Blah.  Monday.  It rained here all weekend, and we ended up scrapping some plans I was really excited about.  On Saturday I’d intended to run a 10K but bailed when I woke up exhausted, with a wobbly ankle, and to a forecast of driving rain and 40 mph wind gusts.  Then, of course, I beat myself up over bailing.  In the afternoon, we had planned to attend the Roycroft Art Festival with our friends Zan and Paul, and then have a picnic, but with rain steadily pouring down, by 2:00 I had to admit to Zan (and myself) that it wasn’t going to happen.  It’s an outdoor festival, rain or shine, and it was just too nasty to take Nugget out.  We did get a surprise dinner invitation from my inlaws, which was delightful, but I was still in a bad mood – mad at myself over the 10K and bummed about the loss of the festival and picnic.  We really needed a fun weekend, too.  Hubby, Peanut and I are all nursing summer colds, and Nugget is going through the dreaded four month sleep regression.  It had been a week of coughing and lost sleep, making us all tired and snappish, and I was counting on two days of fun to restore our equilibrium.  Alas, it was not to be.

Although the weekend was mainly a dud, I did get some reading in – mostly on Sunday, while Nugget made up for a Saturday nap strike by snoozing on my lap most of the afternoon.  I finished Gretchen Rubin’s newest book, Better Than Before, and while I liked it, I didn’t think it was quite as inspiring as her Happiness Project books.  More on this to come on Wednesday, when I post my June reading round-up, and next week as well.  I wrapped up Better Than Before last night and am now moving on to The Elephant Whisperer, which my mom recommended to me after her entire book club adored it.

Of course, the sun is out now.  I’m trying not to be annoyed that it waited until Monday to show its face.  At least I can get Nugget out for a nice stroll, and when Peanut gets home from school I think the evening light will be perfect for a photo shoot for her third (!) birthday party invitations.  Happy new week, my friends!

What are you reading today?

Whoops!  I didn’t mean to go a week and a half without posting, but last thing I knew I was introducing Nugget to you all, and now here I am how many days later?  It’s been a whirlwind around here – of late night feedings and diaper changes, visitors come to snuggle the little guy, lots of lost sleep, and big adjustments for the whole family (but especially Peanut, whose world has been rocked in a major way).  And somewhere in there, my fourth Book Riot Quarterly box arrived.  Now that Book Riot has itself spilled the beans on what was in the box, here are my impressions.

The theme of this box was “life and death.”  The box included:

• Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande, a nonfiction bestseller.
• Half-Resurrection Blues, by Daniel Jose Older, along with a bookmark drawn by the author
• Library card notebook from Out of Print
• Exclusive Liquid Courage “Books and Booze” flask

So, my thoughts on this one… pretty much the same as #BKR05 – it just didn’t do all that much for me.  Being Mortal doesn’t sound like my kind of reading.  I’m picky about my non-fiction and I don’t see myself devoting precious reading time to end-of-life stuff (at least, not at the moment, being as I’m all consumed with the beginning of someone’s life).  I may read Half-Resurrection Blues, as I did hear that it was good.  The notebook, I like, as I like pretty much everything from Out of Print.  (It’s not something I would have bought if left to my own devices, but I’m sure I’ll use it.)  I have no use for the flask.  I’m not a big drinker, and when I do drink an adult beverage, it’s not of the sort that comes out of a flask.  (Now, had the vessel been a wine glass…)  I’ll probably gift the flask to my whisky-drinking bookworm sister-in-law, so at least I know it’ll go to a good home.

As I mentioned when I reviewed my third Quarterly box, #BKR05, I’ve been considering dropping my subscription because I really haven’t gotten $50 worth of enjoyment out of any of the boxes.  I was reserving judgment until this box came – the subscription is for a minimum of four boxes and this was the fourth – but I was fairly sure this was an area where I could trim the budget, and I have.  Had #BKR06 completely blown me away, I’d have kept up the subscription, but I was a bit underwhelmed by this box in particular, so I did cancel my subscription.  I like the idea of getting a box of surprises every quarter, and perhaps in the future I’ll explore some of the other Quarterly curators and try out a different subscription, but right now, it’s not something I want to continue doing.  If my $50 per quarter bought me more than $50 of fun, I’d keep it up, but as it’s worked out, I’d rather save the $50.  So that’s it for my Quarterly box reviews, at least for the foreseeable future!

Do you subscribe to the Book Riot Quarterly boxes?  What did you think of #BKR06?

With Nugget’s impending arrival creeping up on me, I’ve been reading even more parenting articles than usual.  (This whole thing about parents having CPS called on them for giving their kids a little bit of independence makes my blood boil.)  Some of the articles I’m reading are more of your run-of-the-mill “advice for new moms” – not that I consider myself a “new mom” at this point.  But a refresher never hurt, right?

A few weeks ago a friend posted an article on Facebook sharing some of that “advice” for those in the new mommy trenches.  I can’t even find the article anymore.  Most of it was pretty standard stuff.  Don’t sweat the small stuff.  Don’t freak out about every moment being fleeting; read a magazine article if you want.  Don’t let anyone make you feel guilty for your parenting choices.  But there was one piece of advice that made me do a double take… and then see red.

The article advised that moms DON’T read to their babies and young children.

Wait… WHAT?  I fired off a comment, something along the lines of “Mostly great advice, but I have to disagree with the part about not reading to them.  The American Academy of Pediatrics’ official recommendation is to read to even the youngest children every day, to promote literacy and bonding.”

According to the writer, it’s pointless.  Babies are lumps that aren’t listening to you read, and are only laying still in your arms while you read aloud because they’re immobile and have no choice.  And toddlers are running, screaming maniacs that don’t listen to anything you say or read.  (Well, sometimes that can be true.)  The article’s writer said she gave up when she realized she was sitting in a chair reading aloud to herself while her kids ran shouting up and down the hall outside their rooms.

Well… I mean, kids are all different.  Some kids have more of a tolerance for longer stories than others do.  I’ve certainly done my share of bedtime stories in which I know Peanut isn’t listening to a word I say.  Instead, she’s wiggling, head-butting me (ouch), trying to slap the book away or reciting another story as loud as she can while I read Sweet Dreams, Maisy.  But those are the exception, and I still read through them because it’s important.

Back in the summer of 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement saying that it was the responsibility of pediatric care providers to encourage parents to read to their children from the very beginning of life:

Reading regularly with young children stimulates optimal patterns of brain development and strengthens parent-child relationships at a critical time in child development, which, in turn, builds language, literacy, and social-emotional skills that last a lifetime. Pediatric providers have a unique opportunity to encourage parents to engage in this important and enjoyable activity with their children beginning in infancy.

A news article about the statement further explained:

Children who are read to during infancy and preschool years have better language skills when they start school and are more interested in reading, according to research highlighted in the statement. In addition, parents who spend time reading to their children create nurturing relationships, which is important for a child’s cognitive, language and social-emotional development.

One of the things I like best about Peanut’s pediatrician is that they have taken this message completely to heart, and they make it a priority to encourage parents to read to children of all ages.  Every time Peanut attends a well child visit, her pediatrician gifts her with a book.  (Sometimes she even gets one on a sick visit, which takes some of the sting out of that experience for her.)  Some of her books from the doctor have become her favorite books.

Don’t get me wrong – like I said above, all kids are different.  I happened to get one who will sit quietly in a lap indefinitely if stories are on offer.  (At a parent-teacher conference recently, Peanut’s teacher told us that Peanut would sit in the book corner all day long if they let her; they have to encourage her to put the books down and engage with the other kids.  Color me not surprised.)  And by no means am I trying to imply that Peanut is perfect – like I said, I’ve been head-butted a few times during bedtime stories.  She doesn’t always have the patience for a long book – but we put the book down and either read or do something else when she’s not feeling it, and more often than not she’s the one chasing after me with a book, shouting “Mommy wanna wead dis!  Mommy wanna wead dis!  PLEASE!”

Even when Peanut was a tiny baby, I read to her every day, and I think it mattered.  I know that she didn’t understand what I was talking about when she snuggled in my arms, two months old, as I read Fairacre novels to her aloud during my maternity leave.  But she felt the cuddles and she heard my voice, and I believe that those hours were a foundation on which I built a habit of reading to her that is serving us well now.  And even if I’m wrong about that, our marathon Fairacre-reading sessions when Peanut was two months old are some of my most cherished memories from that time.  (We also read board books and Dr. Seuss and Madeline and more.  Not just Fairacre.  Swear.)

I was debating whether I even wanted to write about this, because it seemed so obvious to me – and I think it will be equally obvious to most of my blog friends – that reading to children, even babies, is not wasted time.  It’s a special bonding experience, it’s the foundation for a lifetime of literacy, and it’s doctor-recommended.  Still, it’s something I’m thinking about.

Nugget is going to be a different kid than Peanut.  He may not have her patience for books (or “book ’ems” as she used to call them – goodness, I miss that).  I hope he does; I hope he loves reading just as much as his sister.  But maybe something else will touch his baby heart more.  Or maybe he’ll be wilder as a toddler and I’ll have to chase him down in order to read to him.  You know what?  If that’s what it takes, that’s what I’ll do.  We’ll try different books.  We’ll try shorter books, if we need to.  (Maybe we won’t need to!  But I do think that Peanut is pretty unusual in her willingness to sit through tomes like The Lorax or One Morning in Maine.)  But we will read together.  Every.  Single.  Day.  No matter what.  And I refuse to believe that it could ever be pointless.  Even when he’s a newborn lump.  Even when he’s a wild toddler.  Reading to children is never pointless.

What’s the worst advice you’ve ever heard/read?

One of my favorite things about being a reader (even a maybe-slumping one) is looking back on the books I’ve read.  Once you’ve read a book, it becomes part of you – part of your own personal story and experience.  And sometimes, a book you’re reading becomes bound up in the external events of your life and will forever be remembered as “the book I was reading when…”

I’ve been tracking my books on Goodreads (see the sidebar for my most recent entries) since 2007, so while I don’t remember every book I’ve been reading at every momentous occasion in my life, I do have a record going back quite a few years now.  Here are some of my momentous life events, and the books I was reading at the time…

April, 2007: Became homeowners for the first time.  When hubby and I closed on our condo in Arlington, Virginia, I was midway through Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov.  I can’t remember the exact date of our closing, but I know it was late April and Pale Fire was the book in my bag.

September 9, 2008: Landed in England on the vacation of my dreams.  I’d been wanting to visit England for as long as I could remember (what Anglophile reader doesn’t dream of walking the same paths as her literary heroes and heroines?).  When the wheels touched down on the tarmac at Heathrow for my vacation-of-a-lifetime, I was (re-)reading Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte.

February 19, 2012: Found out we were expecting a tiny Peanut!  This was something I’d been wanting for a long time, and even without the help of Goodreads, I could tell you that I was reading Ina Caro’s Paris to the Past: Traveling Through French History by Train (okay, I needed Goodreads to remind me of the author and the subtitle).  I actually finished it that same afternoon and started The 19th Wife, by David Ebershoff, so hey! a twofer on the first day that Peanut was officially in our lives!

August 21, 2012: Peanut’s birthday.  Another one I don’t need Goodreads for – I will never forget that I was reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, on the day Peanut made her grand entrance into the world.  I’d started it a few days prior, was reading it during my bed rest, and stuffed it in my purse to take to the sonogram appointment that turned into Peanut’s surprise arrival.

October 11, 2012: NICU Homecoming!  We waited a long time (50 days, to be exact) after Peanut was born to get out of the NICU.  I read quite a few books in the meantime, but the last few days of our NICU captivity (okay, I know, but that’s how it felt) were spent with Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (which I loved, and not just because I was reading it in the mothers’ lounge when hubby got the news that Peanut was ready to go home).

August 21, 2013: Peanut turned ONE.  In addition to marveling at the fact that I had a one-year-old and planning birthday celebrations, according to Goodreads, I was reading The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England, by Ian Mortimer.  Guess I was in an educational mood?

August 31, 2013: We moved to Buffalo, New York.  The move itself was months in the planning, but it wasn’t until the end of August that we officially pulled up stakes in northern Virginia.  Since I couldn’t take my Fairfax County library books with me (sniff – still miss my old stomping grounds at Sherwood Hall Regional Library) I had to read something off my own shelves.  I wanted a read that wasn’t too difficult or demanding, and that would distract me from the crushing sadness I was feeling at the idea of leaving the DC area, so I chose Flavia – specifically, The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag, the second novel in Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce mystery series.

July 26, 2014: Whoa, impending Nugget!  We got some very big news in late July of 2014 – another baby on the way!  And after I had confirmed what I already strongly suspected, I sat down with God is an Astronaut, by Alyson Foster.  Just like I did on the day we learned of Peanut’s existence, I actually finished the book and turned to another – this time, it was The Cloister Walk, by Kathleen Norris, which I was already midway through but had put down in favor of books with more urgent library deadlines.

August 13, 2014: Closed on our new house (and celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary on the same day).  I didn’t have much time for reading that day, as I remember it, but I always have a book in my bag, and it happened to be Among the Janeites: A Journey Through the World of Jane Austen Fandom, by Deborah Yaffe.  And then…

August 29, 2014: Moving Day!  Hopefully the last for awhile…  Another day I don’t think I actually had time to sit and read my book – I was actually at the office working on an emergency project while hubby handled the move details.  But I was midway through Sally Beauman’s The Visitors, which I really enjoyed once I did get a moment to breathe.

Wow, looking back, it seems like a lot of big things have happened to me over the last few years… and I’ve read some great books while they’ve been happening.  The next major life event, I’m sure, will be Nugget’s big arrival… wonder what book I’ll be tossing in my hospital bag for that occasion?

Do you remember what you’ve been reading when major life events occur?  

I knew this day would come eventually.

As you probably know if you’ve been reading this blog for more than a hot minute, I love mystery novels.  Mystery might be my favorite genre (maybe – I’m not committing here) and I’m always working my way through one series or another.  And as you may know – since I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before – I have a bit of a quirk when it comes to reading mysteries.

I don’t like to read more than one mystery series at a time.

Not that being in the middle of two mystery series should really interfere with anyone’s enjoyment, of course.  And not that I’m not smart enough to keep track of the differences between two series.  I’m certainly not going to mix up detectives, get confused, and say something like, “Wait, isn’t it Maisie Dobbs who runs a detective agency in Botswana?  And I thought Sherlock Holmes was an Egyptologist?”  But for some reason, I just have preferred to immerse myself in one series, one world, before moving on to another.

So I worked my way through The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series before getting started on Maisie Dobbs.  I finished with Maisie before starting in on The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and getting to know Flavia de Luce.

Of course, it couldn’t last forever.  When you read a series by a prolific contemporary writer, it’s bound to happen that they’ll release a new book and you won’t stay caught up forever.  And there will be a day when you have to pause the series you’re on and check in with an old favorite.

For me, that day is here… and here with a vengeance.  Technically, I’m currently reading through the Amelia Peabody mysteries.  Technically, the old favorites are supposed to stay filed away.  But they just wouldn’t.  First, I excitedly checked out of the library a book to which I’d been looking forward for months: As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust, the latest Flavia mystery.  (Loved it.)  Then I learned that a new Maisie Dobbs novel is due to be released soon – not soon enough to get on the holds list at the library (they haven’t ordered it yet) but it’s on the radar.  Then I discovered that there have been not one, but two new No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency mysteries released since I read The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection – oops – and a new Her Royal Spyness, with another one due in August.  All I need now is for someone to uncover a long-lost Agatha Christie manuscript.

So I’ve had to throw out my rule of only reading one mystery series at a time – because over the next few months I’ll have to catch up with, in addition to Flavia: Maisie, Precious, and Georgie.  It’s time to set aside my “quirk” and deal.  And yes, I know that in the grand scheme of things, this is not a big problem.  But it’s the mystery reader’s day of reckoning… and it’s here.

Do you have any bookish quirks?  Have you ever had to buck up and deal with them?

Recently, I was talking to my mom on the phone, and she told me she didn’t think I was in a reading slump.  “You’re still reading a lot,” she said, “you’re just reading children’s books instead.  And you’re enjoying your baby.”  Mom told me that she thinks it’s just the stage of life I’m in at the moment – there’s less time for reading, and when I do have free time I want to spend it playing with Peanut (and soon Nugget) and watching them grow and learn and explore.

All true statements.  There is definitely less time for reading.  I’ve been swamped at work since before Thanksgiving, and when I’m not at work or ferrying Peanut back and forth from school, I’m making dinner, trying to stay on top of an increasingly chaotic housekeeping situation, and doing the bath-stories-bedtime routine (which can stretch on for two hours or more if Peanut is feeling frisky).  When, exactly, am I supposed to sit down with a book?

And even on the weekends, it just hasn’t been a priority.  I’d rather play with Peanut, as my mom pointed out, and that’s a normal thing right now.  We’re spending our time on family hikes, or snuggled up reading stories, or destroying the playroom.  I’ll have my whole life to stick my nose in a book.  What I want to do right now is snuggle my baby while she’s still a baby.

But I do think I’m in a reading slump.  Maybe it’s no big deal, and it’s just where I am right now, but the fact remains that even when I have those rare pockets of free time – when I’m not working, cleaning, caring for Peanut or enjoying family time – I just haven’t had much of an attention span lately.  It’s embarrassing to admit, because I’m trying to be a book blogger here.  But I just don’t seem to have the head space or patience for many books lately.  Once I’ve staggered downstairs in the evening, after sitting in Peanut’s (increasingly uncomfortable) rocker for an hour or more, I don’t want to switch on the table lamp and take out a book.  I’d rather snuggle up under a blanket with hubby and watch TV.  (We’re working our way through Ken Burn’s The National Parks on Blu-Ray.)  Or scroll through my phone, catching up on social media.  Or stare blankly at the wall.  Sometimes I can’t even make myself crack the spine of a book – and that’s why I still think I’m in a slump.

Maybe it’s just not as bad of a slump as I thought.  I mean, I just whipped through As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust, the latest Flavia de Luce mystery, in about three days.  That’s not bad.  Once upon a time, I could have torn through a Flavia mystery in a day or less, but I don’t have that kind of spare time at the moment.  So just wanting to read was refreshing.  And now I’ve started The Romanov Sisters, which – okay – is a hefty non-fiction chunker, but I’m actually excited to read it.  Excited… I haven’t felt excited to read a particular book in months (until Flavia, that is).

So yes, I do think I’m still in a reading slump.  But I also think that my mom has a point and that it’s mainly just life, right now.  Really, it seems to be a combination of lack of time, other priorities, and a slumping attention span.  I’m sure that it’s a season that will eventually pass.  Until then, I’ll give myself a little bit of credit for the fact that I read Star Wars ABC eleventy-seven times yesterday.

Do you notice that your reading ebbs and flows with different stages of life?