Random thoughts about books and reading…

Peanut is officially an emergent reader!  This confirmation is courtesy of her report card.  I knew this already, but it’s nice to have it professionally confirmed.  I’m still not doing much actual reading skills development with her at home, because I don’t want to squash her budding love of books by making reading feel like work.  I see my role as more of the cheerleader and book-pusher.  I read stories out loud, congratulate her when she sounds out a word or figures something out from context clues, and act generally enthusiastic about books (which is easy to do).  Her teachers agree that this is the right approach.

I have a request, Folio Society.  The summer collection was announced and, true to recent form for their new releases, doesn’t contain much that immediately tempts me.  I’ll probably pick up Three Men on the Bummel, because I do want that one.  But the collection also includes The South Polar Times, a bound facsimile collection of all the magazines from Scott’s expedition, and I kinda want it, since I have the Folio edition of Scott’s journals – bought on a whim during the New Year’s Sale.  At $150 for The South Polar Times, I’ll wait for that one to hit the sale in a few years before I snatch it up.  But if we’re publishing facsimile collections of vintage magazines, Folio Society, can I make a request?  Punch, please!  (I do have the two-volume Picks of Punch, but I really want huge facsimiles.)  At least the editions from the 1920s – pleeeeeeeeeeease?  A. A. Milne poems and essays, witty cartoons, vintage advertisements – I can see it now.  Let’s make it happen!

I had a horrifying revelation.  You know that feeling when you realize that you are the same age as a character that used to seem old to you?  (I was floored the day I realized I was the same age as Lorelai Gilmore in the first season of Gilmore Girls – and that was a few years ago now.)  Recently I discovered: I am the same age as the aged and decrepit Colonel Brandon.  I fully expect to burst into tears the next time I am re-reading Sense and Sensibility and Marianne begins one of her “ewww, Colonel Brandon is so OLD and gross!” diatribes.  (Granted, he is too old for Marianne.  But being the same age as the creaky Colonel, I can say that we hardly have one foot in the grave, Marianne.)

Oh come on, now, PBS.  So who else is watching The Great American Read on PBS?  I watched the first episode and really enjoyed it.  But I have a quibble – I went online and took the “How Many Have You Read?” quiz and scored 43 out of 100, which I think is respectable, especially considering some of the selections – like 50 Shades of Grey – I’m just never going to read.  But my results said “You’ve got some reading to do…” and “We want you to read!”  HELLO, PBS, I do read.  I read approximately 100 books per year – not as much as some, but more than many.  I don’t consider myself well-read, although I am trying to be (and maybe there is a longer blog post in here about what “well-read” even is) but it kind of burns that PBS thinks I don’t read enough.

Bookworm Mom Problems?  I tweeted this a few weeks ago, but it’s still true: you know you’re a bookworm mom when Doc McStuffins and the crew are singing “Time for your checkup!” and you hear “Time for your Chekhov!”  (Or is Disney Junior finally making a production of The Cherry Orchard?)