Book Club

Sharing my life long obsession of always having a good book to get lost in!

Reading For Life!

I grew up in a household where we were constantly asked what book we reading and if we needed to go to the library to get new books. As a child, the end of the school year meant the beginning of the library summer reading program that commenced with my mom driving us to the Western Springs Village Library to sign up for the summer reading program and get our first stack of books for the summer. So many of my childhood memories involve time spent at the library searching the shelves for a new book to get lost in.

The Library Book

I recently read The Library Book by Susan Orlean, the author of The Orchid Theif (another amazing book), and found myself walking down memory lane with the local libraries of my past. Like the L.A. Central Library in Susan’s book, my memories of the Western Springs (WS) library were not just of checking out books for the summer reading program. As Orlean points out in her book, the library was a place of gathering where movies were shown and holiday crafting activities took place (I still have some of my art projects from the library). When I became older, the library was a place that my friends and I gathered to work on school research projects. Whenever we moved, signing up for a library card was one of the first things we did. It is a tradition that I have carried into my adult life, having belonged to libraries as far as Louisiana and Virginia thanks to all of my work travels.

Avid Reader Turned Avid Audio Book Listener

Curling up with a good book is one of my favorite past times. Unfortunately the afternoons of my childhood reading my summers away on the hammock in the yard turned into teenage years spent reading recommended titles for advanced placement (A.P.) classes in my spare time. In college, well there was no spare time to read the books I loved between cramming for exams and cleaning up after last night’s party! My list of books that I wanted to read rivaled some of my college professors stacks of articles to read that they would never get to. That is when I discovered audio books. I don’t remember how or why it happened, I just remember my college roommate, Erka, and I picking out Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress and thinking we were incredibly smart because we knew the physics concepts discussed (probably because we were taking physcis that quarter, duh).

After that, long car rides home became my opportunity to finally start chipping away at my book list! My mid ride pit stops were made at Barnes and Noble to use the facilities, get a coffee, and pick up a new audio book!

My post undergrad years fount me with time to further chip away at my ever growing list of titles that I wanted to sink into on rainy winter night, but I soon found that after working 40 hours a week, reading technical papers and writing reports, I was too tired to do anything but turn the Tv on and my brain off!

While I was on an extended assignment for work in Lafayette, Louisiana, I joined the public library to check out some local travel guides. When the librarian issued me my library card, she told me to check out the audio books on their OverDrive digital library! In 2007, OverDrive was not an app, but a service that allowed me to download MP3 files to my iPod that expired it was time to return the audio book. I soon went from reading 1 book every 1 to 3 months to indulging my ears to 5 to 6 audio books a week! Audio books have been a game changer for me, especially with the advent of the Overdrive App: I have not bought a book since 2010???

Read With Me!

  1. Download the Overdrive App and start adding the books listed below to your digital library bookshelf.
  2. Follow my Instagram gallery below to see what I have been reading lately! Click the link in bio to add the books from the gram to your Amazon Kindle App or shopping cart.
  3. Check out the books in my Amazon Bookstore!