The Parenting Book Club

I used to belong to a lovely book club.  I'd get together once a month with lovely people and we would talk about lovely books while drinking lovely wine and eating lovely food.  I was even tolerant and accepting of those members who did not read the books and just wanted to be there for the fun.  Normally I'm such a righteous student that I would greet this type of lackadaisical attitude toward books with total snobbery; but Book Club Dell was a forgiving sort ;)

I miss that book club which eventually dissipated although I don't know how I would manage to read a book a month with two babies under two.  Yet, the thought of sitting around and having a dialogue with other adults about tantalizing books is a delicious, if unattainable one.  For now, I acquiesce to my new primary label, MOTHER, and accept that my new book club happens extemporaneously every time I am around my friends who are either parents or nice enough folks who care about the development of my children.

My new book club eschews the works of Eliot, Alvarez, and Hosseini in favor of the child-rearing books of Sears, Ferber, Karp, etc. An English undergrad, I relish reading of any type.  Yet, I miss my literary friends.  The day I was hospitalized for hyperemesis while pregnant with Wyatt was not a fun one BUT I read two entire books.  Her Fearful Symmetry and The Birth of Venus kept me occupied.  and I loved the opportunity to be forced to slow down and enjoy my favorite way to pass the time. 

Of course, both book clubs are ultimately linked.  The reason I love literature is its ability to capture the human existence in its most beautiful and ugliest forms.  Along with characters, great books also  reflect the society, culture, and time in which they are written, offering keen insight into life.  Parenting books are similar, no?  They certainly offer invaluable detail into different types of parents and children (i.e. the characters) and they always reflect how the author was raised and who they are as a parenting educator.  Sears and Bucknam could not be further apart in their parenting views and surely this is due to either rejecting or accepting their own childhoods.

For now I know I will certainly spend more time investigating parenting books, although I surely miss the wide-open days where books were my constant companions.  It's enough for me that last week I was allowed a sublime Monday where I laid in bed all day with my three-month old boy and read The Middle Place all day long, from cover to cover--delicious.