Welcome

I love reading. You know that feeling when you start a good book with the intention of maybe reading for a half hour, and 250 pages and 3 or 4 hours later you are still reading that book? There have been long periods of time where I haven’t been able to really read. I just didn’t have the time or the energy on a consistent basis. My husband Doug is also an avid reader and always reads before bed. Sometimes he actually reads for more than 10 minutes before falling asleep. I am always astounded when he comes to bed at 1 am after playing hockey or getting caught up in a movie and will turn the light on and read. Me? I rarely read a book at bed; I am a bed time magazine reader. I don’t like reading for 5 or 10 minutes. It’s not in my addictive nature. I get hooked in and suddenly it’s 1 am and the kids are going to be up or I have to be up to go to work. I would go through reading periods but I had not been a consistent book reader for some time.

Then, just over two years ago, I started traveling again for work. First it was mostly flights to San Francisco or other US destinations and the odd trip to Europe. I brought my magazines (People and US Weekly are my guilty airplane pleasures). I loved being able to read Vanity Fair, The Economist, Macleans and other magazines cover to cover.

Then I started spending time traveling to Europe and Asia. Magazines just don’t cut it on a 9 hour flight to Rome or a 16 hour flight to Hong Kong and you get tired of watching the same movies over and over again. So as much as I complain about the amount of traveling I do, one of the most incredible benefits has been that I am once again an avid reader. Depending on where and how far I fly and how many flights I go on in between, I can read 2 or 3 books in one week.

Why am I telling you all this? I have a friend and former colleague in Calgary, Patrick Bohan. About a year ago during one of our instant messaging conversations, he told me he was looking for something to read and I immediately gave him a list of 10 or so books that I had read over the 2 or 3 months preceding our conversation. In the last year, he said that there wasn’t much he had read that I hadn’t been recommending to him in our IM conversations. (I’m paraphrasing here Pat so don’t call me on accuracy).

It was Pat’s idea that I start a blog to talk about the books I read, using my travel schedule as a back drop. Now, after months of thinking about it and talking about it, here we are. My plan is to post on a regular basis and share what I have been reading recently and not so recently, what I like, what I dislike and in turn hear what you think. This is largely selfish on my part because my hope is that you will tell me what you’re reading. I’m always looking for something to settle into to get me from runway to runway.

Welcome to Road Warrior’s Library.