On my nightstand: Great Book List

Heading for a vacation soon? Need something to occupy your mind for a few hours? Here’s list of book recommendations from avid reader and friend Cathy Monetti. I can vouch for about half of these books. Excellent reads. Pick a few up for your next trip!

1) Cold Mountain
2) The Red Tent
3) On Agate Hill
4) The Poisonwood Bible
5) The Kite Runner
6) Eat. Pray, Love
7) Water for Elephants
8) Evening
9) The Year of Magical Thinking
10) East of Eden
11) Jane Eyre
12) Cannery Row
13) Cry the Beloved Country
14) A Prayer for Owen Meany
15) Colony
16) Wicked
17) The Shell Seekers
18) The Great Gatsby
19) Oral History
20) One Thousand White Women
21) Charlie Bland
22) All The Little Live Things
23) The Unlikely Lavender Queen
24) The Prince of Tides
25) The Help
26) Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand
27) The Happiness Project
28) A Moveable Feast
29) The Elegance of the Hedgehog
30) Born to Run
31) Olive Kittridge
32) The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
33) Loving Frank

What have you read lately and loved?

On My Nightstand

My reading habits have steered into the business-ish aisle lately.

In January, I subjected my Book Club to this business gem: Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior. I found it fascinating and many of them were actually interested enough to read it. Which is an accomplishment!

In February, a friend and I were chattering over lunch one day and she shared Gretchen Rubin’s year-long study of happiness, The Happiness Project. Dug it, too. I’d recommend this one to any woman out there who finds herself juggling wifedom, motherhood and a career. With all that going on, it’s easy to lose perspective.

Now I’m on Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture. I stumbled across this one at the library last week. Just a few chapters in but liking it a lot. It’s converging a bunch of topics that I never really thought were linked: rented building,  once-robust parts of town and people’s need to amass large amounts of stuff. I am interested to see where all this goes.

If you have a book or two you’ve enjoyed lately, please share them in the comments. Always on the lookout for good reads!