When I was on vacation, we took time as a family every day to stop and read. To stop working or playing and allow our minds to delve into the pages of whatever book we happened to be focusing on at the moment.
Prior to vacation, I was ravenously completing book after book and couldn’t get enough as the words leapt from the pages and created movies in my mind as I recreated the scenes the authors crafted so eloquently. That’s how I read… as does mini-me… creating movies in my mind and “seeing” the words come to life. That’s likely why it’s so enjoyable for me to read whereas the Giant, who doesn’t see the words come to life as I do, finds reading to be a chore.
Now that I’m back from vacation, life went from zero to sixty in no time flat. Dinners and drinks with friends, movie events, and even a spa date with my lovely friend Traci have all meant limited “me time” and during that, I’ve come to realize I haven’t even cracked my book back open. I’m also saddened that even with how busy I’ve been catching up with friends, there are still some I’ve barely spoken with since before I left.
This week is shaping up to be no different…
And yet…
The world is so full of the hustle and bustle and chaos of everyday life – running errands, cultivating friendships, traffic, entertainment – that sometimes we forget to just stop. Stop and think. Exercise our imaginations. Spend time sharing some new nugget or idea with a like-minded friend who might be reading the same book or, if you are really lucky, sitting in the silence with those you care about and just “being” in each others presence. Not demanding anything from the other but truly sitting in a comfortable silence while you both enjoy each other’s company.
Next month I’ll embark on another 2 weeks/4 weekends straight of mommy-palooza and I think I need to bring back a few things to my world. I’m looking forward to spending some time with the boys playing games, reading, having family dinners.
Sounds silly but reconnecting on a personal level in such a connected world is something it’s far too easy to forget. And yet… it’s a level of intimacy with our loved ones that I think many of us crave.
For me and mine, we will be dedicating time each evening, after family dinner, to turning of the electronics (yes, even my phone…) for an hour or two to go back to a time before electronic babysitters… a time before my friends lived in my phone… a time where we actually had to TALK to each other or sit in silence while we read…then share what we are reading.
In preparation for the coming weeks, I’ve renewed our library cards and have been scouring the intergoogles for recommended reading lists. I think my favorite list was the one I found on Goodreads of 100 Books You Should Read In A Lifetime but really, I’d love to hear from you. What are y’all reading and/or recommending? Anything that my tween and teen should check out?
I’m a slow reader. For it to stick, I have to read at the pace I’d read it aloud, so it takes forever for me to finish a book. Sometimes that keeps me from starting a book in the first place. Mostly, I’ve been reading my daughter’s YA fiction. I really enjoyed the Divergent series and the Unwind series. Planning to tackle the Song of Fire and Ice books but worried the tv series might have ruined me. Watching so many story lines is hard enough. Keeping track of all those characters on the page/in my head could get difficult. I also have to be able to pronounce a character name to stand reading it.
I have Divergent and that is coming up on my reading list. I’ll have to check out the unwind series
I read at bedtime, on my Kindle app or with a “real book”. I also sneak reading in wherever I can, whether it is at lunch or a few minutes in the evening when my husband and son are otherwise occupied. I can’t go a day without reading. It’s my break from reality! Earlier this month I finished the series A Song of Ice and Fire, which was superbly detailed, and the plot lines are well done. I can see why the tv show Game of Thrones is so popular, although I’ve not watched an episode. My summer reading has been more of the brain candy kind, with a lot of bodice rippers, and cookbooks. I will tell you that Benjamin Saenz’s “Carry Me Like Water” is a great read, if you haven’t already done so.
I struggled to try to read the Song of Fire and Ice series and really wanted to get into it but didn’t. It’s time to make more time for reading again for sure though.
Oh reading. My favorite thing to do. Period. And I just can’t seem to find time to fit it in. I think it’s some laziness on my part, though, and I could certainly do better to carve out some time. I need to put my phone down more.
On the plus side, I’ve been reading lots of great books to Phee lately and that’s so much fun. We’re reading aloud things that I never read as a kid- she’s loving it and I’m loving it, too, since I didn’t catch them the first time around.
I loved reading to the boys. Now they get to read to me 🙂