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Feb. 16th, 2004 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fleaBooks read:
Sweet Dreams, by Paul Fleiss. This is a book about sleep problems in babies and children. It belongs to the "throw-it-across-the-room" subgenre of parenting books, and I'm a pretty tolerant reader. It's not the content, so much, rather the tone, which is about the most condescending I have ever read. The basic message is "if you love your child enough he will sleep through the night." The author also has a minor but disturbing obsession with penises - mentions repeatedly the normalcy of nocturnal erections in children, which I suppose might freak out an innocent mother (?), and seems convinced that circumcision causes sleep diturbances in males. Now, I'm not very pro-circumcision, but I don't think it's keeping 4 year olds awake nights.
Dispatches froma Not-So-Perfect-Life, Faulkner Fox. This is a memoir of motherhood by my neighbor, a woman I am connected to by a number of strands of social intercourse. It is VERY STRANGE to read a book like this - it's deeply personal and exposing - by someone you know, but not intimately. I have also heard her read from it, and read aloud by the author it is much funnier and more pointed social commentary. Read in print, it came across as a lot of complaining. I don't think I can judge it on its merits because I can't erase my knowledge of the author, her husband, her kids.
A Rural Life, Verlyn Klinkenborg. This, mostly, collected brief editorials he wrote for the NYT, seasonal musings from his place in upstate NY. He has horses, and is currently (May, which is as far as I've gotten) considering a pig. Very restful, very precisely observed nature. Not very suited to reading on the bus, which is what I am doing - I wish I had the leisure to read one snippet each morning in predawn quiet (after a long restful nights sleep).
Sweet Dreams, by Paul Fleiss. This is a book about sleep problems in babies and children. It belongs to the "throw-it-across-the-room" subgenre of parenting books, and I'm a pretty tolerant reader. It's not the content, so much, rather the tone, which is about the most condescending I have ever read. The basic message is "if you love your child enough he will sleep through the night." The author also has a minor but disturbing obsession with penises - mentions repeatedly the normalcy of nocturnal erections in children, which I suppose might freak out an innocent mother (?), and seems convinced that circumcision causes sleep diturbances in males. Now, I'm not very pro-circumcision, but I don't think it's keeping 4 year olds awake nights.
Dispatches froma Not-So-Perfect-Life, Faulkner Fox. This is a memoir of motherhood by my neighbor, a woman I am connected to by a number of strands of social intercourse. It is VERY STRANGE to read a book like this - it's deeply personal and exposing - by someone you know, but not intimately. I have also heard her read from it, and read aloud by the author it is much funnier and more pointed social commentary. Read in print, it came across as a lot of complaining. I don't think I can judge it on its merits because I can't erase my knowledge of the author, her husband, her kids.
A Rural Life, Verlyn Klinkenborg. This, mostly, collected brief editorials he wrote for the NYT, seasonal musings from his place in upstate NY. He has horses, and is currently (May, which is as far as I've gotten) considering a pig. Very restful, very precisely observed nature. Not very suited to reading on the bus, which is what I am doing - I wish I had the leisure to read one snippet each morning in predawn quiet (after a long restful nights sleep).