We had decided to ask just a few of his friends over to our house to celebrate his birthday and of course, as expected, the mothers accompanied their children and stayed for the party. The adults sat in the living room and talked while the children played in my son’s room and out in the garden during the brief, unseasonably warm weather that arrived as the winter school break began and before the snow arrived.
In our home, one living room wall is lined floor to ceiling with bookcases, filled mainly with books in English and Turkish, we also have literature and textbooks in Arabic and Spanish. Another bookcase stands next to my son’s desk in a corner of the living room, brimming with his books in English and Turkish. Beyza did not realize at first that there were an additional three bookcases, also stuffed with books, in the hallway leading to our bedrooms. Yes, there are literally hundreds of books in our home. Since I write on a variety of subjects for many different publications, many of the books are used for reference. My husband has numerous books on Turkish history, textiles and antiquities, as well as an entire bookcase packed with religious texts and commentaries.
Another friend, Lale, laughed and said, “I’ve been told by friends that my apartment has too many books for any one person, but I think you have me beat.” I explained that every time we moved to another apartment, the movers complained about the number of book boxes they had to lift and transport. My friends all chucked as I acted out a typical moving day, complete with me imitating the indignant mover who once told me that no one needed as many books as we had and that he thought that we should leave half of our book boxes on the sidewalk for the recycling truck.
The eight of us began talking about our reading habits and those of our children. We were evenly split between regular and occasional readers. Half of us read every day in order to relax and unwind a bit after we had gotten the little ones to bed for the night. We love to curl up and read at least a few pages of a book before drifting off to sleep. This is our way of forgetting the problems of the day as we drift into another world. The other half of our group liked to read, but felt as if they did not have enough time in the day to get comfortable and allow themselves to become absorbed in a book. A couple of the women said they always felt as if there was something they needed to be doing around the house instead of taking time for themselves and doing something they enjoy.
When the subject moved on to our children’s reading habits, and I think it was a relief for us all to discover that we all had the same complaint -- it was often hard to get our children to read for the enjoyment of it. Our children attend several different schools, but we all felt that they were loaded down with so much homework every night during the week and on the weekends that it was sometimes difficult for them to want to read for pleasure instead of feeling that they had to read as part of a school assignment. Fortunately, thanks to several new series of novels that appealed to young readers, they were slowly becoming more interested in reading as a pleasurable pastime and not a chore.
A couple of the mothers had lived overseas and, like me, they missed having a public lending library system. Since there is not yet such a program set up in Turkey, we talked about having our own book exchanges for our little group and inviting friends with children about the same age. By pooling our reading resources, we can trade books we no longer want to keep that our children have outgrown and we can lend books to each other that we want to hold onto for a little while longer. All of our children speak Turkish and some have at least a basic level of English language skills, so we can recycle books in both languages. Our goal is to introduce our children to a wider variety of topics, help expand their interests and help build and reinforce their reading abilities.
It is interesting how a simple comment about the large number of books we have at home led to a group of friends deciding to unite to encourage our children to discover the joy of reading for pleasure.
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