One myth and three facts:
1. Myth. I've been told that at age four, I picked up a book ("Henrietta and her Ducks", I think), and read it to my mother. Without being taught how to read. I doubt the veracity of this particular story, but am grateful for it, because it suggested that both reading and I were special, and a lifelong connection between me and reading was established.
2. Fact. I read more books that anyone in my first grade class.
3. Fact. I used to read and walk at the same time. Once I walked into a parked car in a driveway while doing this and knocked the wind out of myself and fell down. No one saw me, which was a good thing.
4. Fact. I can read through just about any kind of noise or other distraction.
Sadly, I don't read novels so much anymore. Knitting, computer time, gardening, and Netflix are impinging on my reading time. And maybe fiction has lost some of its necessary appeal since I've been lucky to create a real world that I want to inhabit. Lately, though, I've been thinking about stealing some reading time back.
I'm enjoying this book, "Those Who Save Us" by Jenna Blum a great deal. The plotting is a little pat, but the voice is lovely....and I've appreciated to degree to which I've been drawn by her words into the world she has created. It's a story of a mother and daughter both dealing with their experiences as Germans in Nazi Germany. There's a moral complexity to the book that reminds me of my recent visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. The main museum there is structured as a historical visit through the Nazi years in Germany, and one of the aspects of the Holocaust that it evoked was the way that no one escaped dilemmas about their human goodness or lack of, a major theme of this quietly powerful novel.
Of course, the dog, who is a rescue mutt, and I, who was born into a safer time and place, are very grateful for the scale of our dilemmas. To read or to knit, to sleep in the sun or the shade. Not much drama, but I prefer to have my drama in what I read over how I live.
If you're a reader, I'd suggest you check out Karie's blog, and this post by Tiennie, in which she shows off some lovely baby knits and directs you to Shelfari, where you can see what she's been reading. Good ideas for your next book in both places.
And let me know here what you've been reading....but only if you like it.

