1000 Books: Part 4

An update on the health and safety of my paperbacks: although my parents claim that I need to look into planes, trains, and automobiles to ship my books to NYC after Christmas, my woman on the inside reports that her mother “is NOT going to drive that car [the car that effectively owns the storage unit, or engendered it, anyway] in the salt and snow in December!” So…a reprieve?

One thing (the only thing? Ha) I managed in my purge was not feeling that I absolutely had to keep all of an author’s books if I kept one (or most) of that author’s books. Some authors are polymaths and can do comedy as well as they do tragedy (Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Ann M. Martin), but that doesn’t mean every outing is a success. I think the ONLY Ann M. Martin book I tossed was Ma and Pa Dracula, which, well, no one can do it all.

There were an inordinate number of books about unicorns and dragons. I remember liking fantasy, but…not really of that specific genre. Bruce Coville still makes up a significant portion of all of the books, but I got rid of his “Monster Stories” and “Vampire Stories,” “Ghost Stories,” etc, which, as an adult, look to me more like excuses to publish all of his friends’ work than solid collections. I’ll stand behind the My Teacher is an Alien series, as well as Aliens Ate My Homework, and most especially Goblins in the Castle. Bruce Coville has written more than 100 books. 100! I understand that books for children and even YA novels are shorter and so almost by definition take less time to write, but still…

Coville, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Ann M. Martin – these are extraordinarily prolific people. Granted, Ann M. Martin didn’t write the entirety of the Babysitters Club series and all of its offshoots herself (one doesn’t just produce multiple books every single month, especially without a spleen!), but she must have had some oversight. All of the BSC books cohere very well in spite of new characters, more outlandishly fabricated situations, etc. Compared to something like, well, the Boxcar Children after book #19 (#17? I think it was 19) – that became markedly different (and abysmal) after Gertrude Chandler Warner died.

One other small gripe: if at all possible, please don’t write a fantastic book in 1994 and then not write the sequel until 1999. The person who desperately wanted to read the sequel will have aged out of your series.

 

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1000 Books: Part 3

Some of the books that I never actually owned–I may have been allowed to go to the bookstore every time I had to go to the orthodontist, but I still really raided the library hard–are highly VEXING in how non-specific their titles are. I had been trying to remember for literal years two different series, both about groups of friends (duh, and also, don’t bother trying to consult Google) but finding myself stymied, because

  1. how can you search if what you remember about a book is not the author, title, name of the characters, or even plot points, but rather how you felt while you were reading it?
  2. why were multiple series called insipid things like Forever Friends or Friends 4-Ever??

And yes, those were in fact the two series I was looking for. I found one of them because…I guess my Googling skills must have somehow improved, or in any case when I–several years ago–attempted to do a Google search for “pen pals,” “spooky barn,” and “n’stuff boxes,” I really did not have any luck.

(I don’t know if it just didn’t occur to me to search for “teen series”” 80s” “pen pals,” or maybe I didn’t remember the pen pals element, only the barn? In any case…)

So that’s how I found Friends 4-Ever, which did in fact have a book whose cover shows the “pen pals” in a “spooky barn,” and another that I remembered a vague FEELING about but little else (ice skating…enemy moves in…OH YES, C U When the Snow Falls (all of the titles were indeed like that)).

The other series – the equally specific “Forever Friends” series – I’m sure I found only by trolling (actually trawling; I didn’t comment with take-downs of anyone’s taste in YA fiction or anything) various internet compilations of all the 80s and 90s series books. I find the choice of title even dumber in this case because the premise was actually less generic than just “group of four friends (guess what! All of them have different traits that generally don’t overlap; their Venn Diagrams look like a neatly ordered row of plates!). The Forever Friends, at least, had a party planning business (yes, yes, I know that was one of the most common tropes of middle grade series) and each book centered around a particular job/party.

I loved themes, basically. While we’re here, can we talk about how Ann. M. Martin most likely invented the character of Janine Kishi, Claudia’s “genius” older sister, as a way to lampshade the fact that no one (including Martin herself and me) knows how “Babysitters Club” would accurately be punctuated, so best cover all bases by having a sibling with an IQ of 196 who doesn’t know either but can discuss it in detail??

(I’ll never forget that discussion, which lasted several medium-font pages, but I did have to Google Janine’s IQ. I’m not made of magic.)

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1000 Books: Part 2

I’ll never lose my love for the great (and not great) middle-grade fiction series of the 80s and early 90s (and probably mid-90s, too; I was the 13-year-old who might read a Babysitters Club book while eating Pop-tarts after school, then finish my day with Toni Morrison), and I encountered many of them while going through my bins of books. To be honest, I kept most of them. I parted with the books for REALLY young chapter-book readers, like Patricia Reilly Giff’s Polk Street School series, which I remember reading until two or three in the morning one night when I was five or six (I had asked my mom if I could stay up all night reading; she, thinking I was joking or maybe doubting my night-owl capabilities, said yes; she was then horrified when she found me awake, reading, in the middle of the night, and I was confused because hadn’t we discussed it already?).  I wasn’t big into Sweet Valley Twins unless the particular book had something to do with gymnastics or acting, and I only had a couple of sad Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown entries that I don’t really remember reading…but almost everything else survived the cull.

Definitely still residing in their temporary storage unit home: Sleepover Friends, Babysitters Club, Silver Blades (ice skating, obviously), The Gymnasts, and Ballet School. I believe there are more, but…I only took pictures – thus far! – of the books I got rid of.

Existential question: What makes a work of middle-grade fiction a series book? Does it require that a number be involved? Would you count Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s “Alice” books, which you could put in chronological order and which now number at least 25? I would not, because there is no formula to the structure and plot of each book, nor do the characters mysteriously remain the same age and experience twenty autumns of eighth grade (which, you have to admit, is an EXCELLENT trick; think of how many Halloween costumes you could have in all of those Octobers…). I guess that wasn’t such a hard question to answer after all. Series books are, also, more heavily reliant on thematics. That and their familiar structure are what make them so comforting, and why yes I was horrified and appalled when I learned that some of my friends skipped chapter two – the one in which everyone is introduced and some fun fact or outfit description is given! – of every Babysitters Club book.

I did part ways, however, with some of the preachier series books, like…The Ten Commandments Mysteries? See below, and don’t worship false idols. Teen idols, maybe, according to some other 80s series, but not false idols. And didn’t we already learn this from the Brady Bunch? Tsk.

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1000 books: Part 1

I went to Cincinnati last week for my mom’s birthday and to say goodbye to their house (the only house I grew up in!) before they move to Florida. Or, as they might say, I came home for my mom’s birthday and to go through the 7 bins of middle grade/YA books that had taken up residence in our friend’s storage unit, plus the two shelves of adult books in my old bedroom/the guest room, and a few other things…

(I never claimed to be good at this; also, I’ve long said that it’s much easier for me to just not acquire things than it is for me to get rid of things once acquired, a sentiment backed up in more quantitative terms by Kahneman and Tversky in The Undoing Project, which I’m almost finished reading. Don’t worry, that one is a library book and also has zero mass, because it’s a Kindle book! Oh…except that I somehow also ended up with the hardcover library edition. See, books are a problem area for me.)

I got rid of (aka put in piles for my mom to donate to a woman who’s collecting 700 books for a Halloween event…with the caveat that she might want to go through them first to make sure she isn’t giving an unsuspecting 7-year-old a Fear Street Holiday Special with the tag line “Happy holidays…you’re dead!!” <– really, is there anything that has more of a ring to it?) TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY FOUR BOOKS.

Which sounds like a great deal and something I should be very pleased with, and *I* am pretty pleased with myself, but I think my parents are more focused on the fact that there are still four bins of books plus a little tiny bit of spillover. They keep sending me information about air freight and storage units in NYC. That’s a problem for December Claire, who will be scrambling to find solutions (a friend has offered her Cincinnati basement, but…I have to come up with a more permanent plan at some point).

I took pictures of all of the books I got rid of, even the ones I didn’t remember, because that’s my crutch, and so that I could do a series pondering WHAT authors in the 80s and 90s were thinking. To be continued!

(I know at some point, probably in 7th grade, I had 800 books…so the final count may have been more like 1200, but I made an effort to only count the ones I was giving away and not the ones I was keeping so that I could proudly report to my parents the sheer number I’d managed to part with.)

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Around the Neighborhood(s)

On the Lower East Side the other day I saw a bearded dragon lizard riding on the back of a small dog. Their owner had been carrying the bearded dragon but paused when he saw us looking and asked if we wanted a picture (yes). He told us it was his birthday and that to celebrate he had bought $900 sneakers (the sneakers are in the picture; they are pink and shiny). The dog sort of shook the lizard off and he landed on the sidewalk, which startled and concerned me for a moment, but the dog was probably only ten inches off of the ground and the dragon seemed unfazed.

“Enjoy this humid New York day!” the man said as he made his way on with his two companions, though initially I heard it as “Enjoy this human New York Day!” and that seems equally likely even though I know it’s not what he said.

The bearded dragon stayed on his shoulder as he crossed Houston, but it inched its way down until it was nearly completely on his back. I don’t know how strong a bearded dragon’s grip is on the surface of a t-shirt, but he seemed to be a professional. At one point he let the dog off of its leash and I have to say it behaved in a pretty professional manner as well.

On the theme of neighborhood characters and mishearing, there’s a guy who often stands on my corner wearing camo shorts, a vest without a shirt but with significant metallic decoration, and occasionally a hat. I walk past him all the time, and one day when I was feeling particularly neighborly and jaunty, more human than humid, I must have made eye contact and given him a nod of recognition. He either said, “Hey buddy!” or “Hey dummy!” so I suppose I need more data on that.

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Where in the World

So, I tried to make the title of this post “Where in the World USA…” and apparently you can’t format a post title, which seems unnecessarily stingy.

My thought process behind the sous rature (sorry, THANKS HEIDEGGER (and if I’m being honest, without google, that would still say thanks Heidigger (now who invented the double–now triple–parenthetical??))) was that I’m always dreaming of other countries to visit (then feeling guilty at the prospect of flying too much; now this paragraph is vomitously self-referential) but rarely thinking about places in the US that I would like to see.

It’s a false allure, the idea of a place being so drastically different because of a passport stamp (which you often don’t even get anymore…when I was entering France from the UK recently the man at passport control sort of smirked at me and asked if I wanted a stamp, so I must have been projecting the aura of someone desperately hoarding evidence of travel)–or, it’s not false, but there are places within the US borders that are just as drastically different. I’ve never been to Yosemite, for one, or the Southwest. My only time technically in Texas was in the Houston airport. And though I’ve wanted to experience a Portland summer (because I associate those with 1) roses and 2) symphonies outdoors) since I was eleven, I’ve never been to the Pacific Northwest at all.

I stopped writing this for a few days and sort of lost the thread, though if I were sticking with signs and signified I might attempt a digression about semiotically checking off/crossing out regions once you’ve visited them. Anyway, that’s breadth, not depth…but if we consider smaller and smaller regions, moving from “Southwest” and “Mid-Atlantic” to proper states and then to cities, depth becomes more possible.

(I tutored a lot today. I think my brain is compromised, or to quote the Magnetic Fields, I’m not Sau-sure I know what this is).

 

 

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Bloop bloop bloop

As of last month, I’ve lived in New York City for 12 years (!). I never intended to stay permanently, but more than a decade here has made it tricky for me to imagine living elsewhere. The city never “gets me down,” per se, but while I used to think I would move simply to experience living in a different place, now I would need a compelling reason to leave. That reason may end up being $$, or the school systems, or a job, but it won’t be “just wanted something different.”

The past 24 hours have done a pretty spectacular job of making the continued case for NYC. Last night I dressed up as the Great Barrier Reef and went to a 50th birthday party at a nightclub in the Meatpacking District, where Vanilla Ice played while someone wearing a huge plush kangaroo suit leapt around (it was Australia themed, other than the Vanilla Ice part).

(I saw one other reef, two jars of vegemite, two mermaids, several Australian flags, three Quantas flight attendants, Bananas in Pyjamas, the Wiggles, and too many Steve Irwins, Mad Maxes, Crocodile Dundees, kangaroos, koalas, and sharks to keep track of.)

This morning I had coffee in Alphabet City, outside, during the course of which 1) we talked to an actor from Chicago whose small child tried to offer me the stick he was carrying (this was just post-instruction from his dad “Do not put that stick anywhere near that dog” that was tied to the fence, so the kid was technically following instructions); 2) a woman asked me to hold her dog’s leash while she went inside with her baby-in-stroller (I did think she was going to ask us to watch the baby, too) and I got to enjoy all of the comments and pets from the passersby by proxy.

After coffee we went to a community garden down the street and sat by a koi pond with several turtles standing guard on rocks, where we met 1) a guided group of German tourists; 2) a man with two small dogs that desperately wanted to vanquish one of the turtles, which seemed unfazed (I commented, “Poor turtle,” and the guy said, “Poor turtle nothing; we do this every day, so he knows they’re never going to get him. THEY don’t know that, though;” 3) A man and his three- or four-year-old son, who was dressed in a full-on Mario costume (complete with mustache), who explained to us that his son had just become obsessed with Mario but he didn’t want him playing on the phone all the time, so instead bought him a Mario costume and took him out to treat the world as his own personal Mario experience. The boy had certainly played SOME Mario, because he told his dad that he needed to step on the turtle (his dad said “you can touch him gently with your foot, but BE GENTLE” and the child actually complied perfectly, though the turtle dove into the pool indignantly). As they left the boy said, “We have to go find some mushrooms…so I can go bloop bloop bloop!” (motioning growing taller with his hand).

I really, really hope that at home the dad has constructed a set of cardboard boxes that hang from the ceiling that the lad can jump up and crush with his head. Ding!

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Internet detox

Once, many years ago, I told someone I was going to do a sugar fast, and they thought I meant I was only going to eat sugar.

So no, when I say “internet detox,” I do not mean that I’m trying to spend all of my time on the internet.

I’ve known for years that, since computers became part of my life (pretty late – age 13 – even if I’m old, it was late for my era) they’ve steadily eaten away at my hazy patches of uncategorized time. I can still pinpoint the time I spend doing yoga, playing harp, reading, sleeping, working, etc, but there are massive fields of hours – and also fragments of lost time – that go to the computer. And, really, to the internet.

The first step (I mean…other than recognizing it) is probably writing down all of the time I spend online. (My immediate thought here is “Ooh – I should buy a special fancy notebook for this!” but that’s probably a) procrastination; b) jealousy over my students’ new school supplies.) AND THEN? Trying to repurpose that time for something that is, at the least, more intentional than reading about blogs on reddit or scrolling through gymnastics message boards.

In part, if I can spend more of my subway and at-home time reading, I think I’ll feel better. If I can spend it WRITING, I’ll really feel better. And I’ll also feel justified in spending time on things like paring down both my physical possessions and my digital belongings.

I could also feel better about setting aside time to do things like listen to my Discover Weekly playlist all the way through (necessary, no; I’m kind of a completionist, though, which is why having too many magazine subscriptions is dangerous for me and also why I’m still reading a book that I find pretty boring–and, until I finish it, I can’t take my Kindle off of airplane mode to download new ebooks, because this one is overdue at the library…I know, the horror and trauma) or searching for a program with which to draw the various ideas for graphic design/cartoons that I have kicking around my brain.

 

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I saw the sign

If I have a (very) limited time in a city, I favor three things: grocery stores, signage, and cobblestone streets. Amsterdam is no Prague or Lisbon when it comes to magical alleyways, but the signs and the supermarket did not disappoint. A seven-hour layover equates to as much walking + as much eating as possible.

Pictures below – click through for more signage:

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Space

September starts and many people ask, “Where does the time go?”

I ask that question too, of course, but I’ve also been asking lately, “Where does MY time go?”

(so self-centered)

I suspect that most of it gets sucked into the computer, which functions much like a high-powered vortex fan. I don’t know if vortex really works as an adjective in this case, or if I’m conflating natural phenomena and the fan brand name vornado.

When I think about how I could better spend my time, I fall into the trap of “if I cleaned my room and got everything in order, THEN I could work” – to such a degree that I find myself thinking “if I pared down my possessions, they would both be easier to keep clean AND there would be fewer to take up mental space…” which is when you know you’re in trouble.

In actuality, the physical possessions that fill my room are only a convenient distraction, and the real drain on mental space is that which takes up (almost) no physical space at all – the thousands of pictures, text messages (in PDF form, at that), and word documents I have on my computer.

For one thing, there are too many. It’s a trope but also a truism that digital cameras have facilitated a lack of discretion: pixels aren’t expensive, and you don’t have to choose your shots carefully, let alone delete duplicates or reduce your vacation pictures to only the very best.

For another thing, they’re spread out in different configurations across my computer, external hard drive, Google drive, dropbox, probably iCloud…I didn’t mean for it to be that way, but you run out of space on one thing and next thing you know you’re buying a storage unit. I actually have PLENTY of space on Dropbox, but I can’t get my iPhone to stop syncing when I connect it to my computer, so things are always uploading into whatever the Macbook photo program is called…and that’s why I’m constantly having to figure out why my hard drive is full again and where the perpetrators have gathered.

But then, maybe if I just got rid of enough odds and ends that I could thoroughly dust my room, all of my time-management problems would be solved!

 

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