Some light afternoon reading

I decided to pick another couch picture ... because maybe that's a theme? In case you can't tell, I'm really trying to make up for the fact that my June post count is so dismal. My goal this year was to manage at least 10 posts/month (but of course, secretly, I tell myself I should do much better than that). I was doing quite well until all of my dithering about in June, and now I'm seriously behind!

So I'm doing what any semi-serious blogger does: finding some pictures that we've taken recently, and let the image do most of the talking.

Right, so, this is a picture I had to take the other week. Many times, Eleanor shuns her picture books and simple children's stories, opting instead for the adult books on the living room bookshelves. I don't entirely understand this, unless it's just a case of imitation? But if she was just imitating us reading, why doesn't she use her own books?

Unless, perhaps, she doesn't really equate her oversized books, heavy on pictures and light on text, with our smaller, text-only paperbacks. Whatever the reason, I love it and my heart melts every time she picks up a book and "reads" it. It's so important to me that Eleanor love reading, and I hope that this is a positive sign of a bibliophile in the making.

In the picture above, the angle is wrong so you can't get a good look at the book's cover. But not only does Eleanor choose adult books; she often settles on the ones in French, one of my college minors. (Of course, I made sure to put the French books I probably couldn't even read anymore in the living room, to impress all of our guests.) This is one of those books, Le Journal de Zlata, written by young girl in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War.

Another one of her favorites is a blue book with a fish on the cover. For many weeks, this was "Eleanor's book." When we went out to her clubhouse in the backyard, we would have to take her book and another one for me. We would go and sit in the clubhouse and "read." She would page quickly through her book.

I'd say, "How's your book, Eleanor?"

She'd nod, answering with an emphatic, "Good."

After a few minutes, she would insist that we trade books and she would "read" mine, too. Once all the reading was done, then the playing could commence.

I look forward to the days when we really are curled up, side-by-side, engrossed in our own book worlds. But even then, I'm sure these first pictures of Eleanor with a book in her hands will be special—a promise of the many happily ever afters to come.