What a day for a daydream...

It is so incredibly thrilling to have some nice weather again.  When the days were gray and chill, I would often let my mind wander to dreams about Hawaiian beaches and warm sun and cold drinks.  Now that there's at least some sun and mild temperatures again, I want to get outside and play.  All that sunshine still makes me kind of daydreamy though, and brought to mind some of my favorite books to read while sitting in a chair on the back patio, wishing I was somewhere else.

One place I have wanted to visit for years is Italy.  I read Frances Mayes' first book about her own adventures in Italy, Under the Tuscan Sun, about 12 years ago.  At that time, I was in desperate need of being someplace else, and her words evoked the food, the people, the landscape, and the art beautifully.  It was so wonderful that I revisited it several times.  She recently added a new title to her collection about her life in Tuscany called Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life.  It made me as hungry as ever for the landscape and the food.  Someday I'll get there...

There are other days where my pale skin and I just do not think we could handle the injustice of the sun in Hawaii or Italy, and then I dream of Alaska.  I love wild places, and long to see glaciers and the Northern Lights at their boldest and most mystical.  (I did go to Glacier National Park last summer to see the glaciers.  I was successful, but what they say about the glaciers vanishing?  Totally true.)  Heather Lende is a writer at a small paper in a small town in Alaska.  Her first book, If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name, brought me into that world and tugged my heart right into it.  I laughed!  I cried!  I wanted more!  Fortunately she just came out with a new book, Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs, that I plan on reading while ensconced in a chair in my backyard very soon.  Perhaps a book about a generally cold state will be excellent fodder while ensconced on a hot day with a very cold glass of iced tea.

Sometimes I don't know where to go or what to do, so I'll flip through 1,000 Places to go Before You Die.  It seems like there is always something fantastic to see or intriguing place to visit.  This book at least sorts it down to a very manageable 1,000.  When I need a new place to daydream about, I'll flip through this.

If you happen to pop into the store, and see me sitting behind the counter blissfully staring out the windows, I'm likely thinking of one of these places.  Please stop by and say hello and break my reverie; help bring me back to dear, lovely Corvallis.

See you in the bookstore!

Pamela.