Summer Reading

One of the things we longed most for in non-English speaking Asia was English books.

Teachers and book lovers often encourage others to read by explaining that a book can take to you far away places. But, the reverse is also true. Sometimes, when you are in a far away place, all you really want is a good book to take you back home again. When I was living far away I read lots of novels with American settings.

I also read as much as I could on China. Delving into Peter Hessler's true accounts, Lisa See and Amy Tan's fictionalized ones, and any resource material I could find on living abroad. Expats loved to read titles banned in China, and tattered copies of Wild Swans floated around among playgroup mums and coffee klatches. (The Chinese government also curiously banned any book, however innocuous, that contained maps that indicated Taiwan as a separate country and/or government from the mainland.)

Each Home Leave we would load up a suitcase full ... fifty pounds of reading material in a roller case. Eventually, a small English language book store opened in QD, for which we were grateful, but the selection was somewhat limited. Mr Johnson and I would download books from Kindle onto our iPhone, risking carpel tunnel as we flicked each read paragraph from the minuscule screen. But at $10 a pop, it grew expensive.

What I longed most for was a library. And, when we landed last December, securing library cards was one of the first priorities on our list!

This summer we've all been enjoying our local library's summer reading program. MGJ, in the youth category, marks the books she has read on a slip to be added in with the slips of other readers her age. She won the first week's drawing for her age group. (She's now saving her slips for the final drawing where the grand prize is a Nook.) The younger girls are plugging away, earning a 'golden coin' to be used at the Medieval Faire at the culmination of the program. Earlier this week we learned that both EHJ and MGJ won the book mark design contest. Soon the library will generate copies of their designs for distribution to the community!

I've enjoyed reading too... picking up a number of books that were so good I thought they'd be worth mentioning here. Book report post coming soon!