This Year's Beach Reads

I am famous for sticking my face in a book or a magazine for my entire beach week every summer. I always look for riveting, but light, reading when it's shore time. I just got back from a blissful week at our usual summer beach haunt -a laid-back, quiet, residential island on the South Carolina coast.
My son learned a new skill - skim boarding.

But not without some trial and error.
Here's a successful movie snippet version.

He has a bad habit of thinking he should be perfect at everything the very first time he tries. I have explained to him many times that no one is perfect; we all must practice and practice to become good at an activity. He tried skim boarding a couple of times but when he fell, he gave up and sat down. I wasn't about to spend $50 on a board that he never used again! So, being a COMPLETELY INEXPERIENCED (and some may say stupid) skim boarder, I decided to show him that I would try boarding and that my first attempt probably (definitely??) would not be perfect or even good.

Here's my boo-boo. I probably don't need to tell you both my legs went out from under me and I landed with a painful thud on the sand and shells. I would not recommend this to my other 40-something friends.

The upside? My son saw I was horrible, so he jumped back on the board and soon mastered it. Mission accomplished! (I'm still healing, and by the way - I'm sorry you had to see my bare naked leg).

ANYWAY, on to what I really was writing about today - my fabulous beach reads. After the fall, I retreated to my lounge chair FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK and here is what I read from cover to cover:

Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult
Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult

If you've never read Picoult's books, you're in for a treat. Her books are engrossing but light enough to enjoy. What I particularly like about her writing is that she doesn't waste a lot of upfront space in the book with "background" on the characters and their lives. She works it in throughout the first 75% of the book, so you are constantly discovering new parts of the character - just as you would learn things about a new friend over the first few months of your friendship.

Hope you got in some sort of vacation this year. We get homesick for "our island" when we can't visit at least once a year.

Love,
TCB