The care and feeding of parents . . .

My mother is under the weather and has finished off all her books. She asked me to bring her a couple when I come over to do laundry tomorrow. I'm always delighted to hook my mother up with new reading material, so I went to my shelves and looked. She prefers science-fiction to fantasy and paperbacks to hardbacks. This narrows things to begin with, because I prefer hardcovers, so my paperback collection is small.

Then I had to look for items I thought my mother might enjoy. Because there are certain places where I know her sensibilities well enough to be cautious of them. She doesn't care for books where it's like you're thrown into a whole new language or metaphor, sink-or-swim, though she'll sometimes read them and just wish they weren't written that way. This rules out all my cyberpunk. And I know she's not big on violence in movies. I don't know for sure if this carries over to books or not, but better safe than sorry, so I ruled out anything where descriptions of violence are particularly graphic or overwhelming.

I almost pulled a particular book for her, and then stopped. Because the entire premise of the book is that mankind needs pain. That without it, we don't appreciate joy. My mother is one of those people who doesn't favor the bittersweet. I thought to myself, "Maybe it's something she needs to read." Because sometimes, in my life, my role is to beat people about the head and shoulders with truths they'd rather ignore. Then I thought, "Do I have any right to play that role for my mother? I know I don't want to." In the end, I left it on the shelf.

So I ended up with The Surveillance and The Metaconcert, by Julian May. The only two from that world that I have in paperback. I also grabbed Phantom, by Susan Kay, which I think she'll enjoy. And I pulled the first three of the Vlad Taltos books, by Stephen Brust--they're fantasy, but I think she might enjoy them. They're humorous, written in a fun voice, and they're not high fantasy--they're low fantasy, as it were. And there's a science to the method of magic. I almost grabbed the Abhorsen books, for one of the same reasons, but I'm not sure how she'd be with the theme.

Sooner or later, I'll have to start lending her hardcovers.