What I'm Reading

My friend/roomie Chaucee always has her beautiful face in a book. Constantly.  In her own words, she impulse buys books, she shares what she's reading over on her blog, and those books take over the living room (in the best way possible). It's gotten to me. I decided that I need to start reading more as well. Reading has always been something I've loved but lately it's just another chore, especially after coming home from work where I read media advisories, press releases, (often boring) articles, and any other slew of words strung together with some sort of purpose all day. 

I set my goal at an easy "one a month" to start. Last month I tackled "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" by the insanely babely Caitlin Doughty. In a sort of morbid sense, her memoirs as a mortician are must-read for everybody. The book deals with death and death positivity and well, if you haven't gotten the memo, hate to break it to you but you're going to die someday. She's a young, hip death professional with a lot of thought-provoking opinions and some pretty funny commentary. The book got me thinking about deep issues I wouldn't have thought about otherwise such as the benefit of cremation over embalming, the problem of the medicalization of death, and even started to get me over some of my own fears. To me, somebody who experienced death at a young age and then attempted to repress the inevitability of it all, Caitlin gives a really great platform on which to approach the topic in a more lighthearted manner. It's all very interesting. As human beings, death is one of the few things that each and every one of us will experience-- why does it have to be such taboo?

If you want to read along with me for December, I'm currently working on The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer. What are you guys reading? Got any suggestions for January?

xo,

e.m.