What’s On Your Nightstand?: Reading in the Dark

This past weekend’s unexpected derecho upended many people’s lives here in Northern Virginia (not to mention Ohio, and Indiana, and probably many other places). We were without power for over 40 hours, which necessitated the tossing of most of our refrigerator contents and made the top floor of our house a sauna.

I had hoped that this outage wouldn’t hurt my reading time, both because I had stocked up on paper books at One More Page before the storm hit and because paper books don’t need to be charged. Right? Ah, but lights for them do need to be charged, or plugged in to a working power source. Our house, surrounded by old-growth shade trees, is dimly lit even during full sun–and the basement is just plain dark. In order to read in cool surroundings I did what Rebecca Schinsky recommended and put on a hiker’s headlamp. I looked ridiculous, but it was worth it: Criminal by Karin Slaughter was so chilling that it brought the temp down a bit, too.

Whether or not you lost power in the latest round of storms, tell me what your reading stack consists of this week! I’m about to start The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger (late to the party, I know) before moving on to August’s galleys.