Friday, February 8, 2013

READING CIRCLE


I learned to read via the Alice and Jerry basal readers. In the early 50s I might add. I sorta enjoyed the mandatory reading circle in elementary school but I didn't always love reading itself. No wonder. For the first 21 years of my life, I was busy reading whatever the hell the required books for school were... from Junior High to College graduation, at the very least. Plus... I wasn't a particularly fast reader.

However once I graduated college, boom. I was able to read whatever I wanted AND I could take my sweet little pretty time about it, too. One of my favorites from way back then was Prizzi's Honor and somewhere along the line came The Godfather. The story that REALLY set my pleasure reading in motion however was definitely A King's Story... the biography of the Duke of Windsor giving up his throne for the love of a woman. Oh man... talk about capturing the heart of a love struck 16 year old. A guy giving up his kingdom for some stupid ass woman?? SO up my alley.

Anyway, when raising my kids, I would escape but plenty, for heavy private relaxation time in my bedroom with a fantastically wonderful book. I read in my bed, while every once in a while peeking at the kids in the pool though my sliding glass doors which apparently was my method of "keeping an eye on the kids". Thus this is the period during which I became a really voracious reader given it helped mellow me out whenever the kids were screaming and yelling and having a bunch of fun playing. And/or swimming. And/or fighting. Well... that and grass, but who's counting. Before falling asleep each night, I also could read way late into the wee hours of the night only to of course want to shoot myself the next morning when I had to be up and at 'em bright and early. Bottom line: my voracious reading went on for decades.

Until that is, the deaths of my brother, my mother and then my father. I just couldn't stand the silence of the room whenever I read, and I certainly couldn't read with any background noise as in: TV or the radio or whatever. Basically I was screwed. 

Not so fast, however. Enter: THE KINDLE. To be more exact: THE TEXT TO SPEECH FEATURE ON THE KINDLE.

I totally fell in love with this new toy IMMEDIATELY since I could now not only read book after book after book, but even better... THE KINDLE BOOK COULD TO READ TO ME. Talk about killing two birds with one stone. Boom. I could hear all KINDS of stories and I never once had to worry about any deafening silence. I was like THE target audience for this new eBook reader deal.

Which means... my Kindle can now read to me all day long if I want and even better... it can read me to sleep every night. That alone is a God send. Five minutes of reading aloud to me... bingo. I am fast asleep for the entire night. Until I have to wake up to go to the bathroom but that's another story altogether. Anyway... without my Kindle I'm lost. Which is why this morning, when like every morning, I got up, plugged in the charger and began to put on my makeup only to find... OOPS. NO MORE CHARGE WORKING ON MY KINDLE... I freaked. Huh? WTF is THAT all about? What happened?? HELP... I NEED MY KINDLE RECHARGED.

Lickety split I got on the phone with Amazon... spoke to a technical guy and tried all the fixes he suggested. Turns out... sure enough, something with the cable cord and/or charger is kaput. At which time... yippee... the guy said he'd send me the two equipment replacements for no extra charge. Bless his heart, right? Especially since I have the first generation of the BIG sized Kindle DX from years and years ago. And... he'd sent it overnight so I'll have it by tomorrow! This guy DEFINITELY deserves a raise if you ask me.      

Regardless, to this day, I do have admit I adore Alice, Jerry and Jip. Jane, Dick and Spot come in second. Besides, who the hell names a little boy Dick in the first place? I mean seriously... really?? But okay. Whatever. All I know is that even more than Alice and Jerry I love my Kindle. Which will be here in the morning. Until then... I'm going back to the good ole days when I listened to REAL people reading to me via my iPod.

Tonight's bedtime story btw?? Fairy Tale Interrupted... the biography of JFK Jr. Now THERE'S a face to smile about when one is dozing off in sweet slumber and/or sweet surrender. Trust me... either one'll work.

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