I’m a new mom to nearly five month old Finley. It’s the most amazing experience but as all parents know, a new baby can turn your world upside down. Things you used to take for granted (uninterrupted sleep and meals) become precious to you. Activities you used to hold dear fall by the wayside. In my case, this means reading. I used to be a voracious reader. I’d swap books back and forth with friends and my mother-in-law who also loves to read. I never joined a book club, I’m not much of a joiner, but I always enjoyed talking to someone had read the same book and we could discuss it casually rather than following some silly Oprah Book Club Guide.

Anyway, I used read every night before I went to bed. Perhaps I picked up this habit from my parents who are also big readers. I don’t have a TV in bedroom (I can hear the gasps of horror now) and I never will. My husband and I like to read ourselves to sleep. But since I’ve had Finley, I haven’t felt up to committing to reading a book every night because I’m usually too tired to read, so I’ve been buying magazines instead. They contain nice, short stories and lots of pictures and I can pick it up and put it down at will.

I subscribe to a few magazines (Bon Appetite, Real Simple and Parenting) and sometimes I’ll pick up Cooking Light. Magazines like In Style and Vanity Fair are almost as thick as books, so I avoid them although they used to be my favorite. However, my new guilty pleasure is a magazine called In Touch. It costs $1.99 (a bargain), there are practically no ads and it’s chock full of useful information. But I love it. I get so excited when I see a new edition in the check-out line at the Safeway. I can’t wait to run home and read it.

Once I get home with my magazine, I go through a ritual that my husband makes fun of. I like to skim through a magazine from back to front and just glance at the stories without actually reading them. This way, I have something to look forward to and I know what I’m getting into. It may sound silly, but it’s the way I approach my reading. Which brings us back to Brangelina.

You can almost always count on there being one or two of the people that make up the following couples on the cover of In Touch magazine: Brangelina, Vinnifer, Tomkat and NickandJessica (one word). It’s always the same photos, always the same story and it’s never anything earth shattering. Maybe I feel that if I keep reading the magazine, they’ll reveal something groundbreaking about Angelina’s baby being born in Africa or Vince Vaughn’s battle with his weight. But the story never changes. And there’s something to be said about that when you’ve recently had so much change in your life (like me who got married, moved, had a baby and left a job in less than two years).

Now that Finley is going to be early and almost sleeping through the night, I have more time to enjoy reading again. I even bought a real book the other day. Nothing too challenging, but rather something very familiar to me that already know I’ll enjoy. (Trust me, if I could erase my memory every time I read a Harry Potter book so I could read it again, I would.). It’s one in the series of No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall. They are just great books and I highly recommend them. And thankfully, there are no Tomkittens in Botswana.