Summer Reading

The other day, the teenager posed a question that is impossible for me to answer: Mom, what is your favorite book?

I can't answer this question.  I have too many favorite books.  Even if you asked me to name five favorite books, or ten, I'm not sure I could do it without feeling badly about the books I had left off my list.  Some books I love because they're just really good stories- Stephen King's The Stand, for example, which I have probably read about sixty times, or the entire Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon.  Because I was also a park ranger, I feel an affinity for Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon books;  a few years ago we went on a family road trip down the Natchez Trace in Mississippi over spring break, and when I realized I was standing on the same ground as Anna Pigeon had in Hunting Season, it was almost a spiritual experience (yes, I am aware that Anna Pigeon is a fictional character).

See why I can't name just one favorite book? 

Some books I love because they speak to my nature loving soul- A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold is at the top of that list.  Every now and then I go back and read Jane Austen, just because her whole take on English society at that time makes me laugh- if you have five thousand pounds per year, you are quite the catch on the marriage market. If you have nothing, forget it.  I would be doomed.  I'd probably end up as a governess in some remote English village, unwed forever. 

Summer vacation, to me, always meant more time to read.  I happily spent hours reading, oblivious to anything else that was going on around me.  I could stay up until 2 AM reading science fiction books I'd checked out by the dozen at the library without having to sneak a flashlight under my bedspread to read in secret.  Later in life, I knew I was on the right track to parenting success when I caught the teenager doing exactly the same thing.   I would lay out in the back yard or at the neighborhood pool, slathered in suntan oil in the futile hopes of acquiring that summer tan, while reading anything I could get my hands on.  I wonder what the librarians at the local library thought when I returned books that were somewhat damp on the bottom and had sticky pages from popsicle juice fingerprints.

Now that I'm a grown-up, I can't stay up all night reading, although I would like to.  Ok, scratch that last sentence.  Sometimes I do (although by "all night", what I really mean is 11 PM) and the only thing that gets me through the next day is a huge mug of coffee and sheer willpower. 

Somewhat recently, I've discovered audio books, which I listen to during my daily commute.  I tend to talk to the person reading the book, even though I'm sure they can't hear me.  I have to be careful not to get too involved in the story because I am, after all, operating a motor vehicle.  

The other day, I took the teenager to Half Price Books to get some of the books on her summer reading list for next year's English class.  She asked me if I was going to buy anything and I said no, I had enough books already.  She walked out with three books, and I walked out with Edward O. Wilson's Naturalist, a book that had been on my reading list for awhile.  The next day, we went to a friend's house, and while I visited with the other moms and the boys splashed each other in the pool, the teenager sat in the shallow end and read George Orwell's Animal Farm. That one wasn't on her list, she said, she just wanted to read it.

I felt the warm, fuzzy glow of parental joy.  The summer reading tradition has been passed down to the next generation.