Tuesday, December 2, 2008

..and so the Lion fell in love with the Lamb...

You may remember my rant against the Kindle.

When, oh when, will I learn that the equation:

"Granddaughter wants it" plus "Mother says no"

will ALWAYS equal:

"Grandmother steps in to delight granddaughter"

So, yes, we are now the proud owners of a Kindle. (Ha! See how I already say "we.") I suppose you can already see where this is going.....I fell madly in love with my daughter's Kindle.

Yes, after many arguments against it (see "it's too expensive" or "she's too young" or "it's a fad" or "it's not a real book" or "what a waste of money"), I am now its biggest fan.

At first, I only used it after daughter D. went to bed. It was her birthday gift, after all. On a lark, I decided to buy the #1 selling title for the Kindle: some book called "Twilight" that I had never heard of before.

I read it in one sitting.

I couldn't put it down. I stayed up way past my bedtime and finished the book. This is NOT great literature. It's young adult fiction with more than one grammatical error. But I read the whole book in one sitting. I haven't done that since high school. I have no idea what the appeal was - vampires? young love? who knows. I was mesmerized.

Normally, I'm a bit of a literary snob. When it is my turn to host my bookclub, I invariably choose something like "Anna Karenina" or "The Great Gatsby" - classics. Books with teeth. But something about this Twilight series sucked me in. I proceeded to buy the next three books and read them in the next three days. Yes, I stole my daughters birthday present, lay on the couch in front of the fire and said to my family, "make your own damn dinner - I'm reading." And I did. I shut out the entire world and read.

I'm not proud.

Luckily, Daughter D is good at sharing and my Twilight obsession only lasted a few days. (These are skim-able books, and I was able to polish them off very quickly.) So, she has her device back now and I only poach it after she has gone to bed.

But it felt so good to have that obsessive-reading feeling again. That "nothing is more important than finishing this book" feeling. I'm a bit embarrassed that it came back for a book that really isn't all that good (in a literary masterpiece sense.) But it came back. For just a few moments, I was 12 again. I had no responsibilities, no job, no meals to cook. I could just read, read, and read some more.

Thank you, Kindle.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

I read Twilight exactly the same way!!!

Unknown said...

Well, except that the Kindle is mine.

LisaS said...

i hadn't thought about a kindle for this age group ....

and i haven't tried twilight either. but i do that with big thick biographies. in fact, i think i will do that right now.

LisaS said...

oh, and btw ... maybe K & my Boy were made for each other. her schedule sounds just like his. book fanatic pokemaniacs, both.

Anonymous said...

Well, if Oprah had a whole show about it AND gave it away to her audience (given her book "goddess-ness") -- you had to know it would be good!

Bridgett said...

Ah, another mom sucked into Twilight...at my daughter's school, the moms pass it around in a paper bag so nobody will mock them. ;^) I haven't succumbed yet...

More Paul, Less Andrea said...

Book rec: The Shadow of the Wind. Polished it off as my family starved. Good read.