Pulling the Plug (on Television): Reading Together

When I was a boy my mother and I would read the same book and then talk about the characters, places, themes and ideas the book contained. It is in this way I read Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End and J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings books. It was like a mini-book club. I remember writing down ideas that bloomed, descriptions of place which became the scaffolding from which a whole world emerged in my imagination and thoughts or lines characters uttered which touched essence of being human so profoundly to give the work the heft of trueness. The times of sharing each others discoveries in the books we read together are some of my most dear memories I have of her.

When I thought about raising children I so much wanted to do this with them. So far I've had little success with my son, Dashiell. Attempts have ended in the books not being read by him. I'll blame television and the other flickering surfaces in our life. I hope to get him to read one of my favorites, Ender's Game, before it comes out in a movie later this year.

However, Olivia, 10, seem keen to do this with me.

I bought Olivia a Kindle her birthday last October but it's spent two of it's three months life span lost in her room. She found it last week. (But has left it a school Friday so she can't read on it during this long weekend.) Since her Kindle is linked to mine by the same Amazon account we can read the same 'copy' on each of our Kindle. Last week we started reading the Hunger Games together.

Olivia told me Friday night she was already on chapter three and so I stared the book Saturday night and finished it Sunday.

Olivia had already reported the world which the protagonist, Katniss, lives in was “dark.”  This prompted my wife to ask if it was 'too dark' for a ten year old. Considering the Brother Grim fairy tales and the fact that Disney has yet to create a movie where the one or both of main character's parents are not dead, or die during the movie, I can't see how an imaginary future dystopia could be damaging to my daughter's already streetwise sensibilities.

Hopefully she'll get her Kindle back tomorrow and finish the book and we can have our Father-Daughter Book Club discussion.