Today I am tasked with telling you all where I read. The short answer is everywhere! Well not really anymore because people frown upon parents ignoring their children in public in favor of sticking their nose in a book, so I keep that to a minimum now, although I still occasionally sneak some phone reading in while in the waiting room for check-ups, etc.
I mentioned yesterday that I've been an avid reader since I learned how. When I was in grade school, I liked to take books outside with me during recess to spend that time reading. That was until the teachers started searching me before recess to make sure I wasn't taking a book outside to read. They called my mother and everything because it was such a problem. As it turns out, the only problem was that they felt like I should be running around like all the other kids. I was not causing disturbances during class due to excess energy and I was one of the smaller kids in class, and we had PE for an hour a day, five days a week, so please don't come at me with "The activity during recess is to help get you exercise." I got plenty of exercise during PE, walking to and from school, and walking to and from home and my dad's grocery store. We lived in a small town and in second grade I was allowed to go wherever I wanted as long as I was home by dark, and I got there either by foot or bike. During recess, I wanted to read. But that was not allowed.
I'd like to say that in high school I took a book with me to every class to read during downtime, and I sort of did, but it was usually a schoolbook with homework that was due in another class later that day. I was really a horrible student. I got good grades mostly A's with a couple B's thrown in, I was even Salutatorian of my senior class, although that just means I got better grades than 23 other people, so it's not necessarily anything to brag about. I did at least 90% of my homework at the last minute though. Most papers were written the morning that they were due, revision never happened because I really didn't have time for that with my tendency for procrastination. Other homework was done sitting in the hall waiting for 1st period to start or during down time in other classes throughout the day. I can't remember a time when I didn't hand in a completed assignment on time though.
There was one class in high school where I always took a book to read though. That class was called QPA, and it's sole purpose was to fill the time when the junior high kids were eating lunch. Since I lived in a really small town, the high school and junior high shared a building and many of the same teachers, but we had separate lunch periods. To avoid schedule complications around the lunch periods, we had a 30 minute QPA. One day we did a math word problem that usually took me all of 5 minutes to complete, two days we were supposed to read books (any book you wanted), another day we read Newsweek, and the last day we read a newspaper. My senior year, the football coach was my QPA teacher, and he was perfectly okay with everyone in the class sitting with our heads on our desks for the entire period if we wanted to (well every day except math problem day, where we had to complete that first). I never really liked reading Newsweek or the newspaper, largely because 30 minutes was not enough time to finish either of them and I hated not being able to finish and I couldn't take them with me after class to finish on my own, so I took a book with me to read instead. After a couple weeks, the teacher decided that wasn't okay and warned me that if I brought a book into class on either of those days again I would get a detention. Mind you, I could have spent the entirety of those class periods with my head on my desk and that was fine, but choosing to read a book instead of a magazine or newspaper was not okay. I asked my mother if she would be upset if I got a detention, and explained the situation. She simply told me that she would not fight to get me out of detention if I received one, and that was fine by me. The next Newsweek day I took a book with me into the classroom, and I hadn't even opened it up, and the teacher followed through and gave me a detention, for the simple act of taking a book into a classroom. The only part of it that bothers me is that I was simply trying to use my time in there constructively rather than sitting with my head on my desk like most of my classmates.
So now that the history of where I've read in the past has been divulged, I bring you to present day, with pictures!
I do most of my reading here, in the seat with the blanket. This is our living room where we have Family Movie Night every night with the kids, and they pick the movie five nights a week. I'm not always thrilled about their choices, and when my husband is working late and it's just me and the kids, they usually choose t.v. shows instead of movies, but we turn off the lights and have popcorn and soda, and they really enjoy it. Bedtime has been a breeze since we instituted Family Movie Night. But since I'm not always thrilled with their choices, I always have my Kindle nearby and spend most of the time reading. So 5 nights a week, I read for at least an hour, right there.
This is my kitchen, and yes, I read in my kitchen. I keep a paperback in there to read while I'm cooking, when I can. Sometimes that book moves out to the dining room table with me, but it mostly stays in the kitchen. Right now my kitchen book is
Veronica Mars: The Thousand Dollar Tan Line by Rob Thomas and Jennifer
Graham.
I don't do an awful lot of reading here, but only because I don't use these bad boys nearly as often as I should. I always spend my time on either the elliptical or the bike reading though, always from my Kindle because both instruments of torture have a handy place to hold my Kindle and the pages are so easy to turn. My current Kindle read is
The Circuit: Executor Rising by Rhett C. Bruno.
This place needs no introduction, and I am one of THOSE people that reads on the toilet. If this bathroom had a place by the toilet for book storage I would have a book to read specifically on the toilet, but it doesn't, so I just take whatever I'm currently reading that is nearby with me. At the moment that's either my kindle or
Land of Nod, The Artifact by Gary Hoover.
This is my office/computer chair, and I spend most of my time when my husband and children are asleep right here. I always keep a book in my office to read while I wait for pages to load (sometimes it takes a while with my slow internet) or documents to download for blog tours. I also do quite a bit of reading while entering Goodreads First Reads giveaways (and I enter a LOT of those). My current office book is
Sweetwater: The Kihn by Rivi Jacks.
This is my seat at the dining room table. I usually read while I'm eating my lunch because in spite of the fact that I'm a stay at home and homeschooling mother, I always eat my lunch at a different time than my children. I also read here while my son is doing worksheets for our schooling. I usually read from my kindle here, but sometimes my kitchen book makes an appearance.
This is the couch in our "game room." We have an abundance of gaming systems because technology! We have an Xbox 360 and WiiU connected up here for the children to play their video games on and still leave the living room t.v. free for us to use. More often than not, one child is playing a video game here while the other is watching Netflix in the living room. This is where I read stories to my children during the day though. If I'd been smarter when taking this picture I would have chosen a different angle that would show my kids bookshelves right next to it.
The final place that I read now is in the passenger seat of the car. No, I don't get motion sick. It is actually a coping mechanism for me because my husband's driving scares me, but it allows me to mostly not think about that, and unlike me, my husband does get motion sick sometimes when he's not driving, so he just does most of the driving.
I hope you have enjoyed this long winded glimpse into my reading life. - Katie
