After finishing The Hobbit, we decided that the next Bedtime Book for our Perfect Non-Reader should be a trifle less adventurous. Something sillier, more fun, less scary. So we read Pippi Longstocking.
It turns out that there is a brand-new translation by Tiina Nunnally, which would be interesting to read at some point. We didn’t read that. We read the good old 1947 (or whatever) translation, which now that you think about it, is a trifle clumsy and, for lack of a better word, translationy. Still. It’s so wonderful. And the Perfect Non-Reader loved it. Giggles galore.
We finished Pippi last night, and tonight we start Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of NIMH. And with that, Your Humble Blogger is at last caught up on the Book Reports. Or I think I am, at any rate. And I’m in the middle of three longish books (the new Laurie R. King, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, and a short but dense disquisition on FDR and the dynamics of public opinion and letter-writing) (oh, and I’ve picked up the Harold Nicolson diaries again, such a surprise), so it may be a few days before I am behind again…
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
Oh! Mrs. Frisbee! The Rat Race! Tell me if it’s as fun as I remember it to be, specifically marvelously fun.
Just out of curiosity (and I do apologize if, as a new reader, this has been answered before), but how do you manage to find time to read so many books? I work an eight hour job from home and co-raise my two children, and I can barely finish one book a month.
It odd what you miss when you give something up. Ever since I became a vegetarian, I have craved, not steak or Thanksgiving turkey or even chicken fingers with extra MSG, but tuna fish (with mayo on a bagel and a New York Times on the side). And ever since I became a parent, I have craved enough time to read a book. I dare not even wish for time to read a book cover to cover uninterrupted. If such a thing ever happened to me, I would be afraid I was sleeping, hallucinating, mad, scarpers.
Well, and I’m only working part-time, so that’s one thing. Another is that Pippi was a Bedtime Book for my Perfect Non-Reader (who was dubbed that back before she could read), so that’s not time off from parentwork but time doing parentwork. Also, I read very fast, and I read a lot of short, simple books (as you may have noticed) and I re-read a lot of books (essentially half the books I read are re-reads). But no, I haven’t read a book in one sitting, cover to cover, for … um, six years? Maybe more.
Thanks,
-V.