Best Summer Reading: 2013

Sometimes I don't get to read as much as I'd like to. Summer break is a great time to read. While I may be headed back to school, most of y'all still have a month left--just enough time to read some of these books.

bo oks by pearlsandpolisci featuring Penguin Group makeup

I always love learning more about personal style, especially on a budget, which is why I turned to How to Look Expensive. Talk about knowing everything you could want to know. From best haircuts on a budget to wardrobe essentials, this book is it.
The Financial Lives of the Poets is one of those amazing books where you get inside the character's head, and you see how someone's life could easily be turned upside down. It also showed me that even when you think your life is over, it really isn't.
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia was one of those books that was everywhere earlier this summer, and believe me it deserves the hype. I read this book in one day because it was just that amazing. Outlining lives in Asia and the effort they must go through to change their circumstances not only tells an amazing story but also gives insight into that part of the world.
I don't know about y'all...but I've never done hard drugs. And I don't really plan on it. However the Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man tells of how one man, in New York City begins smoking crack and how he maintained his everyday life until one day, he couldn't anymore. This is a memoir, which makes the tale even more shocking.
I've been on a classics kick lately, reading books I should've read in class or I just happened to miss.Slaughterhouse-Five is one of those books and I cannot recommend it more simply because its one of those books you just have to read in your life.
Finally, I love movies that are nostalgic for older times (I'm looking at you Dazed and Confused) and the time period that the Virgin Suicides is set in is just lovely. I fell in love with Sofia Coppola's movie so I thought I best read the book. Boy I was right, this book is now one of my favorites.

Any of these books can be read in a month, so what are you waiting for? Go out there are read!

Diving into Epic Poetry

True confession time: I love me some epic poetry. Total nerd-alert I know, but there is nothing better than reading something you know is ancient, and being able to understand it and relate to it. Right now I'm ready both The Iliad and The Odyssey (one on the kindle, one on the Path train aka paperback). I read The Odyssey in 9th grade (I don't even want to talk about how many years ago that is) and I loved it then, and I love it now. I am particularly fond of the Robert Fitzgerald translations perhaps because they are the easiest for me to read because they sound how people actually speak.

Aside from the Greek cycle (epic poetry is told in "cycles" or series based on location) I have also read Beowulf recently as well as slogged through Nibelungenlied (Think ride of the Valkyries). Each poem provides the reader with ancient insight that was important then just as it is now. In the Odyssey, Homer says "Each man delights in the work that suits him best", which is grandfather to most important and quintessential phrase in job-hunting, "do what you love, the money will follow. Not bad considering it was written centuries ago. This timeless advice, along with many other lines is why I cherish epic poetry so much. I highly recommend , if you have or  haven't taken a recent dip, dive on into some epic poetry.