Sunday, April 11, 2010

Pagi-Nation: This is my Daughter

Plucked from the bursting shelves of novels comes Roxana Robinson's This is My Daughter (Bloomsbury 1998). It has a 2 pound (as in sterling) sticker on the front from the Cambridge bargain bookstore Galloway and Porter, so must be one of the many cheap books Marie snaps up whenever we return to the UK.

Opened to page 192:

At home Amanda never had to read or to listen to reading. Her own mother never read books to Amanda and seldom to herself. When her mother did read, it was a new book, something with a bright cover, usually with a beautiful woman on it. Those were what Amanda felt were the right kind of books to read.

Having this week described my family in a blog comment as a "herd of bibliovores," the above behavior is nothing less than shocking. (You can bet that Amanda and her mother don't end up being published writers!) Yet we constantly hear that Americans don't read. Is that true in your experience? What are your children reading now? What are you reading to them?

4 comments:

  1. Hello, I love your PagiNation. I thought I commented before, but guess not.
    My youngest is reading The Great Gastpy, the oldest is rereading one of her favorites.
    Is your meme a participate with you in the picking and writing, or in rhetoric?
    I sure enjoy you musings! Have a great day!
    Ciao!

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  2. Thanks, Allisonian! As for my meme, I think I haven't really thought it through yet. I wish I was as computer savvy as Susan @ Stony River and had everyone linking in, as she does with her Microfiction Mondays. However, I always want to know what people are reading, and whether they have any reactions to the questions I pose.

    Thanks for reading my blog!

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  3. I met someone once who, when invited to join the family for dinner, was briefed that everyone would have a book at the table and would be reading rather than conversing. This is a bit extreme to me, perhaps because the dinner table was a time to "be a family", but the reader in me is screaming "YES! Lets not waste a minute staring at one another, but READ, READ, READ!" That said, I currently have 4 books cracked in various states of consumption: a textbook for fire training, Undaunted Courage (I swear it will take me all year to read--but I'm determined!), The Story of Edgar Sawtelle and Pecked to Death by Ducks. No kids, so I can only talk of myself. Ah, but the husband is reading The Island of the Sequined Love Nuns by Christopher Moore.

    Jette Baker

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  4. Jette,

    Thanks for posting! That book-reading story is too funny. (Only slightly true in our case: we have to ban Christopher from reading at the table, otherwise we'd never get a word out of him.)

    Thanks for sharing your reading smorgasbord, too. Let me know what J. thinks of the "Island of the Sequined Love Nuns." (I've never read Lamb, but this must be one of the best titles in the business.)

    Take care.

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