Beach reading

Maggie says:
So I'm leaving for vacation. Here's what I'm packing:

• Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck. Finally committed to reading a book I've always been embarrassed to say I'd never read. About a third of the way through now.
• The Gastronomical Me, MFK Fisher. I've been meaning to read this forever. A memoir on travel, love, adventure, and the food that ties it all together. Could there be a better read for me? I'm thinking it'll be very Aphrodite, a book I adore. "[Fisher] spit Puritan restraint out like a dull wine and made a life of savoring the slow, sensual pleasures of the table." Yum.
• Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon. This one was recommended to me a year or so ago, and I found it left behind at a community meeting last month. Seems like a sign to me.
• The Last of her Kind, Sigrid Nunez. Wrote about this one on m-pyrical in February, and finally got it in my greedy reading hands. The sentence that got me was this one: "I believe you have to reach a certain age before you understand how much life really is like a novel, with patterns and leitmotifs and turning points, and guns that must go off and people who must return before the ending."
  

If I manage to see Jessie tonight, she's promised to loan me one of her faves:

• The Brothers K, David James Duncan. Any book friend of Jessie's is a friend of mine, so I'm in.