When women have babies, our reading becomes limited largely to the back of Tylenol bottles.

With time, the syllabus expands to include the What to Expect canon, though only so long as to prepare for the next few hours of the child's life.

This tends to make us colossal bores and miserably uninformed.

Fortunately, nature provides. Our tiny companions can neither talk nor understand, so mother and child are matched in babble. Sadly, many women forget this.

Recently, a cafe's entire clientele had to endure one mother prattling, incessantly and loudly, to her mewling son. She was reading about international relations from the paper. It was all I could do to stop from yelling, "He isn't interested in Condoleezza Rice! He's interested in cookie."

When I was home on maternity leave, and getting through one newspaper article seemed an accomplishment worthy of some prize (MacArthur? Nobel?), my friend, Vicki, suggested that I tackle Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy" (1,488 pages!), a book so long as to make Dickens seem like "Goodnight Moon."

Now, Vicki is beyond wonderful, able to read 1,500-page books and raise three children, all while losing her thighs though, clearly, not her mind, but this was, without question, the single meanest thing anyone has ever suggested to me.

Reading is one of life's great pleasures. It always seemed a tad unkind that children, another bounty, believe they are perfectly good substitutes for getting lost in a book.

This is patently untrue. Books never ask to be driven anywhere.

Our summer vacations have long been built on repetition and reading, plus a healthy intake of spiced hard-shells. There were years when I went to sleep with volumes strewn across my bedspread so, in the event that I woke up, they were immediately available. Every summer, I try to tackle at least one masterpiece that has eluded me. I can mark the years by those books: The War and Peace summer, the Trollope summer.

And then, for many years, children and a brain gone to mush. Sometimes I would try subterfuge and suggest for bedtime reading, "Hey, kids, how about the latest from celebrated children's author Philip Roth?"

But, no dice.

My husband, who reads twice as quickly as I do, would sneak away. Hours later, I'd find him a good way through a novel and shoot him a look that said How dare you? In return, he would offer me a couple of hours off. I fantasized about devouring Anthony Powell's "A Dance to the Music of Time," all 12 volumes, but the truth was all I ever did was nap.

David and I read different books partially because I have no patience for mysteries — I want to know who did it pronto — and because, in the retelling to each other, it doubles our intake. But none of this mattered when the children were younger and we were at the beach, because I barely read anything beyond recipes.

And then, miracle of miracles, I began to read again. Granted, my Magic Mountain summer was accomplished by allowing the kids to devour copious amounts of television. The same may hold true this vacation for what I hope shapes up to be the Brothers Karamazov summer.

Yes, I am surely going to hell for this, I say to myself as I turn the pages, but at least I'm going to hell having read Mann and Dostoevsky.

Karen Heller is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.