Friends and Books

I had coffee with a friend a few days ago. I visited her without the kids. She lives a mere 3 blocks from our house. Being back in the USA I have had a chance to reconnect with some friends and it's been refreshing. It's nice not to have to journey for a minimum of an hour to visit with a friend (something that's pretty much a part of my life in Osaka). It's great to be able to stave off the loneliness that just seems to be a recent, perhaps growing part of my life in Japan despite my best efforts to work against it. I hope to come back and write more about this later, but for now this serves as a start.

Project Progeny recently photographed some of her bookshelves and I thought I'd snap a photo of my current bedside books as well. Clearly (per the photo) I've got friends and friendship on the brain in part because of posts by her and posts by Mel with regard to the topic, but also because I've been giving this a lot of thought in my life in the last year. Trying to figure out how to nurture friendships that only get the benefit of my physical presence 6 months out of the year isn't always easy.

My reading tastes are otherwise eclectic right now. I can't decide what to read; instead I keep sampling and reading bits and pieces of lots of different things. I'm working on Bad Monkeys, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Blackout, The Friendship Crisis and NurtureShock simultaneously. Each is interesting in its own way. Blackout is a slower read with a lot of historical fiction detail to it, while Bad Monkeys reads quickly and easily and feels like a movie. What are you reading?