[I should be watching my movies from netflix - this weeks are "Butterfly Effect" and "Disc 2 of La Femme Nikita", yes, yes, I know half my flist would not see Butterfly Effect if you paid them but a friend of mine whose tast I respect, liked it, really liked it - so what the heck, I thought I'd give it a shot. Won't be the first or the last flick I've rented that did not work for me. Adore netflix - can try whatever I please with no worries. Getting tempted to give up TV and just jump full time, except, am moody tv wise and also impatient, want to see next episode now. Already annoyed that will have to wait an entire year to get next installments of Dead Like Me (assuming there is one? Seen the actors in it in numerous other shows, so am wondering) and The L Word. But enough about tv, such a low-brow topic...moving on to books.]
15 Things About Books. [Not sure there are any rules here - just write fifteen things you come up with on books, I guess. If too personal will flock.]
1. Eating books, The Golden Books, Book Fairs, and Telling Stories As a child, I did everything you could possibly do to a book without actually reading it. Hadn't figured that part out yet. But I loved being read to. Remember begging my parents to buy more books or check more than our alotment at the library. We went through them so quickly. Started with the Golden Books, called golden for the gold bindings which I would eat. We picked up at the supermarket for less than a dollar. We were pretty poor back then. They contained mostly fairy tales, stories from Disney movies we saw, and fables. Other books we'd get through book fairs - the school had them and they were my favorite activity - just like Xmas. I was only allowed to order $5 worth and Mom had to approve. My parents also read to me the EB White series - I adored Stuart Little. And at school they read: Little House on The Prairie when it was too cold to go out and play - those were my favorite recesses and my favorite part of school. Yes, I was a strange child. At recess, I told myself stories when someone else wasn't. My brother remembers me doing it with him, on vacations and in our backyard. My parents have a photograph with the two of us on a wood pile, my hands out in front of me, mouth open, clearly explaining something to my brother, who has a listening look on his face - later he informed my parents that I was telling him a story when the photo was taken.
2. Learning to Read, Fun with Dick and Jane Reading took me a while. Problem was that I was a visual/hands on learner not a phonetic learner - and that's how they taught people to read. Wasn't until a very bright second grade teacher went to her library and found the old sight and sound Fun with Dick and Jane books that I learned. Me and five other kids. We were all lost with the "phonics" method they were attempting to teach us by reading Aesop's Fables aloud and having each kid take a turn reproducing what they heard the teacher read. Reading with sounds but no pictures. Just sounds. Unable to hear or make out certain sounds, I needed to hook the word to something concrete - needed to see the image of it in my head. The word by itself was gobbly gook. Once I connected it to the picture and the picture to something I knew - I remembered the word. As a result, my favorite books when I was very young, contained pictures. Picture books I adored included: The Richard Scarey Series, Dr. Suess, The Snowy Day, and a book of the Walt Disney Cartoon Robin Hood. Or those are what I remember.
3. Sleeping with Books I slept with books the way some people sleep with dolls or stuffed animals. I did not sleep with stuffed animals as a small child. Older - with stuffed animals - yes. But as a child my imaginary friends inhabited the pages of the books that were either read to me or I was eventually able to read myself. I remember once hiding five hardcover books in bed with me, under my covers, next to the wall. I horded them. I saw them as my protection against the monsters in the closet and under the bed. As I grew older, I also took books to bed with me, but this time to read, often after my parents told me to go to sleep. I remember sneaking a flashlight in once. I've been known to stay up all night reading a really good book, you know the type you can't put down because you just want to stay there inside the minds and world of those characters - this happened with Pride and Prejudice and Sandition which was based on Austen's last unpublished manuscript. I also did it with Harriet The Spy, (the sequel, the Long Summer, not so good.), The Hobbit, Dune, White Gold Wielder by Sam Donaldson about a man with leprosy who is a healer in another universe. Also, Lisa Bright and Dark, The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Keatley Snyder whom I adored. The Circle of Light series. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin(?) (is it bad that I remember the names of the books over the writers who wrote them?), Robin Hood by Robin Mckinley ( as young adult) and the Disney Cartoon Version ( as a small child, no more than 6 or 7), Kathleen Woodwiss's The Wolf and The Dove, Laurie McBain's Devil's Desire, Agatha Christie's Curtain and Sleeping Murder. The Borrowers. And oh yes, the complete series of hard back, Nancy Drews - the original ones, with the original artwork.
4. Books on PBS, being Read to in School,the Animal books and oh god, Judy Bloom In the fifth grade, when we moved from PA to KC, and went to a much better school district with a much better school library - I graduated to more complex reading material. Prior to that move, I'd been reading whatever I could get my hands on at the book mobile and school library. Also we were still being read to in class - that stopped once we moved and I missed it. I've always enjoyed being read to. Made my brother antsy. But I adored it. The books they read in PA were Charlie and The Great Glass Elevator and James and the Giant Peach. We also had this show on PBS where books such as The Perilous Guard and The Wolves of Willohby Chase were read aloud with beautiful paintings on the screen. I adored that show. It was often shown in school. I remember hunting those books. Finally found an out of print copy of the Perilous Guard at the college book store in Colorado Springs, 1988, I believe. Ended up writing a college paper on it. It sits now on my parents book shelf, and I still remember it fondly. Also read all the animal books - was obsessed with animal books for a while. Horse novels - Misty of...Chitachnaagoh? Black Stallion. Black Beauty. And from a friend, read Plague Dogs Watership Down, All Creatures Great and Small semi-autobiographical novels about the English veternan. Plus lots of animal picture books. And I think everything Judy Bloom wrote - including Are You There God, It's Me Margaret and the book about the girl who wasn't liked by anyone that I can't remember the name of. Judy Bloom was my graduation from Nancy Drew and animal picture books, I think. Although the veternian books were adult. Even then I was ecclectic.
5. William Allen White, My Aunt the Librarian, and the wonderful world of Fantasy In the new school, KC, I was introduced to new books. They had a contest - you had to read all the William Allen White Award Winners and the Newberry Award Winners. Never won. Couldn't make it through all of them. But I did do a puppet show based on the fantasy mystery novel - the Westing Game, and made all the puppets myself as a book report project.
I remember loving the Dark is Rising Novels - which I discovered via the William Allen White contest. Also, through my aunt who was a librarian in Las Vegas for only 6th Graders - I discovered the wonderful world of fantasy and science fiction. She had boxes of books and would select different ones that she adored. She did not have any children of her own. One writer, Zilphia Keatley Snyder - a children's fantasy author and my current favorite, she arranged for me to interview via a letter. I wrote the letter, she gave it to the writer, and the writer sent me her responses along with a picture - which I used in a book report. She wrote: The Witches of Worm, The Velvet Room and The Cupid Game. My aunt also introduced me to, in no particular order : the A Wrinkle in Time series. My favorite was the second novel that I can no longer remember the name of. The Witch World series by CJ Cherryth, The Wizard of Earthsea series by Ursula Le Quinn, which still sit on parents book case. A darker, gritter, Harry Potter. The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis, and yes, I think the religious stuff more or less went above my head or at that time it did not bother me. The Dragon Riders of Pern by Anne McCathrey(sp?) and just about every other book she wrote. The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien. Escape to Witch Mountain - much better than the movie version with Ike Eisenmen and Kim Richards, which was my favorite movie at the time. According to my mother, my aunt used to tell her stories, when they were young. Long detailed Westerns and Sci-Fi tales. She had also written a few short stories that my mother located amongst her old things and has kept. (My Aunt died of a blood clot at the age of 60, approximately 8 years ago. I still miss her.)
6. The Great Books Foundation In 6th Grade and 7th Grade - I was introduced to Junior Great Books. Not sure if you've ever heard of Great Books. My father used to work for The Great Books Foundation in Chicago when my parents were first married. He changed careers when I was born. What he did was teach people how to lead reading discussions and form adult book groups. This was in 1965-1967. Great Books foundation was an organization that republished what are considered the classics and promoted reading of the classics for everyone, basically what Oprha does today with her book club, but a tad more academic. Well, in the 6th grade, a certain group of kids kept acting up at lunch or at recess - being rude and nasty like kids that age often are when they get bored (actually come to think of it adults aren't much different), so instead of getting to go outside at recess, we'd have to stay inside and copy sections out of the dictionary. I told my mother about this and it annoyed her, so she took action. She came to the school and requested that we do something a bit more constructive with our time. And was allowed by the teachers and principal to pitch her plan to the kids. You had a choice - you could either copy sections out of the dictionary or join reading group with my mother as the leader. Mom chose as the material - classic stories and novella's reproduced in Junior Great Books. Each series was color-coded for grade level. Sixth Grade was Red. Seventh Grade was Blue. Adult - Black. The trouble makers, myself ( I was an instant in of course), and about five or six other fairly savvy kids picked the reading group.
And recess suddenly became my favorite activity. We read short stories - including: The Veldt by Ray Bradbury which everyone adored and I've not forgotten to this day. A short story by Jack Wild (is that his name?), the author of Call of the Wild - which involved a man freezing too death, but I cannot remember the name of. The novella: The Black Perl by I think Steinbeck? And numerous others. I loved it so much that I continued it in Seventh Grade.
7. Books at Xmas - my favorite gift as a child was books. I used to dream of the books I'd get beneath the tree - for you see, my parents never wrapped them. When Santa visited, he left the gifts unwrapped. Sitting there beneath the tree, as if by magic. They believed Santa wouldn't wrap gifts. It wasn't until we no longer believed in Santa, that the gifts started being wrapped. So on Xmas morning, my brother and I would get up near the crack of Dawn, often before, and stumble downstairs, where the tree would still be lit and our gifts arranged magically in front of it, ready to be played with. We'd check everything out with glee, wait patiently fifteen to twenty minutes, maybe an hour, before agreeing to race upstairs and share our discovery with Mom and Dad. For me, I could wait longer, since I had a new book to read. To devour. To love.
8. Working in the School Library As a library aid, I could access even more books. I used to read them off the carrels as I was shelving, often getting scolded. I think all the scolding may be the reason I get nervous in libraries and jumpy? I am no longer comfortable in them. But back then, I was. Odd that. I remember reading a short story about a boy who finds a humongous spider in a tunnel and is killed by it. It still haunts me. Do not know the name of the story. I read the backs, middles, fronts, as much as I could when the librarian wasn't looking - since I was supposed to be checking the books in not reading them.
9. Book Stores I go to book stores the same way some women go shopping for clothes or accessories. We all have our weaknesses, I suppose. For me it has always been books. I now have a rule, I am not allowed to buy more books until I have space for them in my apartment, shelf space. This means, I either have to buy another bookcase, box more up, get rid of a few, or read more off my shelf. So no more books until I read at least five off shelf. I just broke the rule today when I bought Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett's Good Omens, yes, I know, I am incorrigible (is that a word? Yes, just misspelled.Ugh).
10. Reading Books at Book Stores In College I read all of Stephen King's novels in the book store. I scanned most of them. But did read. Also read the backs of all books. I used to camp out when I had free time in a combo store - called Poor Richards - you could sell your school books there, get new books, used books, see art films, and get coffee, tea, soft drinks, and all sorts of sandwiches, health food items and baked goods.
Since they had the movie theater in the middle of the book store, nice soft, wooden seats. I could grab a book off the shelf and sit on one of the seats and read. This is before the whole coffee house bookstore movement of the 1990s. I also read quite a few philosophers in that place including Betrand Russell, Nietzche, Aristotle, and Socrates. As well as Kihail Gibran.
11. Granny's Attic During my years in Kansas City, I used to visit my mother's parents for Thanksgiving and in the summer. I'd take weekend trips. Stayed five days one summer. Shower in their basement. Sleep in my great aunt's old brass bed. And spend hours in the unheated, unair-conditioned attic rifling through their books. They had everything I could imagine. I'd choose about twenty, lug them downstairs with me, sometimes more than twenty, requiring two trips. If I didn't consume them all there, they occassionally let me lug a few homewards. The books I consumed ranged from Elephant Walk, Shepherd in the Glen, the Cartland romance novels, the Georgette Heyer romance novles, the Harlequinn's, the Regency's, Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan books, Agatha Christie myteries, the Hardy Boys, and Laura - which was much better than the movie version.
I raided their attic like a kid in a chocolat factory.
12. My Parent's Bookshelf My parents are readers. Particularly my father who consumes and collects books.
He adores them. Our den had bookshelves on two walls floor to ceiling. I remember as an adolescent sitting in there for hours doing nothing but reading. I read Erica Jong's Fear of Flying, [yes like any adolescent, I liked the sex books best, even if they were a bit above my head,], Rosemary Rodgers - The Wildest Heart and another one can't remember. The Howard Fast historical series. Jeffrey Archer. Patricia Cornwall. (Okay she came much later, obviously). Dickens. Lewis Carroll. Steinbeck. Heminway. Fitzgerald. And many more.
13. Raiding my kid brother's bookshelves - Kidbro wasn't into reading no matter how hard mom tried to get him to. She bought him tons of books, which I devoured, usually without anyone knowing, in his room while he wasn't there, on the water bed. I'd sit beneath posters of Motely Crue and Van Helan, and the soccer, baseball and basketball trophies - devouring the entire S.E. Hinton Series. My favorite was the first one, The Outsiders - I adored it so much that I went to the movie, by myself and saw it. Enthralled. Also read Enclycopedia Brown, Choose Your Own Adventure, and any other book my mother located to entice him - including a biography of George Brett and one of Van Halen.
14. My love affairs with James Joyce, Sylvia Plath, Garcia Marquez and William Faulkner In college I fell in love with poetry and stream of consciousness writing. Devoured it. Wrote about it. Discussed it. Drove people crazy with it. I took not one, but three courses on James Joyce. One was all inclusive. One was just Ulysess and one was a senior seminar, where I researched the writer in depth and Ulysess in depth. By the end of my senior year - I had become an expert. Why Joyce, you ask? Well it started with my brother - who got me to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude one summer. Kidbro had finally discovered books and good books too. He was reading Vonnegurt and Herman Hess - Damien. Not that I hadn't read good ones at that age, I had. Such as Advise and Consent, Brave New World, The Bridges of Toki-Ri by James Michener, and Machiavelli's The Prince amongst others. At any rate - he got me into One Hundred Years and I fell deeply in love. He'd been in a stream of consciousness kick himself with William S. Burroughs, an author I could never quite get into. Not sure, but one might need to drop acid at some point to understand him or at least that was Robert Anton Wilson's view in book I read later regarding Timothy Leary, Burroughs and that time period. Don't remember the name of it, just that I read it around this period, along with an attempt to read all of the Illuminati by Wilson, which my brother also adored. Only liked the prequel which took place in the past. William Gibson also entered my life at this point through kidbro and the teacher who taught the James Joyce courses, the book was of course, Neuromancer. At any rate, I found Joyce shortly after Marquez, because Marquez stated in an interview that Joyce influenced him. Also my mother told me a long involved tale about how she wrote a research paper in college on why Ulysess was banned in the US when it was first published. She said they felt it was too sexually explicit for American consumption. This fascinated me. That and the fact that it was a 400 page book that took place in the space of one day. When I read it, I fell into it, like a diver into a black pool of water with no end in sight. Covered. I wanted to do my thesis on Marquez's One Hundred Years and Joyce's Ulysess, but they wouldn't let me. You half to be able to read it in Spainish, they told me - the Marquez book. Frustrated, I trotted off to my Joyce teacher for advice. He suggested The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner. So I picked it up and dove into another deep pool of water, this time it was warm, and red as opposed to cool and blue. And fell in love again. Sort of. They were perfect companions. At the time, I was also reading, Clarissa - can't remember the author at the moment, Awakening - can't remember this one either. Les Liasons Dangereuses - the play and selections from the book, The Yellow Wallpaper by Gilman (I think), and many poems by Slyvia Plath. Later read The Bell Jar by Plath, which I do recommend, but not if you are depressed. So all of this did have an influence. Oh and, I read Man and His Symbols by Jung, The White Goddess by Joseph Campbell ( I think), Something about the Unconscious by Neumann, and a bunch of stuff about Celtic mythology, specifically Welsh mythology. Which all explains my rather bizarre analysis/comparison of Molly Bloom and Caddy Thompsos as objects of male fears and male ideals.
15 My Discovery and Subsequent Obsession with Comic Books I wish I could tell you that I became obsessed with the high brow or critically praised graphic novels and magna that everyone goes on about, but no, I did not discover those until much much later. Years later in fact. Nor did this obsession happen at the age it happens for most people, such as, ahem, junior high or high school. I was exposed to them at that age, albeit briefly, through my brother and in France - but my exposure was to the Adventures of Tin-Tin - my brother had a friend who hailed from England and they would spend hours drawing tiny comic book figures. Tin-Tin was the boy's favorite strip. It was a British book. The other books they drew from - I didn't read or see, but they appeared to be super-people. They also did Star Wars. My brother drew fantastic reproductions of storm-troopers. I prefered drawing fantasy figures and was drawing peter pan at the time and women with fairy wings. The other book I was exposed to at that time was Asterix (I think that's the spelling). Found it in Bretagne, where I stayed one summer in high school. The books were in French and they comical about the ancient Gauls. We also read Calvin and Hobbes. No, I did not become obsessed with comics until College. Freshman year. A woman named Jessica Betterly had a cardboard box in her closet filled with X-men and Spiderman comic books. (She had read most of them, but didn't have the beginning ones.). We got to talking one day in the student lounge after an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation - which I was addicted to at the time and she began to tell me about her obsession. She told me stories and she was a great story teller. Then she picked up the books and pulled them lovingly out of the box, and we'd sit for hours on her dorm room floor just reading the comics. Discussing the characters and the story arcs. And it wasn't just the two of us. There was another woman - Maria Nazzaro, who had read them since the beginning and knew by heart the earlier issues, she filled me in on the back stories. She also collected Batman comics. Wanting to own these myself and pour over them in greater detail, I went with Jessica to the comic book store one day and fell in love. With the store. I rummaged through the boxes. Found old issues and eagerly got new ones. They were 50 cents back then. Then a dollar. Then two dollars. My favorite characters were in no particular order at that time: Storm, Kitty Pryde, Wolverine, Scott Summers, Jean Grey, Magneto, Mystique and Rogue. I adored the Phoenix story line and loved Cyclops/Jean romance. The owner introduced me to other, better books - such as The Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns. Sandman did not appear until much much later. This was in 1985/1986. Comics introduced to a new world - where pictures and words melded together. Something I hadn't really seen since I was a small child watching those PBS reading specials or looking over my parents shoulder as they read a book with illustrations. As an artist, a visual artist, myself - this appealed to me. I fell in love. Now I don't read them as much as I used to. Buffy the Vampire Slayer oddly pulled me away from that love, but it's not completely gone. In the last year I bought Superman Red Son, 1601, and Black Orchid. I also have collected over the years: Sandman, Books of Magic, Magna, Superman, Spiderman, Batman, Wonder Woman, X-Men, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Comics of Novels, Watchman, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and The League of Extraordinary Gentleman - 1st volumn only.
When I fall for something cultural, it is completely. I may lose interest after a while, but it always has a small nitch in my heart.
To bed. To sleep. To nurse my developing cold. Damn-it.
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