Reading at the Uffizi Gallery

Zara blazer (similar)
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Levi’s jeans
Mango heels
Gucci handbag
RayBan sunglasses
Wolf Circus necklace (similar)
& Other Stories necklace (similar)
Madewell rings
Urban Outfitters earrings (similar)
Vers la beaute by David Foenkinos
Location: Uffizi Gallery – Florence, Italy

For most of my life, my reading habits have been described as avid. In fifth grade, when we were required to make monthly lists of all the books we had read, the idea being that a little friendly competition over prizes in the form of stickers and erasers would encourage every to read more, I regularly came back with lists of fifty finished books. But a strange thing happened when I started working seriously on finishing After the Shots. I was so busy writing that I stopped reading – almost entirely.

Without realising it, I went from reading several books a month to letting months pass without picking up a single novel. My routine changed so much that I reached a point where I read only on vacation – the only time I felt I could turn my brain off my own writing projects for long enough to focus on someone else’s. In the past six years, I have admittedly read pitifully little – a few books picked up in airports, usually bestsellers that are enjoyable but poorly written. (I have read more Dan Brown books than anyone with a degree in writing should admit.)

And then, as I began to prepare for the launch of Before the World Opened this year, while in the midst of finishing the first draft of the as-yet-untitled final book in the series, a switched flipped. It would be nice to have something to read, I thought – and promptly borrowed half a shelf worth of books from my mom.

It’s funny, but once I got into the habit of reading again, my pace picked up quickly. I’m certainly not reading fifty books a month like I did when I was ten, but I’ve worked through a stack of over a dozen tomes since September, adding a new one to the pile every time I finish one. Vers la Beaute by David Foenkinos, which I bought and read in Florence, was a standout – not necessarily because I loved it; in fact, I felt it was deeply flawed. But it was fascinating to read the story of a young girl’s rape written from a man’s perspective, to see how a man might perceive an interpret a woman’s experience of sexual assault. He got it wrong. He made it as much about a man who barely knew the girl as the girl herself. But he tried, and that was important.

(I really did read Vers la Beaute while we were at the Uffizi Gallery. While I know should have been appreciating the art, but the gallery was unbearably hot, utterly packed and, just generally, not a very pleasant experience. I was happier with my book.)

I still have three books in my “to read” stack after the one I’m currently working through. But after that, I will be officially out of books. And I intend to continue reading. So tell me, what’s on your reading list?