I'm glad to say that I'm starting this week feeling ready for it: clean house, clean laundry, clean dishes, stocked groceries, and happy children. So worth a weekend at home! And, we did manage to do lots of fun things, too - a tailgate party on Friday night, neighborhood barbeque on Saturday night, and some good outdoor/park time with the girls.
Annie's mood today was inexplicably good, and so we treasured it. So many people lately have been telling me, "Three is worse than two" in reference to their now-three-year-old girls that I'm bracing myself for more ridiculousness and treasuring the days that are like today, when she gives out lots of unprompted "thank-you"'s and "I love you"'s and remembers that Jemma is a real, live person instead of a Weeble to knock over.
Jemma was adorable today. She really wants to stand up and does this crouching/squatting thing in the middle of the yard all the time. After dinner tonight, she got a second wind and was crawling and cruising all around the house as though she was seeing it for the first time, touching everything, squealing with glee while banging on the glass panes in the door, hiding under the dining room table and giggling when I played peek-a-boo with her. We are slowly trying to push her bedtime back to 7:00 (it's been 6:30 for the longest time) and I think it is working. Hopefully, she'll make up for the lost sleep by taking a slightly longer afternoon nap so I can managed to sit down, eat my lunch, and perhaps read a little during the day instead of at bedtime, when I'm exhausted. We'll see.
And speaking of reading, I read the most depressing story on npr.org today. It's called "Why Women Read More Than Men," but the main premise of the article was not what bummed me out. What did make me do a double-take were these statistics:
-Only 57% of Americans had read a book during the entire year of 2002
-Among people surveyed who identified themselves as "avid readers," the typical woman had read 9 books in the previous year, while the average man had read 5.
What?????? That would be like saying you were an "avid" sports fan and then admitting you'd only watched 9 (or 5) games during the whole year. And, I am especially concerned that nearly half of the US population can go for an entire year and not even read one book. People should be throwing their TVs out the window and reading something, anything! So, in the spirit of inspiring my broad readership to enjoy a fantastic book, here's a random list of some of the best things I've read in the past couple of years:
A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel
Theory of Relativity by Jacquelyn Mitchard
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night by Mark Haddon
Feast of Love by Charles Baxter
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Saturday by Ian McEwan
short stories by Alice Munro
poetry by Billy Collins
anything by Ann Patchett, but especially Truth and Beauty
anything by Barbara Kingsolver, fiction and nonfiction, but especially Small Wonder
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt
The World is Flat by Thomas Friedmann
So go! Read! And write me to tell me what you're loving, too.
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2 comments:
Steph,
9 books a year makes an avid reader? I am appalled! Some of your fave list I have read, some not, so I know what I want to get next time I go to the library. Thanks for sharing! In the meantime, I'll happily try to convince Lance to throw the TV out the window. He, however, is an avid sports fan and Sundays often consist of 5 games (and he probably does average around 5 books a year at most--so, so sad).
Brian loved The World is Flat. Reads his column in the NYT every week...good pic!
I loved The Lovely Bones...and have been meaning to read Empire Falls. Heard great things.
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