Monday 7 October 2013

Newborns are so much easier now that ebook readers exist.

It's been a very lean few months on the blog, due to the fact that since BabyM was born, in the middle of September, I have been taking every opportunity to sleep that is available.

BabyM is so far not in the least interested in books.  However, rather wonderfully, due to the advent of ebook readers, I am able to feed and read at the same time, without the pesky issue of how to stop the book falling over/on to the baby's head (apologies for all the times a heavy Robin Hobb flapped open onto you, C), or how to turn the pages without losing the latch you've spent five minutes, and some minor discomfort, achieving.

Now, it's just a case of resting a nice light plastic screen on your leg.  And, wonderfully, if you're feeding at 3am, you can make the print REALLY big so that you don't have to have the light on.  Using a book light, which conveniently clips on to BabyM's bedside cot, I have got through quite a lot of reading material so far.

Most of it, to be honest, has been spent comfort reading. Mainly Bill Bryson, with his wonderful, comforting, chatty tone.  The only problem with this is that now I want to travel across Australia on a very expensive train, which I can't really afford, or actually do, given that I now have three children, who would probably not massively enjoy the journey.  Ah well, one for the bucket list.

I have also read the first two Percy Jackson books by Rick Riordan.  I saw the trailer for the latest film when we went to see Despicable Me 2 in the summer, and thought that it looked interesting (well, if I'm being totally honest, I'm a sucker for anything that looks a bit like The Clash of the Titans or Jason and the Argonauts, both of which I am never, ever watching again, to preserve their status as masters of the special effect in my head.  As I recall, the scene with Medusa was realistic and terrifying.  In reality, you can probably see the plasticene marks on her head.)

Anyway, often I read books aimed at young people that seem to be more aimed at adults, and wonder how much children actually get out of them.  The Percy Jackson series is NOT like this. It is clearly and obviously written for teenagers (I was going to add by a teenager, but that is very unfair, since I don't know Mr Riordan, who may be the very model of maturity.)  It's a little, um, flimsy.  Also Percy is a bit annoying.  Not that this stops me enjoying a series; I loved the Harry Potter series, but never, ever really warmed to Harry, who I always thought was a bit of a smug git.  But Percy is really very irritating indeed, and his version of Hermione and Ron are also a bit irritating too, which is a problem, since I think I would have been a little relieved if they had been eaten by monsters.

It's a shame, as the idea is so very, very promising.  It's about a group of young people who are "half-bloods" - the offspring of humans and Greek Gods - and the monsters who are trying to do them in.  It is action-packed and the plot is good and interesting. I just kind of wish Philip Pullman had thought of it first...