I've Got My Books to Keep Me Warm

Q: If you were kitting out a holiday cottage (vacation rental) what would you put on the bookshelf for rainy days?

- from Susan

Having spent some lovely vacation days from Cape Cod to Kauai sitting in houses staring out at the rain, I have either been grateful or frustrated at how various hosts have answered this question. Dog-eared, spat-upon paperback copies of baseball players’ or golfers’ memoirs, outdated Farmers’ Almanacs, paperbacks with covers that show half-naked women with long wavy hair I can only dream about exhaling on the exposed abs of half-dressed men who also have long curly hair I can only dream about….

Here’s a dream bookshelf, in no particular order since what I want to read at any moment changes with my mood:

Angelica’s Smile, Andrea Camilleri

Persuasion, Jane Austen

The Golden Spiders, Rex Stout

Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris

Indemnity Only, Sara Paretsky

Farleigh Field, Rhys Bowen

Cooked, Michael Pollan

Salvador, Joan Didion

Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

The Severn Dials Mystery, Agatha Christie

Tripwire, Lee Child

The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger (for especially stormy days)

Through a Glass Darkly, Donna Leon

A baker’s dozen, enough to distract me from quite a few rainy days, although I expect if it were my holiday cottage the library would grow quickly. I’d have to update it every Memorial Day and would probably hit a bookstore in the resort town anyway. There can never be too many books – never!