Beach reads

It’s day 12 of our vacation, and I’ve plowed through several really good books. I love to read. Getting lost in someone else’s story has always intrigued me, but never so much as becoming a member of the illustrious Pink Ribbon Club. Stealing away from the drudgery of this disease with a good book has saved me innumerable times. Rather than falling into a well of despair from a lengthy hospital stay in the hell that is a post-mastectomy infection, I would flip open my Kindle and fall into a great read.

Perhaps my Love of reading is genetic: my sweet mama taught 8th grade English and was an avid reader. She and my dad always had at least one book going, and the bookcase in their bedroom that spanned one entire wall next to their bed would fill me with visions of its collapse one night, burying my slumbering parents in musty hardbacks, best sellers, and classics. Thankfully that never happened.

At home, I don’t read as much as I would like. It’s a cruel dichotomy:  I want to find out what happens next in the story, yet my innate nature has me bustling around getting things done instead.  Not so on the beach: the things that need to get done are sitting on the beach, soaking up the sun, listening to the surf, and reading. That’s a very good to-do list.

My summer reading began with Gold by Chris Cleave. Awesome read. It was especially nice leading up to the Olympics, as it’s the story of two British cyclists training for the London games. They’re friends and rivals in their sport and their lives. Cleave is a masterful writer who crafts characters who seem quite real.

After becoming hooked on Cleave’s, I moved on to his two other books, Incendiary and Little Bee.  Both are as good as Gold was.  The former tells the story of a woman whose husband and son are killed in a terrorist bombing of a London soccer stadium. The latter gained cult status yet I shied away from it because the subject matter seemed depressing: a young Nigerian refugee flees her home amidst violence stemming from turf wars over oil fields. A chance encounter with a British couple on holiday in her village provided a landing place as she fled. Chaos ensues, lives are changed, and a mesmerizing story gains its rightful place in literary history. My only complaint is that Cleave has no more books as yet for me to devour. Get cracking, Chris!

After the gravity of Little Bee’s saga, I sought something a bit lighter and went with the buzz surrounding The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Harold is walking some 500 miles, quite unexpectedly, to visit his former coworker, Queenie Hennessey, who is dying of cancer. Harold is convinced that his journey on foot will save her. Crazy? Perhaps. Intriguing? Definitely.

I absolutely devoured another buzz-filled book, The Light Between Oceans. This story of a remote lighthouse keeper off the wild coast of Australia and his infertile wife is absolutely captivating. The answer to their problems and prayers apparently appears one day when a rowboat washes ashore, containing a dead man and a howling infant. No ID, no witnesses, no problem. I won’t give away any more because you just need to read it yourself.

I have 7 more days of vacation and plan to keep on reading.