10 Things I Hate About You

No, really, what I mean is, 15 Things About Books.
Gina < Joke < Badger.

1. I read Pride and Prejudice for the first time my junior year in college. I was sick with the flu, on a Saturday night, on the night of one of the biggest parties of the year at the fraternity where I was a pseudo-little sister. My boyfriend, who was a brother there, was supposed to come see me for a little bit but apparently the partying was too good. Instead, he was hanging out with a friend from the chemistry department, this cute little preppy girl he nicknamed Boub, who he swore he was not romantically interested in – she certainly was not interested in him, in the three years I knew her I determined she may have been the most asexual person I’d ever met. At any rate, after pathetically calling him something like six –ok, maybe ten - times, I finally just crawled under my comforter with a cup of hot chocolate and P&P. I did not expect to enjoy it – it being a classic and all – but I loved it. As my little Jewish grandmother would say, “What’s not to love?” Oh wait, I don’t HAVE a little Jewish grandmother. Anyhoo…I wish I could also follow this up by telling you I had the courage to dump the boyfriend but I did not, and actually almost ended up married to him. But that is a story for another day.

2. I did post-bacc work in lit, working under the delusion that getting a PhD in English literature would be a good idea and lots of fun. Oh, and marketable. The first class I took was an Intro to Critical Reading class, and I had a raging crush on the professor. I pretty much made a fool of myself over him. But we did read some great stuff, Satanic Verses being the most memorable, and I learned that I could tackle any book I wanted, no matter how classic or monumental or groundbreaking. That class, and that prof, changed the way I read.

3. I met Gina shortly thereafter, in a 19th-century Brit lit class. She was saying something most assuredly brilliant about Silas Marner or Great Expectations and I resolved then and there to see if she wanted to go for a drink with me after class. She did – just like a date – and we went to Hemingway’s, and the rest, as they say, is history.

4. All of my books are catalogued – fiction alphabetically by author and non-fiction by Library of Congress. I prefer the beauty and elegance of Dewey but did not have the time to generate Dewey numbers, I could just look up the LC numbers. I have everything entered into a database so I can lay hands on pretty much whatever I need almost instantly, and the non-fiction is tagged on the spine. Once I get bigger shelves built, I will tag the fiction as well. And between work and my home library, if you give me a subject, I am adept at figuring out at least by letter the general area where a book lives. I am pretty sure every librarian acquires this skill.

5. I collect books about sharks. (My favorite is Thomas Helm’s Shark! Unpredictable Killer of the Sea.) And I really enjoy reading books about mountain climbing. Eiger Dreams is a particular favorite.

6. The best gifts I have ever received have been books. (Don’t tell the Hubster – I do love my diamond earrings!) Ones that stand out: the ill-fated fraternity boyfriend gave me an antique copy of Poems of Childhood illustrated by Maxfield Parrish, one of my favorite artists. A dear friend from freshman year in college(who later attempted suicide and with whom I lost touch shortly thereafter because her father cut off all contact with her old friends) gave me an inscribed copy of Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet which I treasure to this day. And my mom gave me any number of gorgeously illustrated children's books, all inscribed and dated. I like to read them to my boys, and see her handwriting, it makes me happy.

7. Two hours before my wedding (but after my hair was done) I was in Barnes and Noble across the street from the church picking out books to read on the plane. And hunting down a dictionary of the saints – we were going to Italy and I wanted to be well-informed when I finally viewed the Sistine Chapel. In my defense, the groom was watching a hockey game.

8. I never go anywhere without a book. You never know when you might have a chance to read –stuck in traffic, waiting at the doctor’s office, in line at the post office. If I am going on vacation for a week, I take about half a dozen books. If I am going to be away for a weekend, I take two to four books. I am sure there’s a mathematical formula to work out somehow, like
time away * opportunity = number of books
but I haven’t taken the time to figure it out. I just know that if I am not at home, I have a book with me. And I generally have two or three books going at a time.

9. My father used to worry that the weight of my books in my room would cause the house foundation to crack or sag. And that was when I had only two tall bookcases full.

10. I have read James Joyce’s Ulysses in its entirety. I even enjoyed most of it, especially the Molly Bloom parts. Granted, it was for a class on the modern novel, and I had to write an in-depth paper on it, but I remember lying on our grotty old plaid couch with a drink and the book and enjoying the experience. And the book. Probably the drink helped.

11. I weeded my collection ONCE and have lived to regret it. I buy slightly more discriminately now (even though I have a box of books I picked up for a ten-dollar donation at the library books sale last spring waiting to be taken home yet). But I will never get rid of another book.

12. My cat’s name is Septimus, after a character in my favorite play, Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. I also once had a cat named Hepzibah, after the rabbi’s daughter in Harry Kemelman’s Rabbi Small mystery series.

13. I enjoy a good mystery – really, more psychological thrillers like Elizabeth George, Caroline Graham, and Minette Walters, or non-mystery mysteries like Josephine Tey. I have read and do own every Ellis Peters ever written.

14. I can still vividly picture the library of my childhood, with the children’s section off to the right and the adult bestsellers in the sunny nook with all the windows. The railroad ran by right out front, and you could watch the train from those windows. The card catalogs were right in front of the circulation desk as you walked in. Mrs Stanaitis was the children’s librarian and she was wonderful and, as I remember it, beautiful, too. (Peg, do you remember her?) When I started reading grown-up books, I tended towards the innocent stuff like Miss Read and D.E. Stephenson books. In particular, the Miss Buncle books, gently humorous books about a woman who pseudonymously writes a sort-of-autobiographical book about her tiny village and the mayhem that ensues. They are out of print now but I am always on the lookout for them.

15. I love used book stores. My idea of a blissful vacation is to read, eat well, and hunt through used book stores. They don’t even have to be really good used bookstores, although that’s nice when it happens.