Reading With: Rachel Aydt of New York Lost and Found

Photo from New York Lost and FoundAs a writer, Assistant Professor of the New School and mom to a 6-year-old, one would think Rachel Aydt wouldn't have the time to wax poetic about the city she now calls home. But Aydt deftly describes the urban "ephemera" in New York Lost and Found. It's romantic, beautiful and sometimes blunt -- not unlike the city itself.

Here's what Rachel's reading right now:

The books:

I have a stack of books that rivals Pisa. At the moment, I'm moving my way through Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. A terribly beautiful account of Katrina.

After I'm done with it, I'm committed to Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger; because I, like the rest of the free world, adored The Time Traveler's Wife.

Lit, by Mary Karr, and Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys will follow in third place.

Online:

I follow Lisa Belkin's Motherlode and contribute to it once in a blue moon. It's newsy about parenting stuff; so it inspires me.

I read the New York Times, MediaBistro's media blogs online, and check in with The Huffington Pos t when I'm procrastinating.

I'm teaching a Digital Media class at the New School right now, and so I'm always up to my eyebrows in my students' thematic blogs on subjects ranging from pro-smoking to wedding planning to the state of satire in America.

I'm obsessed with homeexchange because we're traveling to Europe for a long trip this summer and we're attempting to swap our apartment for the first time.

Everyone else's places look terribly fancy on homeexchange, compared to ours, so I'm feeling inspired by this and inspired by Spring. So I'll pull out my favorite home improvement manifesto Bible put out by Domino magazine.

Kid Books:

Right now I'm reading Now We Are Six, by A.A. Milne to my "six and three quarters" year old son.

I don't get the big fuss over Geronimo Stilton or Junie B.

But we loved a series of books about a character named Thelonius Chipmunk. They're so cool because half of the chapters are regularly formatted with occasional pictures amid long stretches of type, and the other half are in graphic novel form. There are some environmental Armageddon-esque themes, but they haven't been too bothersome.

Read more from Rachel at New York Lost and Found.