4 yellow books: march reading list

Another coincidence that this months books happen to have similar coloured covers – it wasn’t planned, I swear.

1. A Cup of Sunlight: discovering the sacred in everyday life
   by Juliet Batten.
   This is a book I’ve had for years. I’ve bought extra copies and gifted them to friends, raved about it to anyone who’ll listen, and dipped into it over and over. This month I wanted to sit down and read it again. There is a real tendency for me to rush through things and I know that this generally leads to me being less aware and (sometimes) less grateful for all the everyday things that are here for me to delight in. This book is a way to bring me back into a more aware, more astonished-in-every-moment way of being.
2.  The Agony and the Ecstasy
   by Irving Stone.
   There’s a bit of a running joke with this book between me and one of my brother-in-laws. I first read this biographical novel of Michaelangelo when I ‘borrowed’ the book from his shelves around 20 years ago. I loved it so much that I kept it, and kept it, and kept it. I truly had every intention of giving it back but it stayed on my bookshelf for years. This book made me long to go and see the Sistine Chapel for myself (which I’m pleased to say I’ve since done). I found this lovely hardback copy in a secondhand bookstore a few years ago, so I wrapped my brother-in-law’s copy up and gifted it back to him for a birthday! Time to pull this one out and read it again.
3. The Summer Before the War (ebook, not pictured)
   by Helen Simonson.
   I read Major Pettigrew’s last stand and, having lived in the UK for six years, really loved the humour of it. So much so that I bought a copy and sent it to an NZ friend also living in the UK as I thought she’d enjoy it too. When I discovered that Helen had a new book out, I requested it from the library immediately. If her writing in this book is anything as good as her first, I am sure to love every word.
4. The Red Tent
   by Anita Diamant.
   This is another book I read years ago. I found this copy at my local SPCA so picked it up to read again. I hardly remember what I thought of it the first time around so this reading will either jog my memory, or I will enjoy it as if reading it for the first time.

What’s on your reading list this month?

[for Laura’s Year in Books Project]