O What A Beautiful Day!

I am not a re-reader. I would like to be a re-reader but the lure of what hasn't yet been read is too great and I don't organize my time well enough to juggle the re-read with my need to gratify my new book lust. The few books that I hold onto on purpose are my re-read wish list but I don't harbor any illusions that re-reading will actually happen.

And then...Hear the angels start to sing?...something lovely happened. When my beautiful niece O, who has been sixteen for a scant fourteen days, spent the night she started reading a book from the re-read wish list shelf, Les Miserables. She told me that she "had always heard about it" but had never read it. Could she borrow it? Oh please. It as all I could do to keep from hugging the stuffing out of my girl and then immediately scheduling unlimited read time for O for the next week.

Then the day got sunnier, the birds got chirpier, little pixies mended my socks and O and I had a long discussion (!!!!) weighing the pros and cons of reading the classics in school verses contemporary YA novels like (O's example) Speak. She thinks that Speak is a good book but she wants the classics used in school. I played devil's advocate and spoke up for the YA's even though I was secretly dee-lighted that she has great expectations (Get it? I kill me.)for her school reading assignments.

How lucky am I?