Ben's Aspirational Books

Ben is a bit of a bookworm, but his reading matter is not endless stories, as mine was when I was child. I used to love ploughing my way through the complete works of Enid Blyton. I remember often finishing a whole book whilst still in the book shop, just waiting for Mum to come out of Waitrose. They must have hated us in there, using it like a library.

Ben does read fiction, but also loves facts and educational books. He likes funny and quirky things to read, a QI fact book will amuse him for ages. He will also get lost in grown up magazines like Focus. He is a speed reader and before we got him a kindle, his books would make up a good proportion of the weight of our holiday luggage. Ben read the entire Harry Potter series, all seven books, in just twelve days.

He reads when eating cereal, on the toilet, while brushing his teeth, in bed until very late at night, and first thing in the morning before he gets out of bed.

Mark has been borrowing his kindle lately and on this he discovered Ben’s Amazon Kindle Wish List. Three books were listed;

‘C++ Programming for Beginners and Children’ (- a guide to a fairly complex computer programming code.)

‘A Guide to Green Screen’ (video editing techniques) and a book entitled

‘I want to be a Millionaire when I grow up – Kids’ Guide to Money.’

One evening after seeing this, I found Ben sat on his bed sighing and making noises of annoyance and frustration.

“What’s up” I asked him

“I don’t know.....” he groaned “it is just.....just.....I haven’t achieved anything.”

“What do you mean?” I said

“I’ve wasted the day....every day I have to do something to move forward ...I haven’t done anything today to progress my life!”

Seriously?! I am thinking, this is a real concern of his, he is 11 years old, does he need to ‘progress his life’ at this stage? I thought childhood was supposed to be carefree.

I feel now that my literary diet of Enid Blyton, clearly gave me much lowlier ambitions, and the subsequent career of a 1950s housewife.