Summer Bribes

When I joined my DNA with my husband's, there were many unanswered questions. Would my recessive blonde genes triumph over his green eyes and dark hair?  Would our kids inherit his more mathematical and logical mind?  Would his laid back attitude trump my more tightly wired list-making one?  No matter. Those were all things we had little or no control over.

But I did feel certain of one thing:  our kids would be avid readers.

When I think back to my childhood, and the one my husband describes, we both loved to disappear into a world of books.  Reading took us to new places, requiring only imagination to color in the lines or draw the landscape.  

I fell just a little bit more in love with Bob when he first described his boyhood self to me as a kid “buried in a book.”  That’s when I knew, among other things, that he was the man for me.  Naturally, we would create a little cache of eager beaver readers.  Forget nature—that part was all about nurture, right?

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Oh, hang on a tick, no one in my household is illiterate, no one is using rope for a belt or wears cardboard shoes.  All four of my kids have a decent grasp on current events.  But much to my great sorrow, they don’t read for pleasure.  So if you are one of the lucky people whose progeny devour books like Halloween fun-size candy bars, you can stop reading now.   We need not feel the sting of your smugness.

I got through July and I put my foot down. Summer was half over! The tide had to turn.  I announced to my 13 year olds that they would read or lose their allowance.  Read beyond their summer reading assignments and, well, there would be a new article of clothing in it for them.

Admitting this two-pronged “punitive plus bribery” approach to making my kids read, feels a little like standing up in an AA meeting and announcing that I’m an alcoholic.

But I figure, if I out myself, maybe some of the rest of you won’t be so hard on yourselves.  You’ll abandon the unproductive search for where you failed, after years of modeling solid recreational reading habits, countless bedtime stories and dedicated visits to your public library. It’s a jungle out there in the world of modern childhood— the concept of reading for fun today feels more like being the Victorian bathing costume in the Miss America Bikini Contest--- its just not as sexy as its technologically entertaining competitors.

Bribing kids to read?  Horrors, say the ghosts of child librarians past.  I wasn’t beneath using Skittles as a reward for potty training.  Is this really any different?  Isn’t regular reading as essential as proper pooping if you’re going to thrive in this world? 

As an author I have the pleasure of knowing and working with some wonderful people in the book business. So I canvassed a few industry folks and came up with a stack of current YA books.  I’m no dummy.  I’m not going to try to force-feed Jane Austen right now.  I chose the Harry Potter-style lane. Every crack addict knows you need to begin with a gateway drug.

“All Our Pretty Songs” by Sarah McCarry was first up, a new YA summer entry that got great reviews.  My girls looked over the cover, their summer freckles furrowing as they read the flap; Cool Hand Lukes, those two, careful not to display too much overt enthusiasm.  An eyebrow raised in interest.  The lure and hook snagged in the fish’s mouth.  Success, I thought to myself, displaying my poker face.

I gathered titles like “Social Code,” “Fan Girl” and “Prep School Confidential.”  These books also had wonderful cover art to sweeten the offering, a short skirt here, a mysterious kissy face there.  Hah! Take that you addictive TV series, you seductively shot  “Gossip Girl” and fake blood strewn “Vampire Diaries” episodes! Yes, yes, shame on me.  I do permit them to watch these shows, but I’m what you call an “almost-everything-in-moderation” kind of mother.  Current pop culture has its own important place in adolescence. 

 

The books arrived.  And so they read.

Here we are now, in the early days of August.  Just before lights out, the three of us tuck in, we open our books, stretch out our legs on the bed, the moths beat against the screens in the hushed dark outside. There’s a bullfrog or two, singing baritone with all this recent rain.  OK, OK, so I over-dramatized the scene a little, it does feel sorta triumphant.  And it’s blissfully quiet inside, no vampire victims are screaming on TV, no Park Avenue prepsters are tossing their highlighted manes and huffing away on their Tory Burches.

There is only the flickering of the theater of our minds.  Only the sound of we three drawing breath.  We are reading.  Pure happiness.

Perhaps we will work our way to iconic titles like “The Wind in the Willows,” (although that window has probably passed) “Little Women,”  “The Hobbit” or any of the endless classics that could enrich their sponge-like minds.  Or not.  Is it important that my girls have read Thackeray or can recite sonnets of William Wordsworth or stanzas from William Shakespeare?  Or do we march on now, in the full glare of the information age, with a morphing view of what it means to be well read and well educated?  Quotes and poems and answers lie but a keystroke or two away now on Google.  Do studying Latin and Greek make one especially erudite?  Or obsolete?  What is the future of the “great books” and how will that definition change through the generations?  Who is writing the great books of our time?

Sigh.  All these questions!  I just don’t know.  What I do know is that my girls are reading.  They are marinating in the pure pleasure of delving into a real, live, paper paged book.  And yes, they will redeem their promised reward.  Fair is fair.  A deal is a deal.  They’ll pick a cute top or a skirt at Target as we head out of the mountains after Labor Day and begin to brace for the return of school, chauffeuring and schedules.

 

But here is the thing that gives me hope.  It’s the reminder that all of that foundation laying, all of that work we did as parents in the reading department, lurks somewhere inside like the herpes virus, just waiting to flare up.

 

My 19 year old asked me for book recommendations this summer—she actually asked ME!  And please do NOT tell her I’m writing this.  Aware that I could scare her off by lending her my more literary faves, I quickly pulled down choices like Tina Fey’s “Bossypants” and “Gone Girl.”  I slipped in “The Light Between Oceans,” and that clever Sloan Crosleys “I Was Told There’d Be Cake.”  Finally, I thought I’d dazzle her with Mindy Kaling’s “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?” just to prove my cool factor is intact.  I must have smiled all the way to bed that night.

 

So take hope ye mother’s of children connected to their cell phones and computers.  Don’t despair you parents of instagrammers and Facebook friends.  I share this as a tale of courage that somewhere, around the bend, you might just witness the payback, all those years after the initial investment.

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In Praise of Indies

This is not one of those stories where the supermodel tells you she was home alone with her cat on prom night.  I did go to prom and I kissed a boy. But at the same time, for most of my childhood, I was the kid in the corner of the room curled up with a book, not the one joining organized sports teams or taping up teen idol posters. I can't remember if the term "nerd" was alive in the early 70’s, but you get the picture.  Drawing horses and reading were my two favorite past times.  Let's just say that doesn't set you up for a membership in the Gossip Girl cool club.

 

Many childhood afternoons, I rode my bike to the Delmar Public library in upstate New York. The librarians and I were on a first name basis. They helped me select piles of books that introduced me to imaginary lives, mysteries, history and biography.  Double bonus, Ellen Harris, the cool Mod Squad hippie-ish children’s librarian was also our occasional babysitter.  Checking out books with my own library card had the grown up élan I associated with whipping out a credit card.  And when I devoured those reads at home, I inhabited alternate universes, fed my head and stretched my vocabulary.

 

I married a man whose career took us to many different cities.  In each one I acquired a succession of library cards to match my growing collection of state driver’s licenses.  And eventually, as a mother, I would haunt the children's sections of my town libraries once again, directing my kids toward timeless reads like the Babar series, the Wind in the Willows or The Lonely Doll, a childhood favorite.

 

And while we were regular patrons of our libraries, it was the local bookstores that became my personal sanctuaries, my mental watering holes.  Back when mothering four children could feel like fighting against the undertow, I would have described a perfect day as “being alone in a bookstore.”  I still would.

 

I am drawn to bookstores the way others migrate to clothing boutiques or shoe sales.   Here's what happens. The door opens, the bell tinkles and a beatific look overtakes my face.  I love the absence of a shopping soundtrack. There is no migraine thumping bass in the Abercrombie dressing room, no “Nine Inch Nails” blasting away so as to quicken hand tremors and force premature surrender of the plastic as I plot my exit from mall girl hell.

 

 

Nope.  This is bliss. The hushed interior, the shelved cache of rabbit holes into other worlds and other lives.   Sometimes there is an espresso machine puffing in the back, a worn comfy chair, an invitation to sit and linger.  And the books!  All those crisp hardbacks lined up like soldiers, the distressed pine tables groaning with proven paperbacks, the old faithfuls in the back, arranged by category. And those colorful jackets!  Oh, the books that catch my eye like stained glass.   Even an artfully designed “so-so” read can seduce like a painted whore in soft light.

 

And then I'm jonesing like an addict entering a crack den.  Books are my crystal meth.   Friends and family members have had to literally tug me out of bookstores on occasion.  I can get that gone.

 

Bookstore employees in the towns in which I’ve lived came to learn my tastes and recommend new or unfamiliar titles.  We'd parse reviews like bookies at the track.  There was small talk and gossip, the questions about each other’s children and families or a mutual friend.  At some point in the conversation I'd feel like the party's social climber, making polite conversation while scanning the crowd for bigger game. One eye was always running up and down the shelves looking for the latest read or a book I’d kept meaning to add to my list.

 

When I became a published author in 2007 with the release of In an Instant, I appreciated the value of libraries and bookstores from a different perspective than that of customer.  On my first book tour I had the pleasure of meeting some of the owners at iconic independent stores like Powell’s in Portland, Andersons in Naperville, Politics & Prose in DC and Book Passage in Marin County.  Numerous Barnes & Nobles welcomed me to the back office to sign stock, then un-stacked the chairs and invited people to come meet me on the PA system (always a slightly awkward moment to be a literary blue light special).

 

I learned to grow comfortable with popping unannounced in places like the Concord Bookshop outside of Boston or Bookshelf in Truckee, CA when visiting my brother-in-law, to introduce myself and sign their copies of my books.  That was me, yesterday, in the airport bookstore, bedraggled and puffy-eyed, pointing at the glam-ish author photo in the inside flap to convince the clerk who I was while aggressively offering to “sign some stock."  Ahhh, the joys of self-promotion.

 

Our Indies are the conch-holders, the pulse-takers of their communities.  They are a taproot for the book clubs, schools, the ladies groups and readers in their areas. They are the aggregators, event planners, gatekeepers and bulletin boards for the cultural happenings in their area. 

 

Many bookstore proprietors have put their own personal touches on my tours, driving me to a venue, offering a cup of tea or allowing me to "pick a book for my girls" after a talk (thank you RJ Julia in Madison CT).  How could I ever forget Viv and Roger at Rainy Day Books in Kansas City who demonstrated how they grease the folding table so we could slide and sign all 500 books with assembly line speed?  I’ve kept up with many of these folks personally and I consider my relationships with them a great privilege.  They are book people. That makes them my kind of people.

 

 

On September 11, Hyperion published my first work of fiction.  I was over the moon when Those We Love Most made the New York Times Bestseller list and I was pleased, ok, totally pumped, to read the reviews.   And then my publisher told me that I'd been selected as an “Indie Next Pick” for September.  Reading that list and the insights into the titles continually reminds me why our hometown bookstores are gems, why they really matter.  It's because the owners and staff read the books, they delve deeper, they comment and discuss, they start and advance the conversation.  They get excited.  I like to hang out with people who get excited.

 

As I crisscross the country on a book tour schedule that pals have exclaimed "makes them tired just to read," I'm gearing up to visit with old friends and add some new ones.  I’m eager to meet readers and friends at Big Hat Books in Indianapolis, Common Good Books in St. Paul, Elm Street in New Canaan, and Tattered Cover in Denver, to name a few.  I can’t wait to walk back through the door of the Book Stall in Winnetka, Illinois, the picturesque town in which we lived that formed the basis for the setting of my first novel, Those We Love Most.

 

In the spring I’m determined to get to Just One More Page in Arlington, VA, Brookline Booksmith in Boston, People of the Book in Austin or maybe Bookends in Ridgewood, New Jersey, if they have a spare night.  And Ann Patchett, you Patron Saint of Bookstores and personal She-ro of mine -- just say the word and I'll use my frequent flyer miles to get to your beloved Parnassus Books in Nashville.

 

Arcade in Rye, New York is my hometown store.  We try to buy most of our books from Patrick, who also happens to play in a jazz band.  School-assigned reading, my personal picks, gifts for friends, books on tape all lead me and my family to Arcade.  Shopping local is the only way we roll and the doors are open because many townsfolk feel the same. I hope you shop local too, those of you who are still lucky enough to have bricks and mortar bookstores in your hood.

 

 

These are scary times for bookstores.  Scary times for library funding.  Scary times for reading.  All of us who love to hold books and turn a page, borrow them from the library or read them on tablets (it's OK, really it is) we need to join hands and squeeze tighter.  It’s more important than ever to be a patron or customer, to re-discover the magic of getting lost in the stacks, of finding an unexpected surprise at the suggestion of a bookstore employee or a librarian.

 

And here’s why: I believe books can do good. Lives are made richer by teachers and librarians, by bookstores and the people who love books, recommend reads and encourage reading.  Reading itself may be a solitary endeavor and writing a solo enterprise, but stories have the power to connect us, sometimes in places we didn't know we could.  Stories move us.  Poems and essays, art and conversations, all of it enhances and advances our world. They are as wonderful an elixir as a walk in the woods.

 

Books simply matter.  And so with that, I’m off to pack my suitcase.  Here's hoping I see you on the road.

 

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