While this certainly isn't a picture of my living room [though I think that when I do eventually have my own living room it should include a gorgeous colour-coded library, vase of gerbera daisies, inviting couch, and possibly the cute pug puppy], I am thankful for a day that relates to this image...TODAY! :-)


Just a little after waking up this morning, I decided that - since the skies threatened rain - it would be wonderful to lounge on the couch in my pajamas and just read for as long as I felt like reading. [For once, I was actually happy to be unemployed!] I enjoyed copious cups of Orange Peokoe tea [2 milks, 2 sugars... just for the record] and immersed myself in 170 pages of an imaginary, yet believable world full of people who I'll never meet, but somehow feel connected to... even though they don't exist.


My Grandma always used to tell me that "books are friends," and as tremendously geekly as that might sound, I feel that it is 100% true. A good book takes the mind off the self and draws it into another realm. It's comforting, yet dramatic, captivating, yet honest. It's always there for you when you need it.


Need some interesting summer reading material? Here are a few books that I'd recommend:

- "Blue Like Jazz," and "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years," by Donald Miller*
- "The Shack," by William P. Young*
- "My Year of Meats," by Ruth Ozeki
- "The Kite Runner," and "A Thousand Splendid Suns," by Khaled Hosseini
- "Mansfield Park," by Jane Austen [though this was made 100x more interesting when accompanied with lectures from Dr. Daniel O'Quinn!]
-"Girl With a Pearl Earring," by Tracy Chevalier
- "Queen of Babble," "Queen of Babble in the Big City," and "Queen of Babble Gets Hitched," by Meg Cabot**
- "Oryx and Crake," by Margaret Atwood (Apologies to "anti-Atwoodians," I know there are a lot of you out there!)
- "Flowers for Algernon," by Daniel Keyes
- "The Catcher in the Rye," by J.D. Salinger (who passed away this year - January 27, 2010)
- "Lullabies for Little Criminals," by Heather O'Neill
- "A Million Little Pieces," by James Frey
- "Tuesdays With Morrie," "The Five People you Meet in Heaven," and "For One More Day," by Mitch Albom

Happy reading!