Reading and Sleeping

Yesterday's reading was largely affected by the sleep habits of children. I began and got much farther into The Victorian Temper (Jerome Hamilton Buckley, Vintage 1951) than I ever would have thought possible, due to an unexpected carseat nap by YoungerKid. Meanwhile, I meant to begin White Teeth last night, but couldn't, due to OlderKid's inability to stay in bed and go to sleep coupled with his incredible ability to scream at the top of his lungs.

Re: Blink (I'm going to talk about it, but not count it, all right?). I am an extreme sucker for nonfiction pop science books. The Tipping Point left me pretty unimpressed, but I couldn't resist Gladwell's latest anyway. I ended up finding it interesting for the parts about race and perception, and the more general notion that vision is inherently culturally-dictated, contingent, and culpable. A lot of my academic work is about the ways that the Victorians tried to express this same notion. I'm in kind of the smug literary critic position of not being interested in whether this idea is actually true--whether our vision is really culturally-determined and ever-evolving--but being very interested in how we talk about how we think it is true. If that makes any sense.

Last night's read alouds: Olly and Me, Traction Man, Curious George, Hush! (the last of which I blame at least partially for the screaming. It's a little scary to imagine an elephant popping up out of the jungle and roaming around while babies are trying to go to sleep.)