beautiful books

On this Mother's Day, I want to appreciate a dad -- David Sheff, the author of "Beautiful Boy" -- which I just finished reading last night. I don't think I've ever read anything so honest and touching by a father -- and a lot of it seems to echo what mommy-brain scientists have found: that the more time either parent spends with a child, the deeper the bond and the more each of you transforms the other. Sheff, who divorced when his son was young, spent years as a part-time single parent, which may well account for how devoted, engaged and sometimes, as he says himself, too-enmeshed, a father he became. It seems fairly clear that he ended up saving his meth-addicted son's life. A few times.

Also, in my blog about children's literature the other day, I made the terrible mistake of not extolling Rick Riordan's wonderful series based on Greek myths, starting with The Lightning Thief. The other day, we got a copy of the latest, "The Battle of the Labyrinth,", and first my 12-year-old and then my 9-year-old gulped it down within a several-hours marathon. The peace in the house was an early Mother's Day gift...