In Praise of Books

My husband looked at my Amazon wishlist and pooh-poohed it. It’s full of - wait for it -

BOOKS!

Dear God, what was I thinking???

This cracks me up. I remember going to buy a book for one of my nieces and being told “are you crazy” by my sister. Apparently other people don’t think books are the amazing, awesome, wonderful fun thing I thought they were.

Now I had my share of Barbie’s and dolls and crafts and my share of not getting that electronic thing my cousins got because they were boys as a kid - so don’t get me wrong - but let me tell you, when I saw that shape and size that could ONLY be a new book, my heart would pound. Was it a new Nancy Drew? Or maybe “Wrinkle in Time”? Or something different?

To this day, I LOVE gift certificates for bookshops. This summer, I took a long and boring (REALLY boring) survey at Adobe.com because they were giving away $25 Amazon gift certificates.

My kids are little, but seem to like books so far. I hope it stays with them and that reading is fun for them, not a chore. I love the excitement of a whole brand new world opening up - especially if it’s an exceptional quality fantasy book (rare to find, Ursula K. LeGuin and JK Rowling notwithstanding).

To be frank, all that reading made me a bit smarter than my fellow schoolmates I think. It IS good for your brain. So if your kids love to read, embrace it. It’ll make life easier for them. I mean they need to read a ton in high school and 10 times more in college, and some really dry stuff too. Read to them, read with them, let them read comic books (which I love) and cereal boxes, and don’t laugh.