reading is FUNdamental

so today . . . i've spent the afternoon reading blogs.

i love to read! i always have. both of my parents are teachers and avid readers. my dad would rather read a book than watch tv, and my mom would rather read than do almost anything else (except maybe eat gummy bears!) we grew up surrounded by books. one of my favorite memories as a child was going to the library every week in the summer and bringing home stacks of books to read and then lying in the hammock in the backyard reading them. i started reading mysteries when i was in second or third grade. remember the encyclopedia brown stories? i could never guess "who dunnit?" but i loved to try.

when diandra was born, i couldn't help but have hopes and dreams for her future. and of all the things i wanted for her, near the top of the list was that she would love to read. we started reading to her long before she could talk. i knew "goodnight, moon" by heart. and she learned to read early--not because her preschool teacher mom taught her to, but because she looked at books and listened to them so much that she started learning the words by sight. i was so relieved! yes, i thought, i have raised a reader!

and then she entered the fifth grade . . .

fifth grade, by all accounts, was a terrible year for her. school issues, social issues, independence issues all collided to make it "the year we would all like to forget." but it was also the year she stopped reading for fun. she would still read for school, but if it wasn't assigned by her teacher, she wasn't reading it. this was devastating to her reader mom! i just couldn't imagine that my child didn't want to go to the library with me in the summer and check out armloads of books and then sit in the swing in the backyard and read them. and while many of her issues from that year resolved themselves in the years to come, this one did not.

i have to say, i still do not like it one little bit that she won't go to the library and get a book to read. i don't think she even has a library card! and yet, i envision her reading while she has lunch (like i do,)reading to relax (like i do,) reading before she goes to sleep (like i used to, until i got a laptop--because now instead of reading a book at night, i write my blog and read my email and read the blogs that i stalk and read messages from my friends on facebook, and read . . . )

and there it is!

you see, she does read--she just doesn't read books from the library. she reads magazines, she reads lots of blogs, she reads facebook, she reads THOUSANDS of text messages, she reads her Bible. and she writes two blogs. when i think about it, she reads a lot--she just doesn't read books from the library.

i guess as times and technologies change, so does the way we interact with our world. one of the teachers at school uploads books and reads them on her iphone. the assistant pastor at our church has something called a kindle, which is apparently like a pocket-sized computer screen onto which he can upload books and read them. there are a seemingly unlimited number of different magazines from which to choose. and if it's research you need, everything is just a click away on google.

i still read books when i am eating lunch. and during my summer vacation, sometimes i will read a whole book in one day (instead of all the other stuff i should be doing.) but i find that i spend a lot of time on the internet now, stalking blogs or researching the latest techno gadget that my mom is looking at or bookmarking stuff that i will never buy. and i guess that i have to recognize that as reading time even though no books are involved.

i love my computer and the internet and technology. but for me, nothing will ever replace that feeling i get when i go to the library, check out a stack of books, and head for the backyard . . . it's probably similar to the one diandra gets when she sees her favorite blogger has posted another entry or a new magazine has hit the newsstand . . .