Reading to Influence People

Is my luck changing? Yesterday, Mr. Julius Azuka emailed me to say $5,000 awaits at the Western Union office if I will only pay $225 as a daily endorsement and activation file fee. 

Oh, Mr. Azuka, how did you slip through the spam filter that catches your more charming brothers and sisters in crime, the ones who use “Most Beloved” or “Precious Dear” in subject lines?

Your pitch is not convincing, Mr. Azuka, and your email’s tiny font and lack of white space work against you.

Good news, Mr. Azuka! I will help you craft a pitch that engages your email recipients. For a daily inspiration fee of $225, I will show you how to capture and retain pigeons. What’s more, to show my good will, I will offer you five tips for a discounted rate of $125, payable to me via a Western Union money order.

Help is yours for the taking (and paying), Mr. Azuka.  My best wishes for your success.

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A poll by Booktrust, a UK-based group that promotes literacy, found that only 19% of younger fathers (aged 16-24) say they enjoy reading to their children at bedtime, compared to 78% of older parents (aged 55+).

Do you feel for young dads who are working long hours and balancing school and work? Me, too, but the survey points to lack of confidence rather than lack of time as the chief reason fathers skip bedtime tales.

I blame Jim Carrey.

These young dads think they have to do funny voices and make faces. They approach a bedtime story as if it’s stand-up comedy. Wrong! Your kids want to hear a story from your lips, and special effects aren’t required.

Every time Dr. Seuss or one of his books is mentioned, I flip back in time and “hear” my father read Green Eggs and Ham to my younger brother and youngest sister. His approach emphasized the text, and while he embraced the rhyme, he didn’t overdo it. His version became the baseline for me and my sibs.

So it will be with you, young dads. Your little ones won’t compare you to Jim Carrey or to their friends’ fathers. Yours is the reading that will stick with and matter to your kids.

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Younger Daughter just finished reading Veronica Roth’s Divergent and emailed me to say she loved it.  I gave her the book two years ago because I suspected she’d like it and because readers press books on others. We do this in the flush of enthusiasm for the book itself or in a light bulb moment that illuminates for us, if not for anyone else, a connection between the book and someone we know. Mind you, our attempts to press books on others have backfired, and we’ve learned not to ask if the pressee liked the book or even read it. Patience counts here. If we wait long enough, the person we pressed a book on will unearth the long-forgotten thing and may think he/she discovered it.

My mother only reads large-print books, and my attempts to sell her on e-readers’ font-enlarging capability have failed. She wants to hold a “real” book in her hands, not a Kindle. Her local library has a good large-print selection, but I’ve gone there, chosen for her, and missed. A recent win? Karen White’s The Time Between. My mother loved it. What’s more, after reading the first couple of pages, I bought a copy for myself, devoured it, and then insisted a friend read it. Note to self: be patient.

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Have any advice for Mr. Azuka? Other than Get an honest job! I mean.

Did you/do you read to your kids? What book was/is your favorite and theirs?

Are you the kind of reader who presses favorite books on friends and family members? What’s the last book you insisted someone read?