5 Fave Winter Reads

 

 5 Fave Winter Reads {looking back at your top choices from books you read last winter} – link-up hosted at Estella’s Revenge

Some Sunny Winter Reading

We had a bit of snow last winter so there was something rather nice about sailing somewhat aimlessly around the sunny Mediterranean with The Sailor from Gibraltar by Marguerite Duras, Barbara Bray (Translator). It was so easy to forget that it was snowing outside.

It was the first Duras book for me. I will read more in 2015 and maybe watch some films too.  I did watch a Duras documentary (by Duras, not about Duras) but now I can't find it. Thought I bookmarked it, but I guess I didn't. All I can remember is I didn't watch it on YouTube. 



What was it about me and the French last winter? I seem to have read a lot of French writers in translation. Here's another one I loved:


Enough About Love by Hervé Le Tellier, Adriana Hunter (Translator) I read this in Adobe Digital Editions, a format that usually gives me all kinds of problems. But this was such a good book I read right through my usual technical difficulties. I have to really, really like a book to read it in Adobe.





There were also those two favorite new friends for interesting conversations

Aaliya

                      and  

                                             Barry

 

 

And when I got really homesick I looked at beautiful pictures and read some California poetry in Not Man Apart: Photographs of the Big Sur Coast by Robinson Jeffers, David Brower (Editor), Loren Eiseley (Editor), Ansel Adams (Photographer).

And I knew that if I were in California, I would be looking at a book with beautiful icy pictures and Robert Frost poetry about snowy days.

(Frost was born in San Francisco; Jeffers was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania)

I gave Not Man Apart  to my husband one Christmas long ago, it was his favorite book. He rarely gave me books but one I remember was a book he brought to me when I was in the hospital after the birth of our first child. It was John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley: In Search of America. It's still one of my favorite road trip books.

Do you have a favorite gift book? One that you gave and know it was warmly received or one that you received and were happy to have.