When Sally was three or four, I decided it was time she learned to read. We did sight words and phonics and sounding out and pointing at words (it worked for Scout and Atticus) and I read/We read books. Every afternoon or morning she and I sat side by side on the couch and in between “Don’t you want to learn to read?” and “Just a few more pages” and “Sit up straight right now” and “Can’t you pay attention for five minutes?” I realized that story time wasn’t fun anymore.

So I stopped trying to teach her how to read. And instead we just read fun books. All the time. Everywhere. I never again pointed out a word to her or made her sound anything out, and even now, as she enters third grade, I conscientiously object to spelling word memorization and the building of morphological family groups.

I don’t think you can (or should) teach a child to read before they’re ready. Just as you wouldn’t force a crawler to become a walker before her legs can carry her. I also think knowing why we read (for the decadent, spiritual, sensual, illuminating pleasure) is much more important that knowing how to read. Love trumps know-how every time.

Sometime before she turned seven, Sally started reading. Six months later she read all the Harry Potter books in about four months. At eight and a half she reads Percy Jackson and Nancy Drew and Island of the Blue Dolphins and A Wrinkle in Time, and I have to tell her to put the book down long enough to eat her breakfast or get some sleep or flush the toilet all too often.

Now Susan, who I have never said the dirty phrase “sound it out” to, wants to know why she doesn’t hear anything in her mind when she looks at books. I pointed out that when she sees the first letter of her name she hears that sound in her head, right? And that warm feeling she gets when she hears that sound is the Holy Ghost telling her that Heavenly Father wants her to become a great lover of books.

She looked at me funny. Though Susan is always asking if today is the day we get to see Jesus, and Spot thinks our company tomorrow will probably be Jesus, we really don’t discuss the Rapture that much more than phonics around here.

But Susan’s observation made me wonder if I have been denying her one of the most joyous of human gratifications: that of reading oneself to a sticky-eyed, hollow-throated, hazy-minded hash. (Unless you’re the sort of person who sets an unfinished book aside at a reasonable hour of the night, in which case I’m sure your self-discipline only adds to the pleasure once the book is finally finished. (Though I find it hard to believe).)

Which is to say, I think I’m going to pull out some how-to-teach-your-kid-to-read stuff pretty soon. Between my having learned (some) patience and Susan seeming to be the nearest thing to ready, it just might work this time.

And if not, if ever a reading session turns sour in any way, we shall quit the learning part forthwith and go back to the hedonistic thrill of reciting Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy, all together now.

Thanks to @kirstyt for introducing us to this Australian gem.

I still do that — read books as quickly as possible, but the books I read now are usually what is politely called “genre fiction” and colloquially “trashy romance novels.” But I’m trying, with my friend’s online book club, to put some class back in my diet. I tried so hard in February that I ordered about $40 worth of used books from Half.com (including some fun stuff like Anne Stuart’s The Road to Hidden Harbor) and accidentally had it sent to our old Florida address. Media mail, which isn’t forwarded by the post office. I hope the miscreant drug dealers back in our ghetto are enjoying Leif Enger and Jhumpa Lahiri and Susan Napier.

So I didn’t read So Brave, Young, and Handsome, but enough people told me they loved Peace Like a River that I got it from the library, where I was also able to inter-library loan Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth. I think it’s great that people get paid to write stories down. I just think that overdue library fines should count towards supporting writers, as well as being a tax-exempt charitable contribution.

Unaccustomed Earth turns out to be a collection of short stories, which always seems to me to be a bit lazy on the part of the author. On the one hand, it’s nice that I can finish an entire piece during lunch, but on the other hand, if the author didn’t care enough about the characters or find them interesting enough to develop a full-length novel around them, why should I? Of course this doesn’t apply to L.M. Montgomery’s sentimental short stories about orphans and true love.

Unaccustomed Earth isn’t bad, for a literary book. I find myself getting irritated by the stay-at-home mother angst of the protagonist of the title story. (Am I that wishy-washy and predictable? Don’t answer that.) At one point the narrator says of Ruma, who was a successful attorney before giving birth: “It was the house that was her work now: leafing through the piles of catalogues that came in the mail, marking them with Post-its, ordering sheets covered with dragons for Akash’s room” (6).

It’s a bit agenda-y to me. Maybe a bit ambivalent, but mostly agenda-y. Ruma’s happiest moments in the story come when her father, who is visiting for the week, occupies her son all day in the garden, so that Ruma has the house to herself and is able to get some urgent paperwork done.

It reminds me of a marketing line in the brochure of the botanical gardens we took the kids to on Saturday. The chipper PR people extol the wonder of discovery as “not something you read about or watch on TV. It’s something you do” and something, apparently, that you do only under the protest of your mother, as they continue: “Hey, we consider dirty hands to be a sure sign of fun (sorry, moms).”

I can’t imagine being remotely ambivalent about being a stay-at-home mom if my work were marking catalogues with Post-its and ensuring that my kids never got their hands dirty or had any fun.

{Who WRITES these things?}

Lahiri is a fine writer, though. Her images are memorable. In another story, where the angst-y caregiver (though not stay-at-home) parent is the father, she describes the uninspiring pattern on a wallpaper as “squiggly gray lines . . . as if someone had repeatedly been testing the ink in a pen and ultimately had nothing to say” (84).

The exploration of marriage in that story is intimate, and the proprietary resentment that the caregiver-parent feels towards the necessarily-more-detached (emotionally and/or physically) parent is stunning. Don’t we stay-at-home mothers feel this? When your husband has an evening thing, does he think to ask if you’re free to watch the kids? (mine doesn’t). And when you have an evening thing, do you ask him about “babysitting” first thing (I do).

That story ends with sex, and it’s surprisingly (detailed-ly) rendered, if thoroughly marital. Other, non-marital relationships are also explored in other stories.

So here’s the thing about trashy romance novels versus literary fiction. When I read a good romance novel (and here I include The Blue Castle, Pride and Prejudice, Ain’t She Sweet, and What the Lady Wants) — When I read romance novels, good romance novels, I feel again that heady glandular intoxication of first love. Romance novels are a place where obstacles are overcome, differences are compromised just enough, conflict is resolved, and desire, longing, and need culminate in marriage and exuberantly hopeful commitment.

When I read literary books, I feel the strictures of being committed to one person, the strainings for something else out of life, the yearning to explore other possibilities. Literary works are a place where relationships fall apart, or where the cracks that can be ignored for so long suddenly become unbearable. A husband who drinks too much at a party or a wife who flirts with someone else are no longer sympathetic. An air of stifled repression or stark rebuttal of the suburban dystopia (Am I still talking? I have no idea what I’m saying here. Is it sounding worthy of literary critique yet?).

In short, literary books are about the death or deterioration of relationships, and romance novels are about their birth or growth. Literary books point out everything that is inherently flawed in the human need for companionship, and romance novels celebrate our desire to be connected and grounded in one another, especially in a soulmate.

Is one of the forms more “true” than the others? Where literary books succeed in communicating ambivalence and uncertainty and endless searching, I suspect they are. But is death any more “real” than birth? Death is certainly usually more self-aware and examined. But I like birth. I like closing a novel, coming back from some escapist fantasy, and feeling renewed and recommitted to loving on the people I am stuck with, even if they do like to get their hands dirty.

Jane

(April’s book is The Book Thief. I’ll let you know how it goes. It’s considered YA, so maybe I’ll read it with Sally.)

(From Some Kind of Wonderful)

Keith: You can’t judge a book by it’s cover.

Watts: Yeah, but you can tell how much it’s gonna cost.

Comment of the Day from Memarie Lane:

“I must disagree, there are plenty of literary books about the birth of love. I just finished one. Unfortunately it turned out to be about lesbians.”

In Florida Dick took a job as a copywriter for a minuscule amount of money (let’s just say it made a teacher’s salary look good and that he now, 5 years later, gets paid more than twice as much). And when he found work as a technical writer and started blogging, he felt he’d found his vocational calling.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of supporting your spouse in finding work that they enjoy. Especially if you don’t enjoy listening to a bunch of whining (which is why Dick works so hard to support me in my sometimes-unsatisfying job, not that I would ever whine per se).

But I still envy the university lifestyle. Big time. When I’m not reading my trashy romance novels and generally being too lazy to attend a class anyway.

That’s where Great Books: By Writers Who Aren’t Dead Yet comes in. My friend Josh (who taught with Dick in Cairo and who for longer than I care to remember I used as an example to Dick, as in “Why can’t you be more like your friend Josh and get a job at a university and I can swan around the campus taking classes like “Gardening For The Most Delicious Tomatoes Ever” and people can all call me Mrs. Professor Dick in respectful tones) started a blog book club.

There are many great book reviewing sites (like Book Nook and Bloggin’BoutBooks and 5MinutesforBooks), but often when I read a review, especially if it’s of some critically-aclaimed book that everyone’s talking about, I’ll read the review and call it good. No need to actually read the book myself. Not when there are so many fun books to escape with. (I used to think that I overdosed on “real” books in college, but after 11 years of recovering from that overdose, I’m starting to think that maybe I’m just a literary peasant at heart).

So at first I hoped to sort of skim by on this, supporting Josh but maybe never getting around to reading the books, which look good but serious. Then I found myself staying up late on Saturday night because eHarlequin released the March books at midnight on February first. I read three fluffy books between midnight and some hour that I’d rather not talk about. (One of the books was great; Jessica Hart is a fun fluffy writer. Don’t let anyone tell you differently).

But I think it’s time for a real book. One I can read in public and without worrying if Sally is reading over my shoulder (some of those fluffy books, you have to watch out for; at least if it’s a “classic” I can plead artistic license if a questionable scene pops up). (I should add that Josh is conservative enough that I’m not concerned about this, and curious enough that I’m not worried I’ll be bored.)

February’s book is So Brave, Young, and Handsome by Leif Enger, who wrote that Peace Like a River book that I read a few reviews of but never read myself (see above). And here I’d like to invite you all to read it with me (especially Marcy, since she has Peace Like a River on her reading list, but it would be funner to read this one at the same time, right?).

If you already have an IRL book club and such, great. Despite the many wonders of my church lady peeps out here in Seagull Fountain, I haven’t yet heard of a book club (which certainly isn’t to say that there isn’t one), so I am going to do what any sensible person does when one of her emotional/psychological/mental needs isn’t being met by the people around her: turn to the internet.*

Jane

*Just kidding. It would probably be faster to turn to beer.

**JUST KIDDING. What I really like about the internet is that it has made staying friends with some truly fantastic people a lot easier. And my family too. (haha. I’m just killing myself today). I like the premise of the not dead writers book club — that art is alive today. That the work people are creating today is just as worthy of our attention as the great classics are. I don’t know if he meant to include eHarlequin in that statement, but I’m willing to take a chance on Mr. Enger.

I hope you’ll join me!

(Online book club is what works for me.)

Maybe we hate her because she’s beautiful. Maybe we love her ’cause she’s feisty. Maybe we feel threatened by her seeming ability to have it all. Maybe we think her priorities are really mixed up as we yell at the kids to get their ding-dang shoes on RIGHT THIS MINUTE. Maybe we think she’s the Rosa Parks of the 21st century. Maybe we think a beauty queen could never be king.

I have mixed feelings about her (politically AND personally), but I don’t really care that the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 outfitting her with more bracelet jackets, though reading about it did send me to my Project Runway guide.

Me: What’s a bracelet jacket?

Tara: I don’t know — a cropped jacket maybe?

Me: But I think she wears longer, belted ones too. I think it just means you can see her bracelet when she wears it.

Tara: Oh. I guess that could be it.

The sartorial excesses of the aspirational governing class don’t really offend me. What else are they going to spend all those donations on anyway? More bad TV commercials?

But I’ll tell you what I do care about. Sarah Palin’s parents remember her reading everything from the local newspaper to Little House on the Prairie as a “strong, quiet” child, but they can’t quite recall what her favorite book was as she got older.

That may seem like a little thing. And it would be great if they listed a bunch of books that she read and raved about, but just couldn’t pin it down to one favorite. But no. “Her parents could not recall her favorite books as she grew older, but said they read Reader’s Digest aloud as a family.”

Reader’s Digest, my friends.

Now, I like me some Reader’s Digest when I’m indisposed, and I confess to enjoying a lot of frothy romantic-suspense-mystery-romance in my Thank Everything Holy The Kids Are In Bed time.

But my parents know what my favorite book is.

(And it ain’t Reader’s Digest.)

(Unless I’m on the pot.)

Do your parents know what your favorite book is?

Visit more What’s On Your Nightstand?

And why do I feel like the guy on the right instead of the girl?

I like to:

• Stay up late
• Drink soda fountain drinks
• Eat French Fries
• Read trashy novels all day
• Ignore my kids while reading trashy novels all day
• Lie on the couch

But I am happy when I:

• Get enough sleep
• Drink lots of water
• Eat stuff I’ve made myself, including Shrek Shakes and Muffins
• Read some scriptures and contemplate the state of my soul
• Interact with happy, well-fed, well-rested children
• Exercise for about 45 minutes

What’s my problem? If it’s all about the journey, or if the process is more important than the product/answer (hey, I remember AP Calculus), then what the heck am I doing wrong? How come what I like to do doesn’t make me happy? And let’s not even talk about the things I THINK would make me happy. What I’ve listed are things I already KNOW make me happy, and yet I still usually prefer to do the other things.

So that’s what’s not working for me today. Any insight would be much appreciated.

I don’t always love books and my kids at the same time, especially if it involves reading the same book to the same kid over and over. Susan and Spot’s favorite lately? Susan calls it the toilet book; you may know it as Love You Forever.

If I have to sing-sing I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always; as long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be one more time . . .

Now that I think about it, that book should probably be banned for the guerilla tactics it promotes. Though I do love the section on teenagers: they have strange friends, strange clothes, and listen to strange music.

Spot brought me the toilet book today as I hid out elegantly reclined in my bedroom boudoir. Her sleeves were soaked, and had been for a while. Her arms were chilled and her nose was runny.

I stripped her and tucked her up with me and submitted to the usual enquiring fingers.

Translation: poke in the eye=I’m so happy to see you; fingers in the mouth=I love you. Maybe there’s something to this baby sign language after all.

Then I wondered how she’d gotten wet. Sally’s in charge when mom abdicates, and she had no idea.

Then I saw the toilet bowl, smirking at me from the bathroom.

And I thought Susan’s lipstick incident this morning was bad:

I think the Terracotta Rose Bronze Shimmer shade goes especially well with the green snot.

Dick came home and folded the laundry that has been slouching towards the ceiling for days. And set the table, without being asked. The remains of our dinner are still sitting there, near the sink full of dishes, like sullen reminders of behinded-ness.

He did put the kids to bed, saving me at least one reading of that toilet book. I’ve spent the time well, composing a Valentine’s ode to my sweetheart, exactly ten years after our first date.

I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you when you remember to take out the trash; as long as I’m living, my baby, honey, sweetheart, lover, partner, companion, joy, friend, second self you’ll be.

__________

I’ve entered this post in Scribbit’s (A blog about motherhood in Alaska) Write-Away contest. I’m trying to think when’s the last time I entered a writing contest. Oh, I remember. BYU, Founder’s Day contest. Dick got second place or something and we went to a nice award dinner. The judges misplaced or misunderstood my entry, I think. Ah well, ’tis the burden of genuis to be misunderstood, right? Preemptively I-didn’t-want-to-win-anyway much?

You should enter too! First prize is an Alaskan cruise. I wish.