As I've mentioned, I've been reading a fair bit lately, more than I have in a long time. This is because there are several periods a day when I have to sit in a chair and feed the baby, and the only thing to do during these times is read (well, or nod off, if it's a 2:00 am feeding!). At the moment, I am on a sci-fi kick: I am alternately rereading Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series and reading Orson Scott Card's Ender series for the first time. I think the latter is more serious in its themes, but the former is a damned good read.
Anyway, as a result, I am spending more time with books, particularly fiction, than I have in a long time, and since I am not working, the only person I talk to regularly is my sweetie. This has resulted in the characters I read about being rather more real to me than they might otherwise be. To the point where I start to think about their lives outside of what's written in the books.
For example:
Do you think Anne Blythe (nee Shirley) breastfed her six kids? I think she must have, but do you think she had trouble with it? Did Gilbert, as a doctor, have advice for her, or did he stay out of the way?
Or:
I wonder if Miles Vorkosigan, in addition to his well documented medical problems, also had cradle cap?
Yeah: I need to get out more, in more ways than one....
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Yes, you need to get out more. However, I like the books you're reading! And as E. Bays once said, you ask good questions.
I'm betting Anne Blythe breast fed, and I'd suspect she had no problems, given the "I love being a mother" tone of the volume where she's fretting because she thinks Gilbert has forgotten their anniversary. I suspect it would have been the nurses who would have had advice, rather than the doctor, if she had had problems. My grandmother, who was married to a doctor and breast fed four babies, said it was the nurses who dealt with such things. She never had problems herself --in fact she had so much milk the nurses used her as an informal wet nurse for mothers who were having problems.
As for Miles, I think Cordelia would have been thrilled if he had a cranium, much less cradle cap --didn't all his bones liquify or some such thing from the toxins? He makes some quip at one point about being carried in a bucket. . .
I was given the twelfth volume of Robert Jordan's Eye of the World series for xmas, and am trying to summon the courage to start it.
Okay, I need to get out more too! :-)
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