Comfort For Your Head and Heart

I have been on a bit of a book bender these days. It started when I was home for Christmas and I actually had down time where I didn't feel the need to drown myself in trash TV. I recently just finished all the books I had gotten around Christmas and I was in need of something new and preferably for the ipad since I was recently on a plane for 12ish hours making a round-trip visit to the Best Coast for some skiing.

As much as I love my ipad and reading on it...I get nostalgic and sometimes miss the feeling of a book. More than the book....I miss bookstores.

When I first moved to DC and Alex and I were tres poor, we used to spend our Saturdays camped out in a Barnes & Noble reading books for essentially free (we did purchase coffee to offset our shameful reading of books we never bought). While it was pretty stressful to not even be able to afford a book, I loved those Saturdays. I loved having no where else to be, and I loved feeling comfort in reading.

So to find my next book I wandered into a small bookstore in Spokane and did my usual assessment of the book covers to see if anything caught my eye. A few books caught my eye, but one really stood out as I looked over the stacks of new books.

I picked it up. Flipped through the cover and first pages thinking "could be a cute read", put it down and moved on. I later went back to snap a photo to remind myself I should look into it. 

A few days later I read some reviews on amazon and quickly got the hint that this was a MUST read book. I purchased it minutes before boarding my flight home and I read the entire way back.

I am hooked. Cheryl's words of advice are calm, rational, compassionate, heart-felt, re-relatable, heartwarming, eye-opening and a million other things that just fill you with goodness. I turn page after page and I realize how brutally spot on she is, and how so many of her responses, while not directly applicable to the deep questions of my life, have nuggets of truth that really hit home. I have laughed, I have cried, I have cringed, I have re-read certain letters just to soak in all of the beauty they contain. Simply put--it is a beautifully written compilation of advice letters that you will find comfort and inpiration in. So what I am saying is...go buy this. Read it. Love it. 

Couple this with a cup of my current favorite tea (since I can't afford this ), Yogi Egyptian Licorice, and I am set for a snuggly evening of feel-goodness.

Does anyone else get sad when a really good book ends? I try to have my next read lined up so I don't focus too much on the end of a good book. Any of you have some reading recommendations to help me through what will undoubtedly be a very sad finishing of this book?