What's on Your Nightstand?

I enjoyed my last three reads so thought I'd share them with you. My poor night-

stand.

Sing Them Home by Stephanie Kallos was one of those books that you just hate to end, and by the way, her debut novel, Broken for You, is now translated into ten languages. I loved when I read it and later my book club read it and they loved it as well.

This most recent book is set in a small Nebraska town where Welch immigrants have continued with their customs and language. It opens with the missing mother, whose diary reveals her life with progressing MS and makes her one of the major characters. We see a family of three adult children finally coming to terms with their lives, their parents and their place in the world. I wish there would be a sequel, but I wished that for the first one too.

I really enjoyed Ruth Reichl's first autobiography, Tender at the Bone, about growing up Jewish in New York. I missed her best-selling second book, Comfort Me with Apples, but just finished her third, Garlic and Sapphires, about her years as the New York Times food critic and about the disguises she had to wear to be able to eat at four-star restaurants without being recognized. Her husband and son often are her restaurant companions, and there are plenty of dining experiences and crazy characters. I didn't realize that a critic often eats at a restaurant a half dozen times before finally writing a review, all paid for by their employer. It was laugh-out-loud funny with some cooking tips and recipes tossed in the mix.

The third book, Life's a Beach, by Clarie Cook was simply a quick and quirty romp, not unlike Bridget Jone's Diary. She is also the author of Must Love Dogs, and if you saw the movie (I didn't), you have an idea of her sense of humor. It impresses the heck out of me that she wrote that book in her minivan outside her daughter's swim practice at five in the morning.

Ginger, the protagonist, is finally coming of age at the age of, oh, 41. Living in an apartment over her parents' garage, she's faced with life changing decisions when they put the house on the market. Her sister hires her to be her nephew Riley's guardian during the filming of a movie being shot on location. He is precicious and funny and soon catches the director's eye, just as the gaffer's catches hers. It's a boy-meets-girl, okay, man-meets-woman story, but unpredictable enough to keep it interesting and definately funny. Don't miss the Users Guide to the Fun, Feisty & Fabulous after the end.

So - what's on your nightstand??