How to get children to love reading

My last post was on books that my boy has loved. But how did he get to be such a prolific reader? Really it felt like it 'just happened', but here are my guesses at what happened along the way to encourage it.

Take one baby

At six weeks old, we began reading to our babies before their sleep times, purely because it was delightful. It was only on a film camera in 2003 when Jack was a baby, but imagine our photo of me lying on a bed next to him, reading from a little cardboard book I'm holding up. ("Take one baby, put him in the bath..." I read it so many times I can still recite it.) His big blue eyes are open to their maximum expanse, and his mouth is wide open in the biggest baby smile ever! His legs are a blur, because they're kicking with excitement.

For a while we had to stop reading to Jack before sleep time, because he got so excited it kept him awake.

Anna was the same.

Life was basically a fest of reading for years, with three books before every sleep time. As the books got longer, this was sometimes a drag and we would almost fall asleep doing it. We had our eyelids prised open by little fingers. Yet was always a treat to move onto more grown-up books, instead of the more babyish ones we'd read a thousand times.

There were also three songs before every sleep time, and a weekly Mainly Music session at the local church. I don't know why, but it feels like the rhythm and melody involved helped with reading.

When Jack was about three I started explaining things like the sound W makes (W for Winnie the Pooh, of course.) I'd get him to point out all the Ws on a page and tell me the sound. Then J for Jack, and other letters crept in. That is about as difficult and onerous as learning to read got, i.e., not at all.

Once he got to school his teacher told me she'd never known a child learn to read so easily.

When he was six he started reading Harry Potters. From about then on he didn't want us to read to him anymore. Anna is eight and we still read to her, but not as much as she reads to herself.

Time, not money

Was it expensive? No way, we were paying off a mortgage. Isn't that what libraries are for? Our local librarians are practically extra grandmothers, they have seen our children so much. We are top of the Heavy User category. However, the book cases still managed to be laden with second hand books and gifts.

Was it hard work? A bit. I do find it hard to constantly find books to feed my boy reading-beast. A book a day is nothing to him. That's why I love it when he discovers series of books, because it's a brainless way to find more for him. Also, getting a Kobo has been excellent, because we can go online and get free books instantly. Our local library has an exploding range of ebooks available.

No television, lots of books

Oh, and what I suspect is a MAJOR point: we had, and have, no television. Computers have started to bring screens into our life in a bigger way now, but we fight them valiantly. At present our iPad is at my husband's workplace, and it's staying there for the near future, safely out of reach.

We love having no television. It is incredibly easy.

Love reading yourself

We read, full stop. Every day, for pleasure. Mainly books, in the lounge, in bed. We talk about what we're reading and how we love it.

Is reading so great?

I can see a downside of too much reading: less of other things. Staring into space. Making stuff. Gardening. Doing housework. But for stepping inside other worlds, and therefore expanding your own, I think reading is the ultimate.

Books your boy will love to read

Recently Jack (11) said wistfully that he wished there was a computer programme that could make him forget things.

"What would you like to forget?" I asked.

"I'd like to forget every book I've ever read," he said.

I knew what he meant, and he agreed that he wished he could read them afresh all over again. I tried to reassure him that there must be many good books he hasn't read yet. "Don't lie," he told me. "There will never be anything as good as Harry Potter."

My next post is going to answer a question I sometimes get asked: How did we get our children to love reading so much?

But for now, here is his list of dearly loved books recommended by the most prolific reader I've ever known. It excludes horror books and most war stories, because they are not to his taste. There are definitely more books than this, but we can't remember them all.

Early primary school years

The Geronimo Stilton series
The Captain Underpants Series
Anything by Dick King-Smith (too many to list, but especially Dragon Boy)
The Pippi Longstocking books

In between

Harry Potter series
All the David Walliams books (Awful Auntie, Gangsta Granny, The Boy in the Dress, Mr Stink, Demon Dentist, Ratburger, Billionaire Boy)
Everything by Roald Dahl
The Famous Five series
The Secret Seven series
Anything by Des Hunt
Anything by Louis Sacher
Anything by Morris Gleitzman
Anything by Andy Griffiths
Non-horror books by Antony Horowitz
Anything by Paul Jennings
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
The Killer Underpants by Michael Lawrence
The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulde
The Time-Travelling Cat series by Julia Jarman
The Horrible Histories series by various authors
Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
The Indian in the Cupboard series by Lynne Reid Banks
The How to Train Your Dragon series by Cressida Cowell
All the Star Wars books
Big Nate series by Lincoln Peirce

Older primary school years

The Alex Rider series by Antony Horowitz
Under the Mountain by Maurice Gee (and Gee's other books)
The Lion Boy series by Zizou Corder
The Artemis Fowl series by Eion Colfer
The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins
The Henderson Boys by Robert Muchamore
The Cherub series by Robert Muchamore
The Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan
The 39 Clues series by Rick Riordan
The Eragon Series by Christopher Paolini
The Warriors series of cat books by Erin Hunter
Hatchett by Gary Paulsen
The Maze Runner series by James Dashner
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, by Tolkien
The Magyk series by Septimus Heap
The Divergent series by Veronica Roth

More suggestions always welcome!

So you want to kill my cat?

Last night we watched The Secret Life of Cats, a National Geographic documentary. We watched it online, of course, having no TV. It highlighted cats' murderous habits, which I think about daily as I watch our own furry carnivore, a loved member of our family.

The Australian scenes stood out. A millionaire who founded a fenced wildlife sanctuary to protect Australia's many vulnerable, weird and wonderful mammals had a bumper sticker saying "The only good cat is a flat cat". He wore a cat-skin hat, complete with cat head over his forehead.

As a nature lover I sympathise with and even admire that. So how come we have a cat?

Our cat is good for our souls

With winter setting in here, and a nightly fire in the woodburner, we are falling more in love than ever with Duke, who hangs around us a lot more when it's cold. He has a huge shaggy coat, and cooling off outdoors in the shade is his natural summer setting. But for now, he wants the hearth and the body of one of his clan members (us) whenever possible.

He's in high demand by us. On the rare occasions he's adventuring when those after-dinner hours by the fire come round, someone's bound to call him. He's as obedient as a dog, and always comes, although it can take a while if he has a few boundary fences to navigate to get back to us. We know he's at the door when we hear him rattling the flyscreen, into which he has sunk his claws. (Yes, the flyscreen is tattered as a result.) Meowing's too hard, I suppose, and his is a quiet version.

At bedtime he's essential. Anna must have him on her bed while we have our evening chat and songs, and he goes to sleep there when I leave. Then at Jack's bedtime, I collect Duke and Jack and I spend about 10 minutes stroking and scratching him, and discussing things like how finely crimped his fur is, how cute but lethal his front paws are - and subtly striped, like a tiger's! - and how ugly the insides of his ears are. That fine fluffy guy lies there taking all the touching he can get, including having his ears turned inside out. Ewwww.

Should we have cats?

Cats seem like an extraneous life detail to non-cat people, but essential to happiness for cat people!

A year or so ago a non-cat friend told me her daughter wanted a cat, and she wondered if she should give in and get her one. I told her that we felt that life was much better since we got our cat. Privately, apparently, she scoffed at me for making such a grand statement. But she got her daughter a cat, and within a few days, she told me, she knew exactly what I was talking about! "I love that cat!" she exclaimed incredulously.

I think they are a truly heart expanding addition to a family. Also, they're there for you even when everyone else is angry with you, and nothing else feels good. I remember this as being important to me when I was a child - the comfort of my cat when I was all at sea.

I also love they way they accompany you in the garden, as if they're thrilled to have you visit their territory.

Duke taking his winter medicine of oat leaves. His murderous
fangs are ill-equipped to eat leaves.

What about their murderous habits?

Duke no longer brings us the corpses he's hunted. He started out with that repulsive behaviour, but as a smart guy he learnt fast when I spoke from the heart (i.e. screeching and yelling at him in horror).

But what about the wildlife? Here in New Zealand we almost exclusively want the mammalian wildlife dead, apart from our tiny native bats. Cats can get bats, but they tend to sleep up high under the bark of gnarly old trees. Sadly we have none of those on our property. All our other small land mammals are pests, so cats' killing is welcome.

Birds are another matter, although the natives are in such short supply around here that it's not really a risk (sadly I did once find a fantail corpse). Of course the native birds' main threat is having their eggs and chicks eaten by rats, possums and stoats, so cats may have a net benefit (see this article for more on that*).

Which is why, after his ear innards have been rudely commented on, Duke is mainly heaved outside for the night (unless it's especially cold). There he can kill as many rodents as he likes, as they scurry about on their nocturnal wanderings. Meanwhile the birds are quiet, still, up high and far less tempting.

Let them eat cat

I was fascinated by a section of the documentary showing a group of middle-aged Aboriginal women tracking a feral cat. It seems that cats have wiped out much of the Aboriginals' traditional prey. Astoundingly, now they eat cats instead! The women were helping a biologist, and they were amazingly skilled at tracking and catching a feral cat. When the biologist had finished with it, the women roasted the cat then sat around the cooking fire eating its various bits with their hands. Mmmm, cat drumstick.

*This controversy was stirred up by the SPCA's policy of not putting down stray cats, but desexing and re-releasing them into the wild. There are also places where people feed these re-released cats. Give them a kind, lethal injection and donate the money to pest control efforts, I say.

Only poor people have clothes lines

Recently I learned something that astounded me: a clothesline (for hanging washing out to dry) is a sign of poverty in the United States. Clotheslines are really things of the past, they said.

I was told this by some new neighbours who are from San Francisco. Having lived here for a year already, they realised that all New Zealanders have clotheslines, so could tell me this without feeling as though they were insulting me. For they must have noticed me hanging out our clothes... like a downtrodden wife stooping under the burden of poverty, according to their social conditioning.

For the record, we have three clothes-drying options: a backyard rotary clothesline, lines under the carport, and a drying rack that can be moved around to catch the warmest, sunniest spot.

My first, unchecked reaction (which went on inside me silently and invisibly, I hope) was "How lazy and irresponsible, how can you defend using clothes dryers all the time that run on electricity that is probably generated by burning fossil fuels, what wasteful destruction of our planet... rant, rant."

(I should emphasise that they were not saying they used clothes dryers in winter when it was too wet and cold to get the washing dry. They don't even have lines to hang it on, summer or winter.)

Then I realised that this was another of those rare opportunities that has come to me recently. I was given a glimpse of standard western culture as it truly, crazily is. Mostly we live inside it, so we can't see it.

To me, in many ways New Zealand has a very American, energy-hungry, consumerist, uber-comfortable way of life*. What we don't have is their cheap energy: I gather that at about 35 cents per kilowatt hour, our electricity is roughly 4 times more expensive than theirs, and our gas prices are also about four times higher. So most of us haven't slid into the central-heating, year-round clothes dryer, leave-lights-on mode. We're precluded from that aspect of Western culture by the shock of our $300 power bills.

So what would a non-Westerner, or a Westerner from long ago, be astounded at me for doing? Here are some I've figured out so far:

• not having aged parents living with me
• forcing my babies to sleep in a cot in a separate room to me
• buying cheap Chinese-made clothes for my children (sometimes)
• driving a car too often
• habitually sitting in a chair and therefore failing to squat, so that like most Westerners I can't go to the toilet in the bush without danger of toppling over. This seems like a minor inconvenience until you think of the resulting tight achilles, hamstrings and lower backs that have lead to an epidemic of biomechanical problems (e.g. bad backs).
• wearing shoes that are so stylishly narrow in front that my big toes deform to point inwards, creating bunions and much money for podatrists and supportive granny-shoe makers (actually mine don't but I see it everywhere, it's rife)
• eating meat most days (I was abandoning this practice until my son developed a belly problem that means he can't eat beans and lentils, aaaghh!)
• staring at an engaging screen instead of enjoying my friends and family, or perhaps an extra hour of sleep
• Having a reasonably big fridge (not a double-door job, but adequate for four people). When I lived in the UK I was constantly irritated by their tiny waist-high fridges. The only freezer space was a little ice box at the top that could take maybe one large packet of frozen peas. It seemed like an impossibly antiquated way to live... which is probably how hanging out clothes seems to the Americans! (Actually I struggled to find places to dry clothes outside in the UK too.)

So I keep asking myself what other health, soul and planet-wrecking practices do I engage in that I can't see because everyone else is doing it too?

Today Anna made a quill and did her homework with it.
The ink is food colouring.

*Does this sound anti-American? I don't mean it to be. The people from the United States that I have met, in the US itself, in the UK and in NZ, have been polite, charming, eloquent, and smart. That includes my neighbours.

Getting more bumblebees in your garden

I've had the great pleasure recently of writing an article about bumblebee research that's going on in New Zealand. I stumbled upon the topic purely by meeting a new family to the neighbourhood - the dad is the chief scientist and a very smart, pleasant and interesting man. The mum's a lovely new friend to me, and their daughter to my daughter. It's been a happy turn of events.

So even as we march through autumn, I've been thinking a lot about those big furry bees. Did you know they're mostly dead now? There might be the odd one around, but they die out in autumn and just the new queens from the summer's nest survive. The question is: how to get more of them around next summer?

Why bumblebees are useful

Oh, firstly you might want to know WHY you want more of them around! Many people love them just for being bumblebees, of course, but also they are supremely useful pollinators in the garden. If you want to grow fruit and vegetables, you need pollinators. (But not for tomatoes, capsicums and cucumbers - and maybe a few other things - because these plants, I've learnt, are self-pollinating as long as there's a bit of breeze about.)

Look at all that yellow on its fur: can you see why bumblebees are
good pollinators?

The varroa mite has wiped out wild honeybees, so unless you have beehives near you, or are even a beekeeper yourself (an admirable occupation), bumblebees are the bee's knees for you.

Plus they rarely sting, which is a big deal for people like my daughter and me who blow up in pain and itchiness when we get stung. Although when they do sting, they can keep on stinging in a wasp-like fashion.

How to get more bumblebees in your garden

I'm not an expert, but this is what I've learnt after speaking to a number of experts on this topic. There aren't many experts, because bumbles make only a little honey for themselves, needing no over-winter store like honeybees do. Humans have had no honey reward to force us to understand bumblebees very well.

Firstly, when the queens emerge in spring - early spring, for some species (we have four species in NZ) - they need FLOWERS. The queens have been hibernating all winter, and they'll die if they can't adequately refuel.

Think cottage-garden flowers and herbs, not purely NZ native plants, although they do go crazy feeding on some of them too. For the earliest spring flowers, I've got phacelia (also called tansy) and lupins, and our blueberry bushes. The great thing about phacelia and lupins is that once you've sown them, and let them flower and go to seed, you always have them popping up. The wonderful thing about blueberries is that - well, you get blueberries to eat.

Lupins flowering last September in my early spring garden.

A bumblebee queen I caught and put in a jar. She's drinking honey.
 I took her along to a research institute the next day, and they used her
for their research,then let her go. She hated being in the jar and buzzed
VERY loudly!

The other thing the queens need is somewhere to make a nest - usually a hole in a ground, or a bank. Very tidy gardens aren't ideal, BUT you can try to make them a little house if you insist on clearing away the messy corners and general piles of vegetative rubbish that they might nest in. A link with a guide on how to make them a house is here.

Despite cultivating (or not cultivating, as the case may be) messy corners myself,  I will certainly be making a house like this in spring, and putting some house insulation inside it (here, you see, I have insider tips from scientists). The need a bit of fluff to nest in, and can't collect it themselves. It is said that they like old rodent holes, both for the hole and the fur left behind.

(But if you have read the story of Mrs Tittlemouse, you know that, don't you! Remember how Babbity Bumble tried to nest in Mrs Tittlemouse's hole? The moss she was gathering is another suitable nesting material, but more of a northern hemisphere bumblebee resource, I'm told. Beatrix Potter knew far more about bumblebees than me at the start of this year.)

Then they must be fed all summer! They can visit other gardens too, of course, so do not buckle under the pressure of keeping them alive yourself. After the queen has beefed up with nectar, and collected some pollen in readiness for her first eggs, the pressure comes off her a bit as her daughters (workers) do the collecting for her. Eventually a kind of crusty, messy nest develops, consisting of pile upon pile of loosely round, bulbous, waxy cells. At first the cells hold the babies, then they are recycled as honey pots. The workers collect nectar for themselves, pollen for the babies, and both for the queen. Provide some cottage garden flowers, and it will all happen effortlessly.

There is a list of suitable flowers here, but note it is a British guide and some things like privet become terrible weeds here. (So do foxgloves, but sshhh, I guiltily have some growing). I am told reliably that fancy double-petaled garden centre punnets can be quite unsuitable for bees. They have old-fashioned tastes.

By the way, get sowing now - how else will your phacelia and lupins be flowering by spring? They are so hardy that they can sprout in winter and resist frost, then flower madly in spring. There's no need to kneel down and make a little hole for each seed: just scatter the seeds freely. I am also about to sow some more poppies, although I don't have enough experience with them yet to know when they will flower. It's also a good time to poke some comfrey roots in the ground. Bumblebees love comfrey flowers, and the leaves are great for feeding compost heaps, making compost tea and feeding to chickens. It flowers quite a bit later - summer rather than spring - but keeps flowering for months and months. My comfrey patch has only just stopped flowering.

Oh, and borage. It reloads with nectar extremely fast so the bees can harvest it repeatedly within an hour. There, I must stop at that.

The chances of bumblebees using the bee house are quite slim, but if it works for me I will be thrilled and will definitely report it here, complete with photos.

Our beautiful New Zealand holiday

I've been absent from this blog, busy having school holidays with the children and working. I've been thinking of you though, especially when I take photos.

Here are a few lovely things we did over the break, making the most of the gorgeous autumn weather.

Family walk on Mount Maunganui beach

The diver to the right was diving in, climbing up and repeating.
He was truly reveling in the experience - wonderful!

The stunning Huka Falls near Taupo. We came to this view
 at the end of a beautiful hour of riverside walk. (Confession:
the children complained.)

Anna, aged 8, bakes cupcakes BY HERSELF!
Her Mama just admired her.

Always time for reading a Little House on the Prairie book,
and some simultaneous cat-loving. He is a darling, this cat of ours.

Check back soon - I have a post on bumblebees nearly bursting out of me! It will be about how to attract these loveable pollinators to your garden, and why you might want to. A teaser for Harry Potter enthusiasts: did you know that Dumbledore is old English for Bumblebee?

Living in an armpit city: the bonuses

I live in Hamilton, New Zealand, a city which has a reputation for being foggy, damp and generally not a happening kind of place.

There are real bonuses to living here, though. There are certainly coastal places nearby that are a couple of degrees warmer in winter and cooler in summer, but compared to the climate of most of the world's cities, it's fantastic. Houses cost about half what they do in Auckland, traffic is a fraction of what it is in Auckland, the schooling's good and there are lots of great free family activities.

Here's a taste of some of the things we've been doing recently.

Annual 'Balloons over Waikato' Festival

The balloon dipped its basket in the lake!

Pumpkin Carnival at the Hamilton Gardens

Weetbix tryathlon for children

The Hamilton Gardens

I've written about this beautiful place here, here and here with some lovely images ... but here are some more recent ones:

The Tudor Garden

In the Sustainable Backyard

The Tropical Garden

Tropical Garden again

 Fun at the river

Our young friends

I also like living in a University town, with the associated speakers that visit and general proximity of academia when I need to dip my toes in it again.

While I can't promise I'll always live here and that I love everything about it, I may feel that way if I'd grown up here - I know plenty of people who are sure that this is the place for them, forever.

My green-living winter preparations

Winter can be a time of huge power bills, wet clothes and a barren garden. Here's what's been going on in our house to minimise these problems.

Garden, i.e. what are we going to eat all winter?

We are so lucky in New Zealand to be able to grow our vegetables year-round, and it's perfectly possible to provide all a family's green vegetables from a standard back yard garden. It doesn't take consistent hard work, just short bursts of it - and good timing.

Here we are on the last day of March, and my brassica plants are pathetic. I wish I'd taken my own advice.

Last year in a burst of pride at my accomplishment I wrote a post on How to create a garden that feeds you all winter. Key to this is starting early (as in February, ideally) with sowing seeds. The February heat usually brings a swarm of white butterflies with their brassica-devouring caterpillars, so seedlings must be covered or be destroyed. Ignoring my own advice, this year I let my first lot of seedlings be destroyed.

Cut up milk bottles make seed labels and containers.

Sitting containers in a tray makes it easy to
water from underneath by putting a cm or so
of water in the tray. That way the seeds aren't
dislodged by a stream of water from above.

I then got organised and got my seed raising shelves into action. That's an old mosquito net protecting it, and a net curtain works well too (think garage sales, church fairs, op shops to source one).

As I write on the last day of March, grabbing seedlings of your favourite brassica from a shop or market is the best bet for New Zealand gardeners - any seeds sown from now on are unlikely to reach your dinner plate until spring. The plants need time to grow to a decent size before cold weather and frosts slow them down.

I'm having trouble pulling out our summer crops to make room. We are still flooded with cucumbers, zucchinis and beans, not to mention grapes and feijoas. Sowing a crop of Yates Freezer Slims bean seeds in late January was a smart move. They are in full flush right now, and have turned out to be Very Good Tucker (according to us AND the snails; fortunately the snails mainly like the leaves) - more than adequate payback for pushing a few beans in the ground and keeping them moist for a few days!

Freezer slim beans behind alyssum, which I planted for
beneficial insects in spring. It just keeps flowering.

The tomatoes are blighted now, however, and we're getting just a few to keep us going. They'll come out in the next few days, making room for more brasssica seedlings with a shot of compost.

One of my favourite brassicas is Cavolo Nero kale. I love its flavour stir-fried with oil and garlic, and the way its leaves aren't too crinkly, because the crinkles attract snails. A farmer's market is a good place to find the seedlings, because the supermarkets don't seem to be on to this superfood veg yet.

There are plenty more greens-producing tips in the How to create a garden that feeds you all winter post. I recommend it for your bank balance and good health.

Speaking of which, here is the basis of my winter anti-virus soups. That is, the old-fashioned type of anti-virus.

I so enjoyed the butternuts that I bought from the Hamilton Farmer's Market this winter that I kept some seeds. I sowed one next to a compost bin and let it sprawl over the lawn and fence (it was meant to only be on the fence, but it is a free spirit and I was too soft on it). I have five large compost-fed butternuts to look forward to. One is growing on the neighbour's driveway, but they appreciate the importance of these things, being vege/fruit growers and chicken-keepers themselves.

Free warmth

Firewood, firewood, firewood. We always keep an eye out for people felling trees, and piles of unloved wood. We have about three years' worth stashed about our property now, all for free (apart from the trailer hire and some petrol or electricity to fuel the chainsaws for the big cuts). Sometimes I do the finding, but mainly my husband does the grunt work - and it is a lot of physical work.

This warmth not only heats our house, but finishes off the clothes drying. We also heat water for hot water bottles and do a bit of cooking on the top of the woodburner.

Dry clothes

I love the clothes lines under our carport to keep our washing out of the rain! It faces west, where the prevailing wind and afternoon sun comes from.

In winter I often just hang big things there (towels, sheets, etc.) and put the other things on our clothes drying rack. It can sit outside during the day and be brought inside at night. After spending a night in the room with the woodburner, everything is beautifully dry.

Do you have any prep-for-winter tips?

A little trouble with a chicken's bottom

If you are missing the chicken-keeping posts that used to appear here, fear not, they are still coming! See them at my dedicated NZ chicken-keeping blog, www.keepingchickensnz.com. There's also a Keeping Chickens NZ facebook page here. You don't need to be a facebook member to see it.

One-Wattle, a favourite chicken featured in the post mentioned below.

My latest chicken post is on a little adventure I had recently rescuing a favourite chicken who was having trouble getting an egg out.

Send your mind somewhere

The public library. Isn't it a fantastic place? Every time I walk in there - which is at least weekly - I get a thrill, as if I'm walking into an enormous bookshop where all the books are free. And I am! The only catch is that I have to return them. Our bookshelves at home are full to bursting, so that's a good thing.

This post is, of course, in the thread of thriftiness as a path to being a healthy, wealthy eco-warrior. But besides all that, a lifetime's worth of reading is just pure pleasure.

I recently saw reading described as "an enjoyable, even ecstatic experience" on the Mighty Girl website. The point of the article was actually to say that reading makes people smarter and nicer. That is not, of course, why many of us retire to bed to enter another delicious world. We don't always manage to keep our noses out of our books during the day, either, even when we've got chores to get on with.

The slogan of our local library is 'Send your mind somewhere'. Earlier this month mine traveled to seventeenth century Iceland, in the form of Burial Rites by Hannah Kent. Oh goodness, I loved it. The beauty, the toughness, the fascination of it. It's based on a true story of the last woman to be executed in Iceland.

I also ventured to a certain Scottish castle over the last year, and as a result adored the Harry Potter series. I strung them out over a year because I couldn't bear to think that one day there would be no more of the series for me to read. I've coped quite well, though.

Each night Anna and I are tripping to nineteenth century America in the form of the Little House on the Prairie series. We've been amazed at Ma making head cheese out of the head of a pig, and at the family having trouble sleeping due to nocturnal Indian war cries (which turned out to be part of a plan to kill the white settlers! - well, some of them did have a horrifying motto: "The only good Indian is a dead Indian").

I have read elsewhere that the series, which was published in the early 1930s, was part propoganda. Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter, who edited the books, believed that the government had started meddling too much in people's lives. She turned her mother's memoirs into fables that showed their pioneering forebears as independent, capable, optimistic and incredibly resourceful - in short, thriving without government intervention. That is, apart from when the government drove out the Indians. They were pleased about that little intervention. (Sadly my forebears weren't much better in that respect.)

It's these adventures of the mind that keep me, and indeed our whole family, going for more, more, more books. Pure, free, enriching pleasure.