Blogging is no easy feat...

Yeah, so I just spent a bunch of time trying to choose a new template but couldn't find any I liked well enough. Next, I wasted a bunch of time trying to upload my OWN picture onto my background, with a little help from the web, but no luck there. No more of that for me tonight. I linked a few pics to my WIPocalypse page and called it good.

This month's NaBloPoMo theme is gifts and, while I have posted for now 6 days in a row, I have not really posted much about gifts so far. It's been all stitchy related stuff, which I am sure is why my readers come here. But I'll switch over to gifts for today because I am actually a little tired of stitchy stuff (gasp!?!?! That's shocking, I know.)

Aside from material things, there are many non-tangible gifts I would like to give my boys. One of those is a love of reading. I love to read (although my time for reading and pursuit of the pasttime has waxed and waned with the seasons of my life so far.) My husband has never really had a love of reading, although in his latter years (like, the last five or so) he has become a reader of financial books and magazines.

I want our boys to enjoy reading. They don't have to love it (although it would be wonderful if they did) but I want them to at least appreciate the value of reading an interesting story.

I think I've succeeded. I read to them as young children. I took them to the library at least once a week and I surrounded them with books. I took books in the car with us when they were preschool age and to this day, they still have to bring something with them to read or draw or whatever when they are in the car.

When we discovered audio books, we would listen almost every night to something. It was like an old-time radio show and I enjoyed classic stories from my childhood like "The Phantom Tollbooth", "Where the Red Fern Grows", and even "Island of the Blue Dolphins", a book that was beyond their reading level at the time, but not beyond their listening level. I also found new-to-me children's books that I still think about and remember fondly like "The Scarecrow and His Boy" and the "The Adventures of Edward Tulane".

Harry Potter was the catalyst for moving beyond picture books to chapter books. I started reading the first book to them on a roadtrip to Yellowstone when they were eight and six years old. My oldest spent two hours one day rereading the first few chapters. He was a slow reader and had a hard time with unfamiliar words, but that was the beginning for him. After the third book, we switched to the audio books which is still one of their favorite series to listen to.

The other thing that I did to help foster a love of reading was made reading 30-45 minutes one of their daily "chores" before they could play video games. The books could be of their choosing, but it had to be words, not picture books or comic books. Now that they are in 6th and 7th grade, I don't require it anymore (they do a lot of reading at school), but I do pick up books and audio books at the library that I think they might like and strew them in their path.

One of my biggest delights has been that my oldest (who is 13 now) listened to the audio books of the Lord of the Rings trilogy this year and declared that they were his favorite books next to Harry Potter. (He said they were even better than Harry Potter. *sigh of joy*) Truthfully, Harry Potter really drew me in, too. I still mourn the ending of that series. I will read it again in the next few years, I am sure. Just as I will listen to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Again.

In the meantime, after many years of sporadic adult reading (due to small children and school and work), I am finally finding the time to read. It's hard, though, sometimes to find just the right book. I am picky. If I am reading fiction, I want to read something that will really move me. I don't need some existential "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" type of book. I don't want to read drivel. I want a book where I really get into the characters. I want a book I can't put down.

I'm always open to suggestions.