Book Round Up

You know what I'm loving right now? 

First, I am loving that it's Monday and I am wearing a messy top knot and sweats. (on an uncool note, I am also wearing Uggs for house slippers because my electric bill continues to soar and I refuse to turn up my heat yet again). But really, I love my job and I love messy top knots on Monday mornings. 

I'm loving the fact that Thursday is my birthday, which means I get to have lunch and dinner with some of my favorite people in the entire world. My mom, sister, niece, aunt, manfriend and tons of friends. What could be better?

I'm loving that my kids will be back this week. I miss them so much it hurts. I've got our meals planned out, their room is all picked up and ready to be torn apart again and I get to raid their Valentine's Day goodies bags on Friday :) 

Another thing I am loving is the following list of books I have been on my to read list! I most recently read The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd. It was totally riveting until she joined the convent and I got bored. Is that terrible or what? So I'll be starting one of these books soon, I just haven't decided which one. My lack of reading is also being crippled by the fact I still can't stop watching Mad Men. It's like crack. Sterling's white hair, Jon Hamm's package, the constant clink of ice in a tumbler. I can't stop.  Anyhooters, check out this list of hot topic books and let me know what you're reading! 

From Goodreads: Jenny Offill’s heroine, referred to in these pages as simply “the wife,” once exchanged love letters with her husband, postmarked Dept. of Speculation, their code name for all the uncertainty that inheres in life and in the strangely fluid confines of a long relationship. As they confront an array of common catastrophes—a colicky baby, bedbugs, a faltering marriage, stalled ambitions—the wife analyzes her predicament, invoking everything from Keats and Kafka to the thought experiments of the Stoics to the lessons of doomed Russian cosmonauts. She muses on the consuming, capacious experience of maternal love, and the near total destruction of the self that ensues from it, as she confronts the friction between domestic life and the seductions and demands of art.

From Goodreads: Call it fate. Call it synchronicity. Call it an act of God. Call it . . . The Good Luck of Right Now. From the New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook comes an entertaining and inspiring tale that will leave you pondering the rhythms of the universe and marveling at the power of kindness and love.

For thirty-eight years, Bartholomew Neil has lived with his mother. When she gets sick and dies, he has no idea how to be on his own. His redheaded grief counselor, Wendy, says he needs to find his flock and leave the nest. But how does a man whose whole life has been grounded in his mom, Saturday mass, and the library learn how to fly?

From Goodreads: Hannah, independent, headstrong, and determined not to follow in the footsteps of her bitterly divorced mother, has always avoided commitment. But one hot New York summer she meets Mark Reilly, a fellow Brit, and is swept up in a love affair that changes all her ideas about what marriage might mean.

Now, living in their elegant, expensive London townhouse and adored by her fantastically successful husband, she knows she was right to let down her guard. 

But when Mark does not return from a business trip to the U.S. and when the hours of waiting for him stretch into days, the foundations of Hannah’s certainty begin to crack. Why do Mark’s colleagues believe he has gone to Paris not America? Why is there no record of him at his hotel? And who is the mysterious woman who has been telephoning him over the last few weeks? 

From Goodreads: When Felix Brewer meets nineteen-year-old Bernadette "Bambi" Gottschalk at a Valentine's Dance in 1959, he charms her with wild promises, some of which he actually keeps. Thanks to his lucrative-if not all legal-businesses, she and their three little girls live in luxury. But on the Fourth of July, 1976, Bambi's comfortable world implodes when Felix, newly convicted and facing prison, mysteriously vanishes.

Though Bambi has no idea where her husband-or all of his money-might be, she suspects one woman does: his devoted young mistress, Julie. When Julie disappears ten years to the day that Felix went on the lam, everyone assumes she's left to join her old lover-until her remains are eventually found in a secluded wooded park.

Any of these catch your eye? If you've already read them, let me know what you think!