Isabel Woolf
Before I had children, reading on the weekends wasn't the luxury it is now; it was a routine pleasure. I could, and often did, spend most of Friday to Sunday with my nose in a book. I remember one particularly eyeball-busting weekend reading The Blind Assassin followed by The Eustace Diamonds.
Eight years on, with a young son and daughter, reading anything on the weekend - anything other than Thomas the Tank Engine and Sparkle magazine, that is - seems an intellectually Herculean feat. There are pockets of time in between trips to the park, the swimming pool, and the zoo, but they're too short for fiction, and it's frustrating trying to read a novel two pages at a time.
These short gaps are, however, great for poetry, and I usually have some slim volume on the go. At the moment I'm re-reading Philip Larkin's High Windows and Michael Ondaatje's The Cinnamon Peeler, which are perfect for a few minutes of downtime, light to carry about, and have the added pleasure of a quick intellectual return.
Family life can all but obliterate reading, so the trick for fiction-famished parents is to identify an opportunity and grab it. If the children are playing a game together, I read; if they're playing on their Nintendos, I read; if they're watching TV, I definitely read - though I can manage only lighter fiction against the distraction of the background noise. I'm currently getting through the backlist of the wonderful Eva Ibbotson during Saturday afternoon repeats of SpongeBob SquarePants.
I also create reading opportunities by taking the children to the soft play area at our local sports centre. While they thrash around for an hour I sit close by with my book. Occasionally I catch myself going "Shhhh!"
Evening brings the children's bedtime reading, currently E. M. Nesbitt's A Little Princess for my daughter and Room on the Broom for my little boy. Now that Alice can read, I'm entertaining mean little fantasies about getting her to do all the bedtime reading while I read my book: "It'll be such good practice for you, darling!" I shall say.
The real challenge, though, is in reading literary fiction, which demands silence and solitude - both of which are in short supply. So this I read late at night, when everyone else in the house is asleep. I'm usually exhausted by midnight, but I find the allure of an hour's uninterrupted reading irresistible. So I creep down to the kitchen, sit at the table and, trembling with happy anticipation, open my book. Given that I'm tired, my choice of novel is determined largely by length. For the most part, I read ones that are short - 350 pages max - but compressed, offering multum in parvo. Philip Roth and J. M. Coetzee fit the bill perfectly, as does Ian McEwan, whose wonderful novel Saturday I read last weekend in three late-night bursts.
This coming weekend I plan to read Friday Nights by Joanna Trollope, followed by Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
Isabel Wolff was a journalist and broadcaster before becoming a full-time writer. Her eight romantic comedies have been published worldwide. "Her latest novel, A Vintage Affair, was published by Harper Weekend in May."