A Good Place to Read a Book Near Me
When I think of my favorite books, I often call up exactly where I was when I offset read them. Sometimes the associations are wonderful, and along with dear characters and a fascinating plot, I'll recall a particular chair or a porch by an ocean. I beginning read David Copperfield lying on a pocket-sized patch of grass outside my grandmother'south house in Westport, CT. When the book comes to mind, I tin almost scent the freshly mown lawn.
Sometimes books summon memories of places far less desirable. I've read books while standing on hot, crowded subway trains and while sitting on the floor in airport corridors during countless delays. In my book, The Terminate of Your Life Volume Club, I write about the books I read with my female parent when she was dying of pancreatic cancer. During those ii years, I ofttimes read while spending hours in infirmary waiting rooms or physician'southward offices, or while sitting beside Mom when she was getting chemo. And though I don't await back fondly on any of those places, the books I read in those spots have special memories for me; I recall them helping to accept Mom and me out of those settings. They brought usa from there to elsewhere. The books bring back memories of those places, but in a mode that brings me gratitude both for the books and for the time that Mom and I had together.
So while I can and do read just nigh anywhere, and admit the powerful role books take played in helping make almost-intolerable situations tolerable, I practise have certain favorite places I love to read. These are places I seek out when I have a book in hand. And I similar to think there'south a kind of art to pairing the perfect identify to read with a plumbing equipment volume.
Here are 11 of the best places to read a book, and some thoughts nigh what kinds of books fit each place.
1) Trains take given me some of my best reading experiences. In that location'south something about the rhythm of the track that suspends fourth dimension and concentrates my heed. I used to exist a travel journalist and, in 1985, was given ane of the world's all-time assignments — to go past train from Hong Kong to Berlin, taking the Trans-Mongolian and Trans-Siberian railways. It was on the train from Irkutsk to Moscow that I read War and Peace. What could exist improve?
two) Confined in serenity restaurants or in hotel lobbies are fantabulous for reading. If I'1000 in a foreign town and have to eat alone, I always feel lamentable and awkward at a table. But sitting at a bar with a volume in mitt and something nice to eat and drink, I feel like an international human being of mystery. My favorite bar reading? Spy novels and thrillers. I recently read a good chunk of Chris Pavone'due south riveting and atmospheric The Expats while at a eatery bar.
iii) A chair past a roaring burn. I know it's a cliche, simply the crackling sound and the warmth are wonderful accompaniments to reading. And the fire acts as a kind of hourglass — you can put on another log and swoop into another chapter or read until the fire goes out. Roaring fires brand me want to reach for hefty books of historical fiction, books like As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann or Hilary Mantel'southward Wolf Hall.
four) Parks are slap-up for reading. We accept a little pocket park right exterior our building with benches, daffodils (in spring), and a statue of a very handsome doughboy, a Globe War I memorial. I think parks and poetry get well together, and the doughboy makes me feel I should read Siegfried Sassoon or Wilfred Owen.
five) A comfortable chair. Whatever comfy chair screams for a book. Whatsoever book.
6) The public library. Some of my greatest reading experiences take been in libraries. I especially honey open up-shelf libraries, large and small-scale, because that mode you can just happen on random books, and you tin wind up reading a book you never idea you would similar. It'due south a peachy place to experiment with different kinds of books and different genres. And existence surrounded by other readers reminds you of this dandy thing we all have in common.
7) Coffee shops these days say "laptop" to many people. To me, they still say "book." For some reason, I observe myself itching for nonfiction in java shops. It was in my local coffee store (Café Minerva on W 4th Street, NYC) that I read, appropriately, a brilliant and gorgeously produced book by a friend, Jamie James, called Rimbaud in Java. Information technology mixes history, literary criticism, and "imaginative reconstruction."
8) Airplanes provide lots of time to read, and some of my almost memorable reading experiences take been in the air. Many people complain most plane travel, but I still love it. The actual plane travel that is. The getting on and off the plane and the delays I could do without. But once I'1000 settled in with an absorbing book, I'm very happy. Some people like to bring one fat book on a plane, just I like a modest stack of novellas and short novels, considering I'thousand never sure what my mood will exist.
9) Any porch with a hammock, futon, or Adirondack chair. Porches are designed for reading, talking, relaxing. Some of my best reading experiences have been on friends' porches, specially when they've left a selection of books for me to read. I'm non a beach reader — too much sand, too much glare. But a porch or deck overlooking a beach is the best of all possible worlds, especially when reading a book that a friend has selected only for yous.
10) Bed. This is where I do nigh of my reading. This is where I read A Fine Residual past Rohinton Mistry and Christopher and His Kind by Christopher Isherwood and The Dew Billow by Edwidge Danticat and a dozen Alistair MacLeans and hundreds of my other favorite books. My informal poll shows that virtually people who read practice a lot of their reading in bed.
11) If I'm reading at the breakfast table, information technology means that I'm so absorbed in the book I was reading when I went to sleep that I tin't wait to get back to it. And then some of my favorite books are bed AND breakfast-table books.
I'm sure you lot have your ain favorite spots to read. I would love to hear not but where you dear to read but which books yous've read in those places.
Source: https://www.powells.com/post/lists/the-11-best-places-to-read
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