I am a bibliophile. I’m not sure how I contracted the book-hoarding bug, but I’ve had it ever since I bought and read my first “chapter book” in second grade. That’s when I started buying every book I could get my hands on; I pilfered through my dad’s spare change at the end of every week, so I would have enough money for the next book order or book fair.
I am also a compulsive reader. I cannot not read. And I know that I owe many of my “smarts” to all the reading I’ve done over the years. I read absolutely everything (cereal boxes, signs, newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, books) and retain much of what I read, including stuff from those essays on the ACT! What’s that all about?! Often I’ll find myself in a conversation, and some random fact will pop out of my mouth, and I’ll think to myself, “Where did that come from? I know I read it somewhere, but where?” However I got to be this way, I don’t really care. I love that I am a reader!
My fetishes have evolved since elementary school, and here’s a look at them over the years:
Sarah’s Card Catalog. At some point in school, I learned about the magic of card catalogs, and because my own library of books was growing, I created my own filing system. Every book had a unique number and an index card with its bibliographic information. I encouraged my family and friends to borrow books from Sarah’s Library. (Isn’t amazing that at even such a young age my love for office supplies and need to organize presented themselves?)
Jenny—The Other Bibliophile. In fourth grade, I met my best friend Jenny. She’s a bibliophile, too, and she had her own library, a sign that we are kindred spirits (bonus points if you know what book I’m referencing). We often borrowed books from one another, and we formed a book club at one point. We still recommend books to one another today, and I think she has me beat in the sheer number of books read ever.
First Bookshelves. When my parents built their current house—my childhood home—, they let me choose my bedroom because I was the oldest kid; I could have the bedroom with three windows or I could have the bedroom with two windows and a window seat. The window seat didn’t come until I was in junior high, but it was lovely once it was installed. Flanking both sides of the bench under my window were floor to ceiling shelves and storage, and I filled them with books, which were of course reorganized biannually.
Future Bookshelves. I still dream in bookshelves. I’ve visited the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina a handful of times, and the library in that house makes me yearn for one of my own. It has two levels, rolling ladders, a spiral staircase, and a passageway behind the chimney. And remember the scene in Beauty and the Beast when Beast gives Belle his library? Remember all those books? Oh, be still my heart! And please don’t let me look at a Levenger catalog; the temptation to lust is just too great. One day, Chris and I will be independently wealthy, and we can have a room just for our books. It will be marvelous.
Literature Classes. For my writing degrees, I had to take a few literature classes to round out my studies, and I loved all of them. My first was a survey of American literature before 1965, my second was a study of Toni Morrison and William Faulkner, and my last was a study of Edith Wharton. The Wharton summer class was one of my favorite classes of all time because I read excellent books all summer! If you have not read the House of Mirth, I beg you to do so immediately!
Barnes & Noble. I do not know how I grew up in a town without Barnes & Noble, but from here on out, I will live within BN driving distance. I don’t always have a lot of money to spend on books (thankfully, my family knows that BN gift cards are always gladly accepted), but when Chris and I are on a date or out putzing around, we almost always end up here. There’s just something about browsing all those titles that I love—maybe it’s the possibility that my next favorite book is waiting in one of those aisles.
Harry Potter. I cannot write a post about reading without mentioning Harry Potter. I love those books because they are wonderful, because they got my husband reading, and because I can connect with so many others because of those books. They tormented me night and day as I waited for book seven to come out last summer! In my book (pun intended), they’re up there with Anne of Green Gables, Little House on the Prairie, and Indian in the Cupboard.
Currently Reading. I got so many books for Christmas: Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen! My hubby is uber smart, and I dropped lots of hints that I wanted some classics on my bookshelves. I don’t know how I made it through my childhood without reading Mark Twain, so to make up for lost time, I read Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and Pudd’nhead Wilson last fall, and now I’m working my way through my collection of Charles Dickens (I just started Oliver Twist). And I have so many more to read! That’s what I love about reading—it never ends!
I’m not sure how one becomes a bibliophile or a reader (there is a difference, but I happen to be both), and I’m certainly not sure how I became obsessive and compulsive regarding either, but I am so glad those characteristics define parts of me. I am absolutely certain that had I not been a reader, I never would have become a writer. What about you? Are you a reader? Any recommendations for me?
April 24th, 2008
I’ve been tagged yet again. (Thanks, Sarah!) This time I’m supposed to share seven random things about myself.
- I hate monkeys, especially chimps and gorillas. It’s not that they scare me, so much, but I just hate them. It’s completely irrational.
- I have had horrific acne since I was a teenager, and I have a zit-popping point system. I understand that I am disgusting, but when you spend so much time in front of the mirror, you have to figure out some way to pass the time. Thankfully, the acne is sort of phasing itself out, but I have a feeling that I’ll deal with it my entire life.
- I talk for my cats. That’s right, for my cats, not to my cats. When they “speak,” I use a specific voice (each cat has a different intonation). I have always done this with my pets, and I didn’t know it was weird until Chris and I got Ravi. My best friend Jenny had to explain to him that it was totally normal, and now Chris talks for the cats, too. It’s pretty funny.
- I don’t let Chris fold clean towels because I have a very specific way I like the towels to be folded, and it’s much easier to fold the towels myself than it is to teach Chris every time we do laundry. My mother is to blame for this because she was adament about how all the towels in her house were folded; if I folded the towels incorrectly, she made me redo them!
- I also don’t let Chris load the dishwasher. And again, my mother is to blame for this. I must absolutely cram as many dishes as humanly possible into the dishwasher before I run it. I sort of turn loading the dishwasher into a weird game of Tetris to get it all to fit. And this week, I was talking to my brother on the phone, and he has the same weird obsession about the dishwasher!
- I can’t eat potluck. I think I’ve watched too many 20/20 specials about food poisoning from food that sits out, and I also don’t like eating food that doesn’t match. Seriously, who can eat lukewarm lasagna and fried chicken in the same sitting? It’s just gross.
- I love a good chick flick/Disney movie. I’m a sappy little girl, and I love watching movies like That Thing You Do, The Princess Diaries, The Cutting Edge, and The Holiday.
That’s the randomness about me. Any questions?
April 23rd, 2008
I’m not sure how to say this, and I’m trying to keep this appropriate because this is a family blog, but there’s a new heartburn medicine on the market whose name is pretty funny. I saw the commercial yesterday and just about peed my pants because the pronunciation of this medicine’s name could also suggest that one is customizing one’s backside just as one might customize a car with ground effects. You all are smart, I’m sure you’ll catch my drift!
April 5th, 2008
Have you ever wandered around a grocery store in search of one very specific item and found yourself wondering where the logic lies in arranging the grocery store? Inevitably, I can never find what I’m looking for when a) I’m in a hurry or b) I’m tired.
Tuesday night I was both in a hurry and tired, so it was no wonder it took me 20 minutes to find bean sprouts. I searched the bean aisle three times before giving up and returning to my regularly-scheduled shopping, and finally, on my way from the milk to the register it occurred to me that bean sprouts would probably be with the Chinese food and that the Chinese food would be in the ethnic aisle not the bean aisle. Had I called my husband and asked him where the bean sprouts were, he would’ve said the ethnic section right away, but no, I asked the teenage boy who worked at the grocery store, and he told me the bean aisle. I wanted to shove my newly-acquired can of bean sprouts somewhere unmentionable.
And in my frustration, I found myself imagining a grocery store that functioned like a web browser. Instead of asking unhelpful employees where the bean sprouts were, I could have typed Ctrl + F and searched for ‘bean sprouts,’ much like I would search for the phrase on a page in my web browser. Or instead of looking up and down the bean aisle for twenty minutes, I would have found a sign that functioned like a hyperlink and said, “Looking for bean sprouts? Try the ethnic food aisle!”
Do I spend so much time online that I take for granted the simple usability the Internet offers me? Am I such the web developer that I treat my environments like extensions of the World Wide Web? Do I need to spend more time in the real world and come to accept these usability problems?
What have I become? I’m a crazy twentysomething that rants about the location of bean sprouts in her grocery store. I have a feeling it’s all gonna be downhill from here.
April 2nd, 2008
I’ve been tagged by kch at Run Faster to write a six-word memoir, which means I have to sum up the last 25 years of my life in six little words. I can say with confidence that one theme continues to pop up in the decisions I make, the random things I do, and in what happens to me:
Beat my own path. Never looked back.
Now it’s my turn to play tag, and these peeps of mine should write up some fine memoirs:
And here are the rules of this little meme:
- Write your own six word memoir.
- Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you want.
- Link to the person that tagged you in your post, and to the original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.
- Tag at least five more blogs with links.
- Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.
Editor’s Note Due to some protests that my six-word memoir is actually seven, I’m slightly revising it:
Blazed own path. Never looked back.
There. Are you all happy now?
March 31st, 2008
I took a little spring break earlier in March to go home and visit my family. Ah, family. Yes, mine is as crazy as the next, but I think this takes the cake: My mother has joined the sheriff’s posse.
My experience with the sheriff’s posse is slim; namely, I remember seeing them at events like rodeos and demolition derbies sitting astride their horses and ensuring that drunken chaos never ensued. Apparently, as I’ve been corrected, the sheriff’s posse does more than what I’ve described. If activated by the sheriff, they have the “authority” of the Henry County Sheriff’s Department and can take action—whatever that means. More than likely, if they’re activated, they’ll be called upon to do sweeps and searches and such.
So Mom (and my aunt and uncle) filled out their applications and were approved by the sheriff, which is no surprise to me because my mom has been on the HCSD’s A list since I was a kid:
- We moved out of town when I was in first grade, and during the week, my dad worked away from home, so it was just Mom, Jacob, and me in our house and just a handful of neighbors on our dead-end road. At the time, the 100-year-old cemetery on the corp ground just two miles behind our house was the party scene for local carousers, and the unusual amount of traffic generated by weekend parties prompted Mom to call the sheriff’s department time after time until local partiers got tired of fleeing from law enforcement every weekend. At some point, they found a new party spot, and Mom could sleep peacefully.
- In 2003, Mom’s daughter dated the deputy sheriff for about six months, and Mom got to know him pretty well. Now they’re on a first-name basis.
- In 2007, Mom was chosen by the sheriff to serve on a grand jury for a high-profile (for Henry Co. anyway) manslaughter case.
- And just this winter, Mom got a late-night visit from a pair of deputies who were looking for a stray teenage girl (who had been with friends at the cemetery when they abandoned her and who made her way to Mom’s house in the middle of the night).
At first, I thought this whole sheriff’s posse escapade was just another excuse for Mom to take her horse Duke out (after all, they get ride in local parades)—and part of me still thinks that’s an alternative motive—but it’s fun to see Mom do something a little out of the ordinary. Of course, this doesn’t surprise me—she’s always marched to the beat of a different drummer, and that’s probably why I do, too. I have an excellent example to follow!
March 27th, 2008
