hole I plan to inhabit this vacation. (Ok, pause for full disclosure: I have been reading fun books while in school, they just take me four times longer than normal because so much of my brain-space is occupied by more serious academic endeavors.)

Before leaving Petaluma, my mama stacked a smorgasbord of books for me to sample. I have exactly 17 days until school starts again.

Winter Break Reading List


  • Atlas of the Unknowns -- Tania James
  • Excellent Women -- Barbara Bym
  • East of Eden -- John Steinbeck
  • The Art Forger -- B.A. Shapiro
  • How it All Began -- Penelope Lively
  • A Sense of an Ending -- Julian Barnes
  • tinkers -- Paul Herring
  • Lunch in Paris -- Elizabeth Bard

Have you read any of these? Any recommendations of other books that should make it onto my list?