This year, I have been on an inadvertent Holocaust themed book reading kick. Two of the books that I read, The Reader and The Book Thief* have dealt with one of my favorite topics – why we read and the power of books to affect our lives.

It is an interesting thing to contemplate – and as our children are both our imitators and the opposite of ourselves, I see both trends in my children. The C-Man is like me in that he reads voraciously – he reads the back of the cereal box, the newspaper headlines, and the words that surround him. The X- man defines himself as not being a reader – he once said to me, “I read, and read, and read and get to the bottom of the page and turn it and there are more words.” It is interesting to see this develop as I can’t imagine not reading any more than I can imagine not breathing. What I also find striking about him not being a reader (and this comes up in The Reader as well) is that so much of our culture goes over your head if you don’t get the literary references, he often notes this during our dinner conversation, or when a joke is cracked. I pray that some day, a book captures him and he will find himself a reader as well.

Last night, I finished Escape by Carolyn Jessop, about life in the FLDS
cult** She writes hauntingly not only about abuse and submission that we like to think don’t happen anymore - just like those who were living in Germany and the occupied territories didn’t want to think about the abuse and submission that was occurring around them – but about how one of the symptoms that there was a crackdown coming in her society was when all of her books were taken away. I suspect that the fact that she had to escape became clearer after she no longer had the literary way to escape.

I am off to read in the car while the X-man goes to baseball practice, and to discuss The Book Thief with my mom. Both lovely ideas this Bright Thursday.

*this book hit my mother particularly hard. I can relate Slumdog Millionaire did the same thing to me.
**I will write a longer review for the Page Nibblers blog in a day or two,

This is the day of resurrection, Let us be illumined by the feast, Let us embrace each other, Let its call "brothers" even those that hate us, And forgive all by the resurrection, And so let us cry: Christ is risen from the dead, Trampling down death by death, And upon those in the tombs bestowing life. Christ is risen! - from the Canon of Pascha

A Facebook friend shared this lovely BBC photo article. Christ is Risen!