Bedtime Stories

The Reading Promise , 3218 nights of reading with my father by Alice Ozma

I've had this book on reserve in the library for a couple of months, in fact as soon as I read the pre-publication blurb I knew that I wanted to read this book.

The jacket reads

"When Alice was nine years old, she and her father - a beloved school librarian - made a promise to read aloud together for 100 consecutive nights. upon reaching that goal, they decided to to continue what became known as The Streak for as long as they possibly could."

I've mentioned before the memories I have of being read to (Dad, why did we never read The Horse and his Boy when reading the Narnia books?) and so this book was always going to appeal. And when it finally arrived I read it in one day.

I think I thought it would be more about the books the pair shared, why they chose them and what they thought of them. It wasn't really like that.

This was the story of Alice's childhood and teenage years with her single parent dad with some mention of the time they spent reading together, there was very little about the books themselves.

It was an enjoyable read, but it wasn't what I was expecting and to be honest without the 'hook' of the 3218 nights I'm not sure that the book would have ever crossed the Atlantic to the UK. On the plus side it was lovely to read a book that was so positive about reading and about the father-daughter relationship, but it was a bit too 'touchy-feely' for me as a rule.

I think that as an avid reader the one thing that disappointed me the most was this closing paragraph:

"My father and I had no idea what The Streak would become and therefore never made a list of the books we read. Many have been forgotten"

they do go on to list some that they remember but as someone who has kept a reading diary for the last decade I wanted to know what they read and what they thought of the books.