Most advice you read on breastfeeding seem to create two categories: women who prize breastfeeding as an almost spiritual experience and give their full and undivided attention at every feed, and women who view it as strictly business and can't wait for the day they wean.
The first is a little melodramatic and unrealistic, and the second is a little sad. I love the time I feed my baby, and I try to give Kekoa my full and undivided attention for a few feeds each day so that he will love it too. BUT every mom needs "me" time too, even if it means free time where I'm pinned down with a baby on my lap.
So I started reading. The Kindle only requires one hand to turn pages, so it's easy to manage without fumbling around. And I'm moving through books a lot faster than I expected!
When Josh started school, I made myself a list of books to read by the time he graduated. Below (italics are the ones I finished during his first year):
1. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Baum)
2. The Deerslayer (Cooper)
3. The Hunt for Red October (Clancy)
4. A Rose for Emily (Faulkner)
5. The Man Who Knew Too Much (Chesterton)
6. The Face (Koontz)
7. Atlas Shrugged (Rand)
8. Love in the Ruins (Percy)
9. Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck)
10. The Greatest Man in the World (Thurber)
11. Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut)
12. Catcher in the Rye (Salinger)
13. For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway)
14. How to Win Friends and Influence People (Carnegie)
15. Swiss Family Robinson (Wyss)
16. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Covey)
17. Catch-22 (Heller)
18. Into the Wild (Krakauer)
19. The Divine Comedy (Dante) - I've read Inferno, but not the others
20. East of Eden (Steinbeck)
21. The Thin Red Line (Jones)
22. His Dark Materials (Pullman)
23. Tess of the D'Ubervilles (Hardy)
24. Rebecca (Du Maurier)
25. The Time Traveller's Wife (Niffeneggar)
27. The Wind in the Willows (Grahame)
28. Emma (Austen)
29. Persuasion (Austen)
30. The Kite Runner (Hosseini)
31. Memoirs of a Geisha (Golden)
32. Winnie the Pooh (Milne)
33. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Marquez)
34. Life of Pi (Martel)
35. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
36. The Lovely Bones (Sebold)
37. The Secret Garden (Burnett) - how had I never read this one???? I read the Great Illustrated Classics when I was young.
38. The Little Prince (Saint-Exupery)
39. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Dahl) - I still love the old movie the best, but reading the book helped me appreciate the new movie as well.
40. Five People You Meet in Heaven
42. Northanger Abbey (Austen)
43. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Doyle)
44. Kidnapped (Stevenson)
45. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (Pyle)
46. Flowers for Algernon (Keyes)
47. The Time Machine (Wells)
48. The War of the Worlds (Wells)
49. The Art of War (Sunzi)
50. Leaves of Grass (Whitman)
51. The Turn of the Screw (James)
52. The Hunger Games (Collins)
53. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Hugo)
54. The House of the Spirits (Allende)
55. Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury)
56. David Copperfield (Dickens)
57. Zorro (Allende)
58. Ask Jeeves (Wodehouse)
59. Three Men and a Maid (Wodehouse)
60. The Kingkiller Chronicles (the third book is not yet released, I've read the first two)
61. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Kesey)
As you can see, the goal was to be as varied as possible - in writing style, era, topics, cultures, and viewpoints. These are all books I had never read. They made the list because (a) it sounded interesting and I wanted to read it; (b) it was recommended to me; (c) it is a classic and I wanted to be able to say I've read it :P (also, because classics are often referenced and I like understanding those references); or (d) it was free on the kindle.
When I got pregnant, I assumed that I probably wouldn't finish my list. I was okay with that. But I didn't anticipate the time I would have during feedings, and reading is far better than browsing youtube.
60 books. Three years. I've finished (or put down) 27 of them, which leaves me with 33 remaining. Some of them I know I'll love. Others are complete wild cards - I may hate them, love them, or not make it past the first chapter. With literally thousands of books in the world, I don't like to waste time on bad ones.
What I need from you are suggestions for a few more. I would like to reach 75 books total, which I think is reasonable (I worked full-time through most of Josh's first year, and not all the books I read were on this list. So 24 each year should be very doable).
Please, any favorites? Must-reads? Little-known discoveries?
I've heard good things about "When people are big and God is small" by Welch. Not sure if it fits the genre you are looking for, but I've had it in the back of my mind to read for the past several years. Perhaps being tied to a baby on a daily basis will cause me to actually pick it up (if I can master holding, nursing, and flipping pages, hee hee).
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