The Sunday Question

Which book will you read on your next snow day or vacation day?

Much as I love working at the Odyssey, it was great to have a snow day last week. Something about a snow day is magical. It's a retreat to childhood, when you have permission to do the unexpected, like build a snowman or bake a cake just for fun. Or luxuriate in a big read, which is my favorite snow day activity. So, I'm planning for the next one. And if the weather doesn't cooperate, there's always a holiday (Martin Luther King Day, Presidents Day -- when I read instead of going to the mall).

Here are some of the books we are looking forward to reading during the next big blizzard:

Nieves thinks short stories are perfect for a snow day. Some of her current faves are the Best American collections of 2010, because, as she says, "everyone is still in a contemplative mood about the past year."

She has been loving Best American Short Stories, edited this year by Richard Russo,

and Dave Eggers collection, Best American Non-Required Reading.

I love the short story idea, and am really looking forward to reading two kind of off-beat collections, Stephen King's collection of some of his very long short stories (one is set in western Mass, too) Full Dark, No Stars.

And Best American Noir of the Century, edited by James Ellroy, of L.A. Confidential fame.

Marika likes the idea of reading a book aloud to whoever she is snowed in with. One of her choices would be the lovely, lush, Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie.

I love evocative reads, too. I either want to read something set in a storm during a storm, like Jon Katz's amazing novel Rose in a Storm, in which he evokes a storm of the century, and how his Border collie, Rose, might react in it to save her farm.

Or a book that takes me out of the stormy weather altogether and sets me down someplace completely different, like the 19th century Egypt of Kate Pulinger's The Mistress of Nothing, a fictionalized account of writer Lady Lucie Duff Gordon's time in Egypt, told from the perspective of her maid, Sally Naldrett.

I also have to admit this is one book I'd read based on it's cover.

So tell us, what are you planning to read on your next snow day?

~ Chrysler