When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.
Over the weekend, I visited my niece who had moved into her first apartment. I was filled with nostalgia for that time in my life even though most of it was miserable. Her place had one large window which looked out on a classic New York landscape of apartment buildings, inside each window a short story in progress. I could have stared out of it all day. She had only begun to furnish it with a few pieces from Ikea, couch, tables, one chair. The first piece of furniture I bought when I became a full editor was a couch. It was black leather and the arms and back were curved and you could stretch out on the whole thing and read all day, which is exactly what I did. That couch followed me to three houses before it was finally retired to that great couch heaven in the sky.
What is your favorite spot to read?
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Betsy Lerner 
My home is a bus.
It has a huge door at the foot of my bed that I open wide to let in the view and the breeze and the light of the world.
I park in some of the most beautiful places in Australia, take a real book out of a real wooden bookshelf I made myself, and in that moment, my life is perfect.
Rottenish photo at http://harryipants.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/ugly-sentence-day/
Just like Frank, I’d say you’re there, too.
I have a loveseat in my bedroom, (no not my husband), and to sit there, at night while the house is quiet and my husband quietly snores, is the best.
When I first moved to Chicago, I took the blue line “L”. There’s a moment going north when it comes up out of ground and the car becomes quiet. Raised above the streets, the car looks out over the back of apartment buildings and condos. I loved peeping into their lives as the lights came on in windows, people kissed, made dinner, fought.
I still miss that line.
The couch is my favorite place to read too.
In my backyard on the outside couch. PJs, blanket, coffee or tea close by.
Rocker on the front porch
I recently splurged on a Stressless recliner http://www.ekornes.com/us/stressless-recliners chocolate brown with walnut trim. It’s in my office facing a window. I often read (and nod off) there.
One of the best is on the boat, with its creaks and soft groans, the slightest movement of the water, a touch of drizzle, light from an oil lamp, solitude and calm. It will not last if the breeze freshens, but those moments live long.
In the cockpit, leaning against the bulkhead, glancing up from my book to see Lola at the helm, sky and water around her. A slight smile grows as she watches, trims, and the boat responds. I smile and go back to reading, and she doesn’t even know I’m there.
Then there’s this beach……..
A perfect place to read, Frank.
I thought of you as soon as I read the question.
You’re really, really there.
My thought exactly.
Big old easy chair, light brown with dark, nicely carved wooden legs. It’s a recliner but rarely gets used as such. Riding shotgun is a stand up lamp with a pivoting extension neck. A small table with a 3/4 full wine rack and some random books, a couple read, one started and a few unopened. Just enough real estate on the table top for a cup of tea (cold beer, lemonade or flavored seltzer in the summer) and a tumbler with just a bit more than shot of bourbon/tequila filling the air with its fragrance. Sometimes a bowl, but then I just read the same paragraph over and over and under and over.
I have two. In my front yard in my tiny rural NH village. I sit in an old Adirondack chair, looking out at the gorgeous historic building on the daffodil-covered hill above my house. There’s a glass of wine on the broad arm of the chair. The neighbors notice I’m reading, and wave, but don’t stop by for conversation.
The other? In bed, after the kids are tucked in, and I have managed to get a solid word count in.
“What is your favorite spot to read?”
Wherever I possibly can. At home at my desk or sometimes at the dining table (which my wife insisted we put in the living room–don’t ask) or in bed, or in warmer weather on the front patio. At work at my desk when the boss is out and the day is slow, and at lunch on a sofa in the lobby downstairs since it’s the closest place I can repair to outside the office.
When I was a boy, after lights-out I would slip down the hall to the bathroom where I could sit and read and my family would think I was taking a crap. Or so I thought, but my brother got wise and stood outside the closed bathroom door one night and hissed, “I’m gonna tell!” Reading as an infraction. It still can be. I do not let my boss catch me reading at my desk. Hooray for the Internet. I read the entire Cambridge History of British and American Literature online at my desk at work. Took three years and many distractions.
Okay also in line. In line at the bank or the post office. I always take a book or magazine with me and I might get a page or more read if the line is long enough.
And I always have something to read in my backpack when I’m in my car because it’s an old jalopy and if it breaks down I can get some reading in while I wait for roadside assistance.
And on the bus. When I have to take the bus I always bring something to read. (One of the several great things about living in Manhattan was reading on the subway.) And on airliners. I cannot imagine having to fly without being able to read.
And on the crapper, but enough said about that.
A writer’s gotta read. One of the best things about the job. And there’s no end to the reading. As Harold Bloom pointed out when he shot off his Western Canon, two lifetimes wouldn’t be enough to read all the good stuff alone.
Put me in, Coach, I’m limbered up and ready to read.
I’m the same way, anywhere I can these days suffices.
The most comfortable place to read in our house is the end of the living room couch closest to the corner of the room. There’s an end table (a Sauder pressboard DIY college remnant, which is why it’s hidden in the corner) with a lamp for my eyes and a coaster for my drink.
But my very favorite place to read is anywhere there’s something I want to read and, for added pleasure, something else I should really be doing.
“…anywhere there’s something I want to read…”
Apt. #2. Dusk. In bed by the fire escape with a glass of wine perched precariously on the window sill. Taxis honking. Garlic drifting up from the restaurant below. Unfortunately, it’s not NYC, but the similarity works for me.
My grandmother liked to rent furniture. When I was about 10 yrs old, she went into denial about never having anything “nice,” about having 9 kids and 30 grandkids, and got herself a new couch every year. I never knew her to sleep in a bed, so each pretty new couch was also her bed. Those new couches were where I loved to read my books.
I can settle into just about any couch with a good book.
A rich friend gave me 4 amazing living room chairs. Two beautiful, two not-so-beautiful, but all incredibly comfortable. Any one of them is perfect, but the two semi-ugly ones in the corner are the best.
My favorite spot to read is my upholstered swivel chair by the front living room window, tea beside me, bookshelf behind me, occasional neighbors passing by, my feet on a footstool.
Ideally, laying (lying? I’m never sure) down on my couch or my bed. When I was a kid living with my grandparents, the living room was small and the chairs were filled with adults so my escape was to read in my bed. Lots of light in the daytime, cozy lamp at night. To this day, I’ll bet 90% of my reading is done the same way. Such an imprint our childhood has!
I’m a nomadic reader: whether I’m in the pillow-infused swing on my screened porch, under a market umbrella shading my recline on a chaise in the backyard, properly perched in my ergonomic desk chair or comfortably tucked into bed the venue is merely the means to reaching The End.
In bed, with my husband asleep beside me is where I do most of my reading. Every night he moans about it. ‘Turn out the light. Time to sleep…zzzz’
Under the grapevines in summer, around noon
That sounds wonderful as long as there are no bees. I’m ridiculous about bees.
Any place there are words and I don’t have to act all pretentious cuz I know how to read.
I came into my new marriage with my daughter’s Cocker spaniel, and a armchair too big for most living areas, both were negotiatable. The spaniel bonded, too well for my liking. The chair fills a corner in our bedroom, I drop my long body into it, legs dangle across the overstuffed brown velvet. Here my grandson fell asleep in my arms whilst I typed away on the laptop balanced on my knees; here i repeated German phrases listening to Michelle Thomas tapes my first months in Leipzig; here I snuggle under a quilt in frozen winters, cool summers absorbed in turning the comforting pages of another world.
Bed. Propped up with pillows and covered with a down comforter. The schnauzer puppy curled next to me. Where’s my book?
Like the post-script to a fortune from a fortune cookie, in bed.
I don’t have a favorite place to read. Wherever I can read, that is my favorite place.