summer reading

the girls and i have been spending some time at our local small-town library...the girls are participating in their "summer reading program" and enjoying little prizes along the way.  today was the last day of the june storytime but, unfortunately, we were unable to go.  why?  well, there is a certain young lady who recently turned 5 and is in what i am dubbing her "sassafras stage" (or alternatively "i will never...stage").  i love that little thing to pieces, but her mouth makes my mouth say things i should not.  not proud of that.  or the fact this "stage" could resurface when she is in double digits.  or just stay.  **sigh**

anyhoodles, we have been reading a bunch this summer!  i have enjoyed some of my favorite authors and found a couple new ones to love.  i am finishing up jodi picoult's latest book and have an anita shreve book ready to be read next!  I also like to keep a list of books to checkout...sometime the are magazine recommendations, or a friend's, or on a blog...this following excerpt someone else posted and it makes me want to read the book - just from this paragraph!

what are your recommendations for some summer reading?

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