Month 15: Rockin’ the Reading Glasses

A new study just came out on Americans’ reading habits. One in four people said they read zero books last year. The typical person read four, and the most avid readers were women and retirees. Hmmm. I am a woman. And I did spend much of my time last year stitching and bitching with the senior set… Anyway, I’ve read WAY more than four books this year, not even counting baby name books and books about how to get your baby to sleep. (They put ME to sleep, that’s for sure.)

Back in junior high, this sort of deviant behavior would have labeled me a nerd. Yep, I went to a school where it wasn’t cool to be conspicuously smart. Coolness was instead bestowed upon those who could rock the leggings-and-rubber-bracelets look. (Oh, don’t think I didn’t try. And who knew they’d make a comeback??) Let me tell you, those cool kids were missing out. They had no idea what wonders awaited them in the enchanted world of the Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High.

These days I publicly flaunt my literacy. I will show my face in libraries, and I intentionally seek out bookstores. Mostly for the magazines and coffee, and sometimes for the kids’ storytime, but the point is I willingly go where there are books. And sometimes I even buy and read them! I figured out it’s often cheaper to buy a book than to pay the library fines I inevitably rack up when the book goes missing amidst my household clutter.

In the Mommy & Me yoga class I took after Miles was born, the teacher asked us one day what we would do if we had an hour to ourselves. The other moms all said they’d take a bubble bath, get a massage, go to the gym… I’m the only one who said I’d spend my time reading. But think about it—it’s one of the few things you can’t do while taking care of a baby. You can watch TV over their heads while they play on the floor, listen to the radio or a book on tape in the car, drop them off at the gym daycare while you work out. But I could never read when Miles was awake.

I heard talk of women who could read while they were nursing, but I always needed both hands. And as Miles has gotten older, he has started to rip the newspaper out of my hands or shred the magazine I'm flipping through. I did manage to read a great article this weekend in my favorite parenting magazine, Wondertime.

In his curiously titled story, “The Angel & The Skank,” writer Andrew Corsello discusses how parenthood forced him to, basically, stop being a self-centered prick and be in the moment. He describes taking care of his sick infant son one night: “For the first time in my life, I shed my own poisonous third-person regard, stopped looking at myself doing whatever I was doing, and passing judgment of one kind or another. Here’s the truth: There is nothing like dealing with one’s own screaming, puke-slathered spawn at 3 in the morning that better puts one in one’s place.” I love that. “Puke-slathered spawn.” Now there’s a fella who can turn a phrase. See what those non-readers are missing out on?

TIP O’ THE WEEK: Miles’ current favorite book is How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? by Jane Yolen & Mark Teague. He requests it five times a day and gets miffed if the person reading it doesn’t pucker up at the part where the dinosaur kisses his mom goodnight.