Ah, tsundoku! The Japanese word for a book hoarder. Useful.
I don't like to think of myself as a book hoarder. In fact, I buy few books. But I give away very few. When the older kids were little, I used to go to the library book sales on the last day when it was "bag of books for $1" day, and fill up a couple of bags. Then I started to worry about weight limits when we moved, so I quit that habit and gave away a lot of those library rejects. I also pared down our home schooling collection - got rid of the textbook type books, except the Catholic Textbook project history books and The Story of the World books. I kept quite a few of our historical novels, science stories, the Eyewitness books, all the art books, most of the saint books, the science and history encyclopedias, the collections of Greek and Roman and Egyptian and Celtic mythology, and even a few books on learning and pedagogy. When these home school books are combined with my novels and my husband's architecture books, the books on theology, the remaining philosophy books from college, and the rest of the children's fiction and picture books, what happens is that we don't have room in the house for them all.
When I posted those book lists, I thought I might pare down the collection of children's fiction to just these and maybe a few more beloved favorites. Marguerite O'Henry books. James Herriott books. The Tom and Pippo books. The Emily books. The Louisa May Alcott books. The Brian Jacques books. Richard Scarry books. Tomie de Paola books. The Biggest Bear. The kids' poetry collections. Tolkien and Lewis books. And, ok, I admit, I'm glad The Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and The Lightening Thief books are on the list because the kids love them. And Greg Heffley makes me laugh.
See? It's just to hard to let books out once they come in. I even met a guy at Barnes and Noble the other day who was looking for Kierkegaard books. I told him I had a couple I keep meaning to get rid of. He gave me his number. I haven't called him. I don't ever want to read Kierkegaard again. But what if one of my teenagers does get drawn into a Great Books program? It would be nice to know Mr. K was going to a good home.
I do find it relatively easy to get rid of parenting books if they show up.
Although I am posting about books, I am not reading much right now, other than kids' books. Stuart Little is the bedtime story. I read Schooled by Gordon Korman because my 10 year old liked it and he doesn't like much, although he liked a couple other Korman books. Korman writes about misfits in the school environment, and this one is about a homeschooler from a hippy commune who's grandmother breaks her hip, so he has to go to school for a few months. He teaches his peers about nonviolence and tie-dye and the value of learning people's names and ignoring social cliques, while they teach him about friendship and tv and money. It was enjoyable.
Also started the Born to Run book that has been a bestseller. I don't need motivation to run, so much as I have an interest in other runners. I have two sons running Cross Country this year, so I have been going to some of the practices. One day they ran with the local running club on the track. It was a family night, and they were having free pizza, so we brought everyone. And I ran 800s while my husband held the baby. It felt wonderful. For a few laps everything clicked. I couldn't help smiling as I finished up. The other runners were a friendly bunch. I was glad to be back on the track briefly. So I came across The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner as I was cleaning my shelves and had to reread part of it and decide not to put it in the give-away box.
Much of my reading time has been given to reading the composition text and the internet as I try to decide what essays to assign this summer. After craving a teaching job last year, I finally got called not only by the school on the base, where I will be teaching one class one night a week, but also two local community colleges who are adding new courses. I actually said yes to one and then spent a week having anxiety attacks about trying to work. I had applied for these jobs last fall, thinking I could teach when the kids were at school, but I never cancelled my application after the baby came. As soon as I said yes, I started worrying. I couldn't eat or sleep. On the third day I woke up and had no milk. So I called back and quit before I even started. I had even found a babysitter. But as I lie there looking at my four month old and thinking about the 17 year old who is filling out ROTC scholarship forms (to my dismay), I realized I only have a very short time before Baby will go away to school. And each of my kids has needs they want my help with. Even though I had a sitter for the 4 hours of class a week, I still had to have time to plan and grade and interact with students. But I need to interact with the students who are dearest to me. I hope they'll interact with me in my old age.
So why don't I home school if I enjoy teaching so much? Partly because my kids weren't good listeners. And partly because they needed more motivation and competition to do their best. And partly for other reasons. I'm looking forward to re-sharing some of the home school books and the other childhood favorites with LCJC. Now I know which books I'm tired of reading and which I don't mind repeatedly reading. But new favorites are being written all the time. I hope she loves books!
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