I love to read

I love to read. That was the first sentence of my oldest son's college application essay, which made me very happy. We are a family of readers. I haven't written much about books here, but it occurs to me that I can because (besides the fact that it's my blog and I can write whatever I want) books are an important part of country weekends. Here in the Catskills, used books stores abound. Even the smallest towns have a used books store. Hobart, population 354, the book village of the Catskills has five, leading some to compare it to Hay-on-Wye.

Summer reading brings to mind tattered paperbacks smelling of sand and suntan lotion or lining the knotty pine shelf in a cabin on a lake. There's a special feeling that goes with reading while surrounded by nature--the rest of the world disappears. It evokes the sound of water, hammocks, porches, shade trees, rainy days ... And of course there's winter reading, by the fire. The same son who gave me the opening for this post, spent a winter weekend in our Catskills house with his girlfriend, and they read A Wrinkle In Time (a favorite of their youths, and mine too) aloud to each other.

I re-read it myself every few years. It's that good. As I wrote about in another post, many of my children's picture books that I saved got destroyed in a flood, but the ones on higher shelves survived. I've brought many of the old favorites to the Catskills house. All the Roald Dahl books. Beatrix Potter's. The Chronicles of Narnia. So many more. I'm planning to read Charlotte's Web again this summer. Do you have a favorite book from your childhood that you re-read now and then?

Jen