My friend Kevin tells me that he’s making good on a New Year’s resolution and “reading again.” Then he quickly rattles off a list of authors he’s finished recently that would make any honors comparative lit professor proud: E.L. Doctorow, J.M. Coetzee, and…
Okay, I confess I do not remember the rest of the tomes. Each impressive title he ticked off was such a reminder of how much I don’t read these days, I had to stop listening — La la la … I can’t hear you! — or I’d want to take a header out of my office window. Jealous much? Yeah, maybe. Just a tad.
See, I love to read. And once upon a time, I read volumes. I’d find an author I loved and devour everything they’d written. There was a John Irving phase. An Edith Wharton period. For a while I was seriously hooked on Gloria Naylor and Howard Fast. I even — though I’m embarrassed to admit it now — had flings with Stephen King and (blush!) Danielle Steele. And okay, okay, on the recommendation of a college friend, I also consumed the Harry Potter series en toto, like a fat girl tearing through a Whitman sampler. All right … so my taste isn’t always exactly high brow. At least the books weren’t made of cardboard and filled with pictures. (Except for … well, maybe … The Better Built Bondage Book. But that was strictly educational.)
Alas, my read-for-my-own-pleasure days were predominantly pre-child. When Fletcher was born, my friend Joel gifted me with Haiku Mama, whose very prescient tagline goes “Because 17 syllables is all you have time to read.” Sigh … I usually don’t even manage that. These days, I consider myself extra special lucky if I get 10 uninterrupted minutes to skim a Parents or Redbook. And usually those moments are stolen in the bathroom, with sudden — and completely invented — attacks of diarrhea or constipation. Oy! The lengths I’ll go to just to get through a “Modern Love” column in the Sunday Times! Back in the pre-Fletcher days, Sunday mornings were for languidly perusing the Times … under the umbrella … by the pool … on the patio … with a French press of French roast steaming beside me. Now, I read frantically and on the sly — grabbing a page here and there — like an adolescent boy rushing to “finish” with his Playboy before someone bangs on the door. Though since Fletcher learned how to turn the handle and roust me from my commodal sanctuary — Mah-meeeeee! Whatcha doing?Are you going poop or pee? — those moments, too, are becoming exceptionally rare.
Even perusing my friends’ bookshelf pages on Facebook is an exercise in envy and frustration. Jessica is deep into Broken For You. Jeff is bured in The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University. Cliff is paging through Aldous Huxley’s Point, Counter Point. Kelli is actually reading … Moby Dick. To a once-avid reader, this is like being the diabetic at Magnolia Bakery: You can appreciate how scrumptious those cupcakes are, but … No Cupcakes For You!
So, the last actual book I read? Trucks Roll. It’s a primary-colored paen to the massive gas-guzzling, hardly eco-friendly 18-wheelers that haul “books and bulldozers, dolls and clocks …through mountains, over rivers, past towns … around blue sky curves through rain pouring down.” The book has about 170 words in it. I finished the whole thing — aloud, natch — while Fletcher gnawed through his bagel and cream cheese this morning. (Hey, it was a whole wheat bagel with low-fat cream cheese —what kind of mother do you think I am?!)
If you’ve got kids (boys!) in your house, chances are you know what I’m talking about. And chances are equally good that the novels and nonfiction that used to pile up on your nightstand have been shoved aside by these:
*Green Eggs & Ham, The Cat In The Hat … really, anything from the Dr. Seuss oeuvre.
*The complete Curious George collection — even the paperbacks repackaged from the PBS show.
*Anything from the construction genre. Besides Trucks Roll, house favorites include My Truck Is Stuck, Truck Town, I’m Dirty, Bob The Builder (Duh!) and Big & Noisy Trucks and Diggers, which — bonus!! — comes with buttons that make honking, jack-hammering, crushing, clanging, banging construction sounds throughout the story. We call it Migraine in a Book.
*Thomas The Tank Engine. Count your blessings if you only have the books. There are also tons of mind-numbing DVDs (those with George Carlin narrating, excepted), not to mention the miles of track and bazillions of toy trains and stations to go with it!) You can literaly drown in Thomas crap.
Any and every book about dinosaurs, like the brilliantly fun Dinosaur Circus, which has the added attraction of allowing you to customize the story so that your kid’s the hero (available from StoryTots).
Goodnight — anything. Moons to gorillas.
If You Give A Moose A Muffin … A Mouse A Cookie … A Pig A Pancake … A Cat A Cupcake … A Mom A Martini (Okay, this last one’s not a kids book. But I find having one (or several) makes the kid lit go down easier.)
Hippos Go Berserk, Horns To Toes And In Between, But Not The Hippopotamus, and just about any other screed by Sandra Boynton, who (like the good folks at Pixar) creates children’s books that parents can read again and again, without wanting to dip a syringe into the black tar heroin. And for that we are forever grateful.
So … what’s in your library? Post a comment … or email me!
[Oh, by the way, the lovely photo, above, is by jpmgrafika]
HEY — DID YOU MISS THESE?
*And There Were Three In The Bed …
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