What I've Read - April 2011

Well, I’ve come down from the Inspired high, had a visit with my Mom and aunt and gotten back to work. Which means it’s time to get back to blogville, too!

To say that Inspired was good would be an understatement. I’m working on getting photos of our projects and will post them soon! Laurel has already posted hers here. Check it out.

The name of this post really should be “What I’ve NOT Read”. Seriously. I was going to catch up with my book posts….only to discover that I didn’t read anything in April. Wait, that’s not true. I’m positive I read at least three books, but for the life of me, I can’t remember their names. Pooh. It’ll come to me.

Which brings me to a little dilemma. I’m embarrassed by myself. I guess I better back up to explain that statement. I read a lot. And by a lot I mean, I start to get a little sweaty if I realize I’ve left the house without a book. Even if I never have the opportunity to read during the day, I always have a book in my purse or in my car. That being said, I go through a lot of books. Here’s the part I get embarrassed about…..they aren’t always intellectual, heart-rending, mind-bending, life-altering books. There is a lot of chick lit, mystery, and, dare I say it, romance.

I never felt this way before I joined a book club. I l.o.v.e.d my book club. We read intellectually stimulating books. We had hugely interesting conversations about those books, full of personal introspection, comparisons of those fictional worlds to the real world, character analysis and threw out terms like “undeveloped characters”, “beautiful prose” and “plot development”. It was intensely gratifying and it brought about an entirely new thought process for me when it came to books. And somehow I began to believe that any book that didn’t bring about those types of conversations or thoughts was inappropriate. That somehow I wasn’t as intelligent if I read anything else. Granted, I never stopped reading the books that shall not be named, I just stopped talking about them.

Those four books in April? They weren’t books we’d ever consider reading in book club. And so I’ve conveniently forgotten them. But I enjoyed every moment I read them. In secret. Oh dear. This is all so sordid.

So, the question is….should I list them in my roundup posts? And get over my embarrassment? Does anyone else suffer from the same affliction?

Please say yes – even if it’s not true. I’ll send you a romance novel if you do! ;)