Hi friends!  First off, I just want to thank everyone for their well wishes on yesterday’s post about my career change.  It’s really easy to talk about fitness classes, healthy eating and travel.  It’s much harder to talk about serious stuff like your career.  I really appreciate all your positive comments!  It took me a couple of years but I’m finally beginning to feel like I’ve found my niche.

Anyway, now that we have the tough stuff out of the way, did you know that yesterday was National Lemonade Day!?  Oh heck yeah!  I LOVE lemonade!  It is quite possibly one of my most favorite summer treats.  I don’t care that it is so not a healthy living drink of choice or that it is full of sugar and probably bad for my teeth, I love it and I will drink it forever.  I’m not necessarily a lemonade purist either, give me pink, give me yellow, give me pomegranate- I’ll take it all!  I even came up with this concoction yesterday when I was celebrating: Basil Lemonade (on a side note, this was necessary because I can never buy the amount of basil I want from the grocery store and I always end up with way more than I need!  Why!?!).

I’m doing my absolute best to stretch out the rest of these warm summer days.  I just can’t give ’em up!  I decided to do a little check in on my Summer Reading List.

So far I’ve read:

–          Dan Brown’s Inferno

–          Khaled Hosseini’s And the Mountains Echoed

–          Sarah Jio’s The Last Camellia

–          Sarah Jio’s The Bungalow

–          Liane Moriarity’s The Husband’s Secret

–          I’ve been working on the second book in the Call the Midwife series but I’m not really that into it.  I think it was spoiled for me a bit when I watched the TV series because now I know what happens so I’m less inclined to spend the time reading through the entire thing.  I downloaded the third book too though so I’ll have to keep going!

All of the above are absolutely excellent!  For a quick little review on each one: Inferno was a thriller and very much like Dan Brown’s other books.  It was not as good as the DaVinci Code but I think that is because Dan Brown has kind of a formula and once you’ve read one to two of his books, you begin to figure it out.  The ending was also a little disconcerting.  And the Mountains Echoed was fabulous.  I still like Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns better but the writing and storytelling of Khaled Hosseini are unbeatable.  I just started reading Sarah Jio’s books this year and I love them all.  The stories are always so interesting and heart wrenching.  Both The Last Camellia and The Bungalow are the stuff movies are made of!  The Husband’s Secret was not even on my Reading List but it was getting some press so I decided to download it.  I had no idea it took place on the North Shore of Sydney, Australia.  Hello old stomping grounds! Excellent book and it really makes you think about timing, morality and cause and effect.

Speaking of Australia, my friends from down under (whom I miss dearly but still get to see occasionally-yay!) started a book club and I’m so jealous!  I would love to be in a book club but I don’t know anyone else who loves to read as much as me.  I so want to do a virtual book club but I have not found any that I particularly love yet.

As you can tell I’m suffering from end of summer blues but it’s not over yet and I’m going to soak up every last sunny drop.  Still left to do on my 99 Days of Summer List include: Surfside yoga, mini golf, sailing or boating of some kind and a visit to the Met Martini Rooftop bar.  I’m hoping to be able to cram everything in! 

Readers, do you like lemonade?  What’s your favorite kind?  What’s the last book you read?  Do you belong to a book club? What do you have left to do this summer?