Some Summer Reads

I do love the summer, and reading is my favorite summer past time. Now that I'm back from my travels home, I've got more time to devote.


A few of the books I've read recently:


I picked up Comfort Food in the Seattle airport. Lucky thing, too: I had a 12 hour delay trying to get out of Seattle to go to Atlanta. This book filled a need.

Comfort Food tells the tale of a world famous chef/ t.v. personality (think: Ina Garten or Paula Dean) who finds herself turning 50 and grappling with cable ratings, relationship issues with her daughters, and competition from a hot Latina cook. It's a silly little read, but it was enjoyable.

3 Stars.






This one was a bit of a surprise. Gloria Vanderbilt's newest book, Obsession: An Erotic Tale, ventures far from what I would expect to read from Vanderbilt. In the opening chapter, the main character's husband drops dead at their 10th anniversary party.



As the widow is reading through their past love letters, she happens upon a stack of letters from the husbands' mistress. Really, the mistress was sort of a hired lover housed in the lap of luxury by the husband.



This slim book is a series of letters and dreams... all pretty erotic. The tag line is accurate.

Rated "M" for mature... and "I" for intriguing?



3.5 Stars.



Cormac Mc Carthy is not known for his happy literature. It's usually dark and deep. He wrote All the Pretty Horses and No Country For Old Men, to name a couple of his better known works. So I kind of put off reading The Road.

I knew the premise: something has happened to the world in the form of fire or explosion, and there are very few people left. Two of the remaining people are a man and his son who are just trying to travel south on foot to survive the winter. There are certainly horrible parts of the book that make you think: oh man, it really would be like that! And most of the book makes you wonder just how much you'd like to suffer through before you threw in the towel. -But then you think, If I had a kid to keep alive, perhaps I would be this dogmatic about surviving.


What I wasn't banking on was the underlying, nay: PERSISTENCE of hope throughout the book. Even when there is not one good thing to hope for.


The movie is coming out October 16 (the day after my 30th birthday). I'm not sure I want to see some of those images, but I'm sure if the movie is half as powerful as the book, it will knock your socks off.

5 Stars.