Winter '12 reading list

Still not into drawing in the cold early months of 2012, I delved into book-reading!

Sadly, Rich and I have a tradition in recent years, of reading a Nancy Drew (or similar) book together when he visits from L.A. So my read-a-thon began with Nancy’s Mysterious Letter and Cherry Ames at Hilton Hospital. They are thin reads of course, but written for 10 year old girls, so let’s not over-analyze it. I was surprised however, in the Cherry Ames novel, at how in-depth the cut-aways were in describing nursing and hospitals of the 1950s. Cherry solved the puzzle of the amnesia patient, but sadly didn’t get the guy in this book, who was the young married doctor she was assisting.

As I am a fan of the film, I nervously entered the original book Auntie Mame. The book is very different from the film, but in a way that you can love both for different reasons. Still unnecessarily blue, I decided to re-read Catcher in the Rye, which I hadn’t read in 20 years. There was a time that I was reading the novel on continuous loop, but on this reading, I found it cringe-inducing.  I guess I don’t have as much angst as I did 20 years ago. 

Lastly, I read A Tale of Two Cities. I’m not so wild about Dickens, but this is Robert’s favorite, so I read it for that plus the famous lines. Rich warned me that the second half is much better than the first. Boy was he right. The first half was a struggle, but the second half was really engaging. My old Modern Library edition’s jacket was lousy, and the binding was from the 60s (not my preference) so I made this dust jacket for it, using the color scheme of my apartment: red-orange, cream, aqua, black.