Sunday Salon: The Perfect Weather

Normally I am first in line to complain about the weather in the Pacific Northwest. All that rain, grey sky, and chill get monotonous. It rains more or less non-stop from the end of October through May, and June is iffy. The payoff, though is the summer. In a good year it can be sunny, clear, and beautiful every day in August and September. Unfortunately that does not appear to be the norm for this August. We had a couple of beautiful weeks, but we've now slipped back into the cold, grey rain and fog. The weather stinks, but it is good for one thing: reading. I really believe there's no better environment to curl up on the couch with a good book than when it is cold and rainy outside. The sound of the rain is a soothing sort of white noise, and with the house warm and cozy, with a cup of tea, it's pretty much my ideal reading environment. So, that's precisely what I did today, and I read a whole book. Granted, it was only 160 pages, but it's still a book from the TBR pile that I've now completed. The book I read was Anna Quindlen's Imagined London. It's basically a travel narrative in which Quindlen discusses how the real London relates to the literary city, as it's been chronicled in 500 years of literature. It was a bit slow-going at first, as it begins with a stream-of-consciousness narrative, and the real thrust of the book is the last chapter, wherein Quindlen gets into the real literary criticism. My review will follow on here in a few days. I generally enjoyed the book, but it definitely requires some knowledge of London (either literary or real) to be of any sort of interest. So, I feel like I've accomplished something today. Not bad for a Sunday.