I know, I know -- I stink at this.

I realize I haven't touched this blog in four months. It's not because I haven't been reading. I did fall into one of those book-less months at the beginning of summer, but I pushed through and have been reading steadily since. Let me try and remember what has come through my hands ...

I started Tara Road by Maeve Binchy, one of my favorite authors of books-to-bring-to-the-beach. I got about 25 pages in before I realized I had read it before. Twice. The funny thing is that I don't recall liking it either time.

Then I picked up The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It left me feeling gloomy and lonely and depressed and I loved every page.

Then I got on a memoir kick. Adam hates memoirs.

First I attempted Dry: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs but found the language too obscene and the topics too painful for me to continue.

I went through a whirlwind Ruth Reichl feast. I read Garlic and Sapphires, her memoir about being the New York Times restaurant critic, a few years ago. Inspired by my dear friend Anika to pick up Reichl's first memoir, Tender at The Bone, I made sure it was our book club pick for the month of September. That led me to her second memoir, Comfort Me with Apples and then, finally, to Not Becoming My Mother. In the end my favorites were her last two, Garlic and Not Becoming. While I found myself disappointed with many of the choices she made in her life, her voice and her culinary adventures kept me coming back for more. The recipes she attached at the end of every chapter in her first three books helped, too.

When I started to raise chickens, Anika's sister, Sarah, directed me to the 1945 classic, The Egg and I. The author, Betty Macdonald, is probably best known for her children's series, Miss Piggle-Wiggle. I went on to read her other memoirs, chronicling varied periods of her life -- like when she had tuberculosis (The Plague and I), her childhood (Anybody Can Do Anything), and her life on Vashon Island, in the Puget Sound (Onions in the Stew). She is a clever, witty writer who managed to tackle some pretty serious subjects (the depression, WWII, tb) in a way that had me laughing aloud.

I just picked up Agatha Christie's autobiography, creatively titled Agatha Christie: An Autobiography (I wonder if she'd call it a memoir today). I have high hopes. I'll let you know how it goes.