Passing the time before class

After a gym-less week I finally found my way back to my workout routine. Thank goodness for waking up at 7:30 on a Saturday morning right?! On my way out of the Hollywood YMCA, sweaty from a 40+ minutes of cardio I spot Sarah reading in the front courtyard. She had thought that her class was at 11am when in fact it was really at 11:30am so she had some time to kill. Sarah was actually a bit thankful for the mistake. She normally doesn't get to read for pleasure very often so the extra free time along with being able to read outside during this beautiful day were a plus for her morning.

Sarah is reading Wendy Wasserstein's Elements of Style, a book about New York society a la the CW show "Gossip Girl". However, Wasserstein's book revolves around "older" women rather than teenage gals and guys romping around the city. Sarah had read Wasserstein's previous book, The Heidi Chronicles, another book about women of privilege. "Yes, I know it's trash", Sarah says, "but it's entertaining!" Hey, I'm not going to judge. I'm all about reading whatever you want as long as you're reading something you enjoy, right?

Since we were at the gym I had to ask if she read books while she worked out. Personally I can't focus on books while I am burning calories and she agrees. Sarah tends to read magazines while on the machines but if she has a light read like this book that requires very little concentration then she'll bring it along. And how about audiobooks? She has yet to try them out during her workouts. We listen to music so why not books, right? Coincidentally Sarah is heading over to the library after the gym. She is driving up to northern California next weekend and wants to listen to an audiobook on her way up. It's funny because I am such a huge advocate for physical books but since I've been so busy I finally caved in and purchased my first audiobook. Comes in handy when I want to multi-task.

Some favourite books of hers? A book of short stories called Runaway by Alice Munro. She also enjoys reading books by Jane Green.

Growing up she loved "The Giving Tree" by the beloved Shel Silverstein. We started to bond over our love for this book along with our youthful obsession with the Christopher Pike series! She has every book, all currently stashed at her mother's house. I told her how my mother found all of our books growing up - how she gave away most of them, even our The Babysitters Club collection! I know...I know.

Sarah and I also started to laugh about how we loved Dr. Seuss and how our parents used to read the books to us. Her faves? She loved the "obscure" ones like "Hooper Humperdink..." and another one with "catchoo" (?) in the title. Sadly I couldn't find it.

Sarah is a screenwriter and has thought a bit about books she could write someday. She shares with me that her stepbrother and his wife are both deaf and have six children who are not hearing impaired. She would love to write a fictional work based around this premise and explore the subject matter more. She finds the family's dynamic to be quite interesting and would love to write about it.

What do you like to read when you're working out?
What is your favourite Dr. Seuss and/or Shel Silverstein book?