Reading for pleasure is one of those activities I associate with my life before children: those lazy Sunday mornings curled up with a page-turner (and the Sunday Times) in my jammies was a delicious weekly habit. I still love to read under the covers at bedtime and by Wednesday, I've gotten through most of the Sunday paper. But these days, by the time I've gotten the kids to bed, cleaned up the mess and had a bite,  I can barely get through a few pages before nodding off. 

So when a dear friend invited me to join www.goodreads.com, it reinvigorated my desire to make time to gobble up a good book.  I liken the community to a virtual book club.  The best part is that once you join, you don't need to find a sitter or to read a book on anyone's timetable. It is really a community to let other people know what you are reading and what you've already read and what you want to read in the future. 

You can form a club with friends or there are groups in which you can meet other readers with similar interests.  Scroll through list and you'll find every imaginable niche, from Vampire literature to cookbooks to folks trying to devour 100 books before the year is up.   The Well Mom recently chatted with the 30-year-old founder of goodreads.com, Otis Chandler. He says about 700, 000 people are using the site and they have cataloged more than 11 million books.  He was inspired to launch the business by his own love of reading and a desire to keep in touch with friends.

"Reading is a very solitary activity and not a lot of us have a watercooler place to discuss what we're reading," he told me. Hmmmmm....Think stay-at-home-moms, for example. 

Another aspect of the site is its link to Amazon. So, say you see that your sister or college roommate recommends a really great book, you can quickly order it right then in the moment. I think that is genius for those of us who feel like we have trouble remembering what day it is! 

I would love to start a Well Mom group one of these days. But that may be a project down the line. Please let me know if any of you out there would like to undertake it because I think it would be a lot of fun to start interacting with all of you.  In any event, check it out.  I think some quiet time with a juicy novel or suspenseful mystery or a literary masterpiece is due for all of us.  Now we just have to make the effort to do it.