Books, Planes and Summer

When I was a younger girl, you couldn't tear me away from a book, no matter what season it was.  I was the girl who gave up reading for Lent, who was told to "put down that book and go play outside or something!"  I read all the time, and when I first started driving I was so lost because I never paid attention to where we were going.  I was too busy reading.

In recent years, my love of books has not lessened, but my reading habits have altered somewhat.  I blame it on college, but I find that during the fall and winter and cold months, I don't read all that often.  Oh I love been warm and cuddled up inside with a good book, but I tend to find myself wrapped in a blanket with a mug of hot chocolate and an episode binge on Netflix more frequently than a blanket, hot chocolate and a stack of library books.

Not so in the summer.  True, it's only May, but with the past few 80 degree days that we have had, it has felt like summer.  Today the warm weather combined with the "I'm going to be on a plane in two days!" realization triggered my "I need to go to the library NOW" instinct.  Luckily at the time I was just down the road from the library, and I was indeed able to go right then.

I love the freedom of summer to relax, layout on our hammock and read a good book.  There's something about summer and warm weather and traveling that makes reading absolutely irresistible.  There's something about the carefree-ness of no school, more casual clothes, of relaxed living that makes it alright to dive into a stack of chick lits and not feel guilty about avoiding more classical works.

I do feel like my current stack is an acceptable blend, however.  I have an Agatha Christie novel, a Nicholas Sparks novel  (yesIreadNicholasSparkssothere), Mr. Knightly's Diary, Mr. Darcy's Diary and an intriguing looking mystery/chick lit novel about a girl whose sister was murdered that's not so much about who did it, but the woman her sister was that she didn't know about.

The temperatures will be dropping from mock-summer highs to more acceptable degrees of the mid-60s, and the next few days will be filled with work and finals and packing.  But then after that, I'll be in the airport and on a plane (I do love reading in the airport and on the plane... there's another something about reading in an airport with a Starbucks and a good paperback novel) and I will have plenty of time to read.... and distract myself from the impatience of getting to Boston and seeing my Knight again.