A few weeks ago I was driving around listening to (wait for it…) NPR, and I heard a really interesting interview on All Things Considered with Jennifer Senior about her new book, All Joy and No Fun. I sat in the car for a few moments to listen to the end. The next day, at E’s school’s Open House, I ran into someone and we started talking about that very piece.
This week I heard a longer interview with Jennifer Senior on Fresh Air. Worth a listen, and perhaps a book to put on your library request list. I find this shift in parenting roles (particularly mothering roles) to this obsessively-involved molder and shaper of the child’s current, and future, well-being to be the most interesting aspect here, but I also really love this from the All Things Considered interview:
that parents would have preferred napping, answering emails… housework, vacuuming, all clocked in higher [than childcare]…
I enjoyed the Senior interviews much more than this discussion on the not gone, just sleeping earthquakes. I listened, but it freaks.me.out. On a positive note, we found out that our earthquake insurance premium is going way down this year. Hooray for found money, boo for the New Madrid fault line.
I’m making sloooow progress on The Goldfinch, not because of the book itself, but because I wait until right before bed to read it and I’m so very, very tired these days. I need sunlight and outdoor exercise.
Once I’m done with that book, I’ve found my new read. I could listen to Maureen Corrigan all day.
Alena by Rachel Pastan is next on my list. An inspired reworking of DuMaurier’s Rebecca? Yes, please.
Moving on to kiddie lit – a new book that hits close to home: Tille and Clementine: Noises in the Night by Dan Killeen. Featuring (actual, real) friends and neighbors of ours – Author event at Left Bank Books.
Two exhibits we’ll be attending this month:
A Queen Within: Adorned Archetypes, Fashion and Chess at the World Chess Hall of Fame – thanks to Brooke for the head’s up.
Suburban Modernism: The Architecture and Interior Design of Ralph and Mary Jane Fournier
What a girl (at least this girl) really wants for Valentine’s Day: these, on a platter.
And if beets seem a little too weird for cupid’s day, then fine… I’ll take chocolate. These specifically:
Sauce Magazine Cover by Greg Rannells
Turns out our local chocolatiers are developing a much deserved national reputation.
Need something chocolate, like now? The Chocolate Silk Pie in here has been vetted by yours truly.
Have a great weekend.
Spooky – I was just telling Tim about the “Joy” interview on NPR that I heard and how the author spoke of “turning off that ticker tape in our brain of all the stuff we have to do, and just be present, in the moment with our kids”. And I was just thinking this afternoon, I wonder if you, my dear friend K, heard that interview, too.
I did! And that ticker tape thing is really a new phenomenon, which is fascinating to me.