R E A D I N G : - )

Bookstores, scholastic book club, libraries, etc...and I'm still unhappy w/my children's reading material. Harry Potter even bores me and there are only so many things you can do with boogers. Yes my children constantly have books in hands however "I" have learned so much about sharks and whales. I'm totally bored with Junie B and her silly antics and I think my 7 year old daughter is also. The Grossology 'collection' is well, gross. And we all know the powers of Batman, Spiderman, The Hulk as well as Barbie and the Twelve Dancing Princesses.

So off to the the Unabridged bookstore we go just to weave between isles of nude art books placed very close to the children's section (hmmm?), before we exit with Diary of a Wimpy Kid. BTW, we went to that particular bookstore because it is directly across the street from their school. Today I had a ...hmmm...what should I call it? An elightening moment, which might come across as somewhat silly: I thought, why don't I go through my personal library and see what might be in there that might intrigue, inspire and not to mention motivate us to read more and spend more time together. BOY!!! was I glad I thought of that dusty bookcase. As I pushed aside The Spiral Dance, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, Nitzsche, Derrida, Shakespeare and the rest of the heavies, I found the most wonderful books..

The hunt for the 'right' books triggered a memory of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which I then found online. I think that is the book we will begin tonight emmulating a night in the old Hollywood movies when there was no television and everyone sat around a room taking turns reading a story. That will become our new ritual. Viewing myelf as a somewhat progressive individual and parent, I can imagine someone thinking, 'oh, poor kids.' LOL Of course there is always that possibility but in this case I'll choose to believe that the positive will outweigh any negative, which I can't imagine existing at all.

Let me tell you what I 'found' right behind me: Short Story Masterpieces from Faulkner, Elizabeth Parson, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway just to name a few. The Tao Of Pooh will be an amazing book to read together. Stephen King's Pet Sematary (perfect since Halloween is around the corner). Emmanuel's Book and my ALL TIME FAVORITE Autobiography of a Yogi by Parmahansa Yogananda:-) I'm going to take some time today to refresh my memory on the genre here in order to make sure the content is suitable. However, whatever these classics contain must be better than iCarly or Spongebob OR Big Time Rush...ugh:-)

Last night we tried our first night of literature and started with Greek Mythology. Can anyone say B O R I N G?:-) I wanted nothing to do with it and neither did they; I acted interested but they're no dummies. So tonight will be fun and I look forward to it. We will light the scented candles, put pillows on the office floor and see what happens.

Please don't misunderstand, my children always have the option to read their fun kid books on dinosaurs, etc... I just thought it might not only be fun but also a good idea to expose them to what great books are out there that they are certainly missing in school. Maybe they will get something special out of it. I know I will; the two of them close to me sharing 'quality' time together:-)

Here is an excerpt of tonight's read:


I can see by my watch, without taking my hand from the left grip of the
cycle, that it is eight-thirty in the morning. The wind, even at sixty miles
an hour, is warm and humid. When it's this hot and muggy at eightthirty,
I'm wondering what it's going to be like in the afternoon.

In the wind are pungent odors from the marshes by the road. We are in an area of the Central Plains filled with thousands of duck hunting sloughs,
heading northwest from Minneapolis toward the Dakotas. This highway is
an old concrete two-laner that hasn't had much traffic since a four-laner

went in parallel to it several years ago. When we pass a marsh the air
suddenly becomes cooler. Then, when we are past, it suddenly warms up again.

I'm happy to be riding back into this country. It is a kind of nowhere,
famous for nothing at all and has an appeal because of just that. Tensions
disappear along old roads like this. We bump along the beat-up concrete
between the cattails and stretches of meadow and then more cattails and
marsh grass. Here and there is a stretch of open water and if you look
closely you can see wild ducks at the edge of the cattails. And turtles. --
There's a red-winged blackbird.

I whack Chris's knee and point to it.

``What!'' he hollers.

``Blackbird!''

He says something I don't hear.``What?'' I holler back.

He grabs the back of my helmet and hollers up, ``I've seen lots of those,
Dad!''

``Oh!'' I holler back. Then I nod. At age eleven you don't get very impressed
with red-winged blackbirds.

(Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Rober M. Pirsig)