It embarrasses me to no end to admit this: I am still working on the same book, been reading it for nearly three months now.
This, from a person who used to devour five and ten books a week during summer vacations past.
Now? I consider myself fortunate if I can choke out a couple pages a day, let alone a handful of pages a week!
Yes, I am still reading Jared Diamond's Collapse, stealing five minutes here and there to read this book. It is very much worth the commitment to stay with it.
My secret weapon in this slow effort: reading to the kids at bedtime.
I was desperate to get my son to calm down before bedtime during our northern vacation; with twilight ending at 11:30 pm, he was unable to settle down because it was too light outside. I figured I would bore him to sleep by reading aloud from Collapse, sneaking in some reading time for myself as well.
But they both loved it, absolutely adore this book! My son wanted to learn more about the travails of the Vikings in Greenland. This fit in perfectly with discussions we'd been having about the migration of Finns and other Nordic peoples, in conjuction with a Finn Fest we attended. I must have read and re-read the same chapter to him several times as he drifted off to sleep, punctuating his doze off with questions about what Vikings ate and where Vikings traveled. He was very proud to relate that "Vikings were farmers!" when we got home from vacation.
My daughter is enjoying it, too; she shuts off her television and listens in as I read about the Tikopian's bottom-up success model in comparison with the Japanese Tokugawa Shogunate's top-down success model.
As much as I'd prefer to be reading more, I guess I can live with this bonus in recompense; I have kids who want to read non-fiction, including history and science, for the fun of it.
I don't want to wish their lives away, but I can't wait for the day the kids and I can have a lengthy and detailed conversation about this kind of book and these kinds of topics. It's coming; my son and I talked for quite a while about the Greenland Vikings' active avoidance of fish as food, and how my son would actually eat fish if it meant he wouldn't starve (he hates fish, sorry to say).
I wonder what we'll read together next, and what we'll talk about as well?
10:51:03 AM 
