Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads

Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads

By Gary Greenberg and Jeannie Hayden

As I mentioned before, there's a few of these books coming down the pipe.

I have a nine month (six to go) book competition playing out in my head. I am currently auditioning the role of go-to manual for fatherhood. You know, the book I will keep tethered to my end table in my bedroom until my son or daughter turns 18 and I kick them out the door. I'm looking for that all-encompassing guide that will tell me how to do as many things as I will need to do and best prepare me for the unexpected while making me look like I was born to do the job (and somehow maintain my cool card). As of right now, I'm holding the book that is the odds-on favorite to win this competition.

And that's not to say reading a book is going to prepare me for fatherhood. I'm perfectly aware that nothing will prepare me, least of all a book. But I feel a little less not-ready now. And that, at this point, is comfort enough. So please, parents out there, don't give me a hard time about how a book isn't going to do much good when the shit hits the fan. I know. And I'm ready to not be ready.

Anyway...

Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads is exactly the sort of book I was looking for. It offers easily digestible material about a wide range of issues ranging from the day of birth through to the baby's first birthday. It covers the standard questions such as "How do I change a diaper?' and "How do you baby-proof a room?" to the more complicated issues such as "How to insert a rectal thermometer without traumatizing the child?" and "How do I best handle a slippery wet baby?" (with a clean sock). It's the sort of book that answers the questions you have and the questions you didn't even know you were supposed to ask. Reassuring, to say the least.

Aside from the obvious stuff, there seems to be an expert level involved in fatherhood and this book covers some pretty cool territory in that respect. Greenberg and Hayden offer all sorts of fathering gold such as constructing emergency diapers, creating a decoy drawer with old electronics for the toddler to "destroy." and how to stay awake at work after your twelfth sleepless night in a row. There is also a great section on traveling with a baby (camping and how to survive long-haul flights), which I am certain will come in very handy over the next couple of years. While I'm certain there are things this book is not covering, from my perspective, it's as comprehensive as Britannica.

And it's funny. From what I have been perusing, other books about child-rearing oscillate between panic and irreverence. My wife seems to favor the former while I tend to frequent the latter. The only problem with humor is that it often gets in the way of actual advice, which is why I'm reading the book in the first place. Be Prepared seems to know when to remain deadly serious, when to yuck it up and when you can blend the two. For instance, this sage piece of advice concerning dining in restaurants with small children:

When going out to a restaurant with your small fry, keep your expectations low. Don't expect to enjoy your meal. Don't expect to converse with your partner. And don't expect your fellow diners to be anything but irritated by your presence. And if by chance your baby is angelic, count your blessings and wolf down your meal as quickly as possible.

Indeed.

And then there are the pictures. Jeannie Hayden's style is evocative of the bygone dad of yore. The 1950s/1960s Ward Cleaver figure with pants cinched up to the solar plexus, pipes firmly clenched in their square jaws and perfectly parted hair. There are lumberjackets and Stetson hats and enough Aqua Velva to drown Mary Tyler Moore. One gets a sense of timeless comfort from the images. Each image is a sort of Superdad with a steady hand, a firm grasp of all situations and a quick sitcom-ending lesson to impart on wrong-doers at every corner. I like that. It's comforting to think I'm taking fathering advice from Alan Thicke.

This isn't to say this book is perfect. I would have liked to have had a chapter or two concerning the father's role in the weeks prior to birth as well as some lessons on protocol and etiquette concerning the announcement but these are minor complains. As it stands, this book is taking it's place on my end table until such time as a better book unseats it. Given the sheer volume of solid advice, I suspect it would take nothing less than Alan Thicke's Guide to Fatherhood (God, I hope that actually exists) to remove this book from its place.

What To Expect When Your Wife Is Expanding

What To Expect When Your Wife Is Expanding

By Thomas Hill

Well, I suppose that more than a few titles such as this one will appear on my blog over the coming months for reasons that should be implied. I'll try to keep nervous father-to-be angst off the blog as best I can, but since I vowed to write something about everything I read, I am forced by my own dogmatism to write about them. Please bear with me.

Actually, I should take this moment to plug my side-blog: Birthing the Dragon. I started another blog that will chronicle my wife and my experiences of (cross-cultural) pregnancy and birth in Taiwan, one of the world's most superstition nations (and, yes... out child will be a Dragon, though we didn't plan that nor does it mean anything to us). Most of the blog content will be relating then furrowing my brow at the nonsensical advice doled out by old (and not so old) Taiwanese women about how pregnancy and babies. Should be enlightening.

Anyway, back to the book at hand. I suppose that it was smart of me to start with a parody. A nice, short, light-hearted little booklet for new fathers. While most of the advice is silly and irreverent ("What to Name Your Baby If You Are Not Serious About Naming A Baby," "What To Take To The Hospital For Myself," "What Your Wife Will Be Complaining About This Month") some of the advice is quite useful (although you often have to dig through layers of sarcasm and dimwittedness to get there).

Despite the light-hearted approach to a serious subject, I'm not going to get on this book's case. It is what it is. It's a fun little book you might would in the humor section of the bookstore. It's the sort of gag gift you buy for a guy whose wife is expecting their first child (me) but wouldn't necessarily buy for yourself. And since it was given to me by a very good friend in exactly that sort of vein, I'm happy with it. A solid morning's read.

I'm not going to give this book a whole lot of space for obvious reasons. I have more serious books on the subject piling up around the house that will get closer attention. But if I took one lesson away from this book it is this:

If our baby is a girl, her name will not be Bertrude.

Shout Out!

Unless you live under a rock, you've been to visit Sheila over at Book Journey. She is a book blog hub and a wonderful blogger with lots of fun stuff going on. Always deserving of an extra visit.

Seven Days at the Silbersteins

Seven Days at the Silbersteins

By Etienne Leroux

Living in a non-English speaking country is a challenge for a reader. For me, books are often hard to come by and while it's not impossible to get them (there are bookstores in Taipei, three hours by train and Amazon does ship to Taiwan), it can be feast or famine at times. while my Kindle has eased some of the worst famines, I'm certainly not living in a place of unlimited access to books.

Despite the challenge inherent to a reader in Taiwan, there is an interesting side-advantage that I never considered but turns out to be true. Living in a medium-sized city with a small population of English speakers from all over the world has provided me with the chance to read a wide assortment of English literature from countries I would otherwise have ignored (unwittingly, of course). If I still lived in Canada I would be inundated with Canadian and American literature with a smattering of English novels to fill the gaps. Aside from the odd worldwide curiosity, I would hardly get exposed to the depths of Australian literature, or New Zealander, or South African.

As it turns out, I've had the opportunity to read a lot of interesting books from around the world due to the fact that I live in an international expatriate community and Seven Days at the Silbersteins is a prime example of a book I would have never read otherwise.

Seven Days at the Silbersteins is a classic South African novel by Etienne Leroux. Originally published in Afrikaans in 1962, Seven Day at the Silbersteins is a classic in it's original language. I'm not sure if this book is widely available outside Sotuth Africa. This particular English translation was done by Charles Eglington. Needless to say, I imagine this book would be difficult to find in a North American bookstore. Despite such obscurity, Seven Days at the Silbersteins won the Herzog Prize, the highest award in Afrikaans literature.

On the surface it is the story of Henry Van Eeden, a young, well-educated South African who is escorted to the vast Silberstein estate by his uncle, J.J. in order to meet Salome, the young girl he is betrothed to marry. Henry spends seven days at the Silberstein's winery and cattle ranch (called Weldevonden) meeting the family (of which the enigmatic Jock reigns supreme), attending parties populated by eccentric gentry and farmers and, mysteriously enough, not meeting Salome. She is in attendance at all the functions, but Henry remains uncertain as to which guest is his fiancee until the very end. The surface story is the literary equivalent of a Three's Company episode.

But this novel cannot be read on a surface level. Leroux's prose is dense with philosophical and social implications. Written as a time of social awakening in South Africa, the text is a bizarre trip that examines the nature of good versus evil, the essence of salvation, the formlessness of being and the divine among a plethora of other themes. At another level, Seven Days at the Silbersteins is a literary awakening of the Afrikaans voice at a time when South Africa was itself awakening from several decades of crippling apartheid to find themselves increasingly the pariah on the world stage. I get the impression that this novel and its highly liberal ideas when a long way toward softening the Afrikaans stance on race relations in South Africa, but I could be wrong.

The prose is so dense that it takes a linguistic machete to hack through its layers. One of the central themes of the book is the notion of reality vs. illusion and the book often diverges into bizarre twists and turns that are sometimes difficult to understand. Leroux is concerned with the the notion of masks and hidden realities and this not only comes out in the surface narrative but also on various philosophical levels. This obsession with illusion and reality is perfectly manifest in the ongoing interplay between the very real Henry and the illusory Salome, whose presence is entirely definite, but at the same time, entirely indefinite.

While the novel itself is short (only 157 pages) the writing is so dense and layered that it should be read slowly in order to really chew the philosophical fat. Each chapter represents a particular day and each chapter descends deeper into a world where very little is certain and everything seems possible. But don't get me wrong, aside from the deeper themes of the novel Seven Days at the Silbersteins is very much a piece of humor. Watching Henry stumble and bumble about his future in-laws estate, being continuously misunderstood and misinterpreted (often to his advantage) is a lesson in good comedic writing. The pacing is as it should be. Quick on story and long on thought.

If you are into philosophical comedy and/or Afrikaans literature (and I know you are!), this is as good a place to start.

Shout Out

Despite the fact that she has really culled back her posting recently (boo!), I really dig what Erin has to say over at Erin Reads. Excellent blog. Check her out!