There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.

Last week, on my way to go grocery shopping, Seg asked if we could go next-door to the Big Bird and play with the Thomas trains at the bookstore. Since he finished his preschool year two weeks ago, we were under no time constraints to get the grocery shopping done at a specific time, and I can get coffee just as easily at the B&N as I can at the BB, so what the heck. The boys staged giant train wrecks centered on the trestle bridge, and I looked at books.

Noticing that the last Jennifer Chiaverini Elm Creek Quilts novel was out in paperback, I scooped that up. (I have to read all my library books first, though.)

And ever since the library-book-replacement debacle, I keep thinking I should just BUY Primo’s books (because, you know, we have a twenty-dollar-bill tree growing in a sunny spot in my muddy backyard…). But I like to buy classics, books I think all the boys will eventually enjoy, and that bear rereading (we’re on our fourth reading of Paddington, and they’ve been pestering me for more Mr Popper’s Penguins, which has to be, upon rereading, one of the dullest books ever written). So I brought home Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Now, the movie “Willy Wonka” is ODD (although I harbor a shamefully weird crush on Gene Wilder), and I won’t let the kids watch it yet; and many other Roald Dahl books are ODD (I still sometimes have nightmares about his story “The Swan,” from The Wonderful Stories of Henry Sugar and I was NOT an especially sensitive child by any means). But I thought Charlie might be a fun book to read aloud to the two boys this summer, before bed and during the lazy, hot afternoons, swinging on the porch swing. Well, that was the theory at least. Primo started it yesterday afternoon, propped up on his elbows in our front yard, his feet draped over the side of the wading pool where Seg pretended to be a polar bear. He gulped it down, begging me to stay up a little bit later so he could finish it before he went to bed (I let him. Sucker.) I was charged to bring home more Charlie books today – but our library doesn’t own Charlie and the Glass Elevator, so I checked out Matilda (my personal favorite) and the deliciously creepy James and the Giant Peach.

A ten-year-old friend recommended the Alex Ryder series, by Anthony Horowitz, and I did look at them but I think Primo is still a wee little bit too young for them just yet.

He also proudly showed off his Pokemon Pokedex, and now Primo wants one, too. Because that boy is digging Pokemon these days, and he loves nothing more than memorizing statistics. He reads the sports page every single blessed morning, and can rattle off batting averages, point totals, plus-minuses, and possibly even, who the hell knows, over-unders. I think nothing would delight him more than becoming a repository of useless Pokemon information.

Public schools wrap up Tuesday, and I am already fearing trying to keep that boy in books this summer.

*************

Yesterday I began Betty MacDonald’s The Plague and I, a rollicking account of her year in a tuberculosis sanatorium. No, seriously, I do have to admit, probably only MacDonald could make this a good read. I mean, she made life on a chicken farm hilarious in The Egg and I so who was I to doubt? I have coupled it with a serious attempt to finish Clare Clarke’s The Great Stink because the reviews were so good, and the writing is so evocative. But that’s sort of the problem. It’s a book about the engineering and building of London’s sewer system – and even I, the great iron-stomached one, am finding it tough to read it while eating, which is my favorite way to read.

So I am off for my lunch hour – to read about TB or read about sewage. Tough call.