Raise a Reader? You Can Try

In the summer I had dinner with a friend I was extremely close with in grad school, touched base with when I got to Ottawa, and then fell out of touch with and hadn't seen since Eve was about four, so, a long time. It was amazing - actually never mind, I'll do a whole post on that later. But she has two daughters and neither of them are readers and she said she had kind of a hard time with it until one of them had to say cool it, you're making me feel bad and it's not going to change anything.

I'm not sure how I would have felt if neither of my kids was a reader. I know it's a big part of my personality. I loved children's books and had a collection before I even had kids, and reading to them every day was really fun. Eve moved smoothly into chapter books and is definitely what you would consider a reader. With Angus I read one entire Percy Jackson book with him, and it was great, but after Diary of a Wimpy Kid his reading fell off and it didn't really bother me. During one camping trip a few years ago he pilfered my stack of books and took one and since then has been asking me to give him books for Christmas. I think he still only reads a lot on vacation, but that's fine. Would it have bothered me if neither of them read? I honestly don't know.

I am constantly getting frustrated with myself for not being able to lay hands on old pictures - I started organizing all of them last year and then put the mess away for Christmas and then got horrifically depressed in January and here we are again. Anyway, years ago I took a picture at brunch of Angus leaned over a Harry Potter book intently while absently stabbing at pancakes with his other hand and sent it to his grade three teacher saying 'job well done!' I mentioned this to someone a few weeks later and he said indignantly "she SHOWED THE WHOLE CLASS", but he hadn't mentioned it before then so it can't have scarred him that badly. 

I did love the way Eve and her friends talked about our book-stuffed house. I took Eve and a friend to meet the teacher night in middle school because the other mom was busy, and the friend said to their English teacher "their house has books EVERYWHERE. Eve goes into her mom's room and asks for a book and she just GRABS one out of a pile!" She left out that there are so many books there's no room for anything else to be put away properly, so also a win. 

Eve and I like a lot of the same books, and sharing books with her has been kind of magical. We buddy read some of her books in undergrad, I never have trouble finding books to give her for Christmas, and now she recommends books to me, which is a bit trippy. I gave her my old ipad last year and she got into borrowing library ebooks and loved it because then she could turn off her lights except for the little fairy lights and read in the dark and be cozy. 

We both love Miriam Toews, and she has had the weirdest good luck with finding used Toews books on sale at new bookstores. This is the latest one - is it not just stupidly beautiful? It looks like her lamp and the Coach purse I got her for her birthday last year. 

Last week she told me she was going to put a real actual paper book on hold (I guess she wants to be more like Sarah too) and then sent me this picture. We were on Facetime and I said it gave me a tiny bit of a weird feeling seeing her last name, which is different from mine, on the label. 

I'm also a bit jealous that she has an A name so will also be right at the beginning of the holds, rather than an M name which is always, always on the bottom shelf. Have you tried picking up seven books from the bottom shelf? It is inelegant, to say the least. ALSO Also, it's an Olga Tokarczuk book that she is now reading before me. Is that even allowed?