Sometimes, the universe hands it to you!

This was an incredibly satisfying day.

I went to the library to return TORTILLA FLAT (I prefer their original copy of the book because it's got those hilarious Ruth Gannett Stile illustrations.) The copy I bought only has one of them as the cover. Sigh.

While in the library, I decided to "release" 3 books for Bookcrossing. This time I used a different approach. Last time, I just stuck the books on the donation table. This time, I decided to get a little creative. A real Bookcrosser's gonna love the thrill of the chase, the hunt, right? So I stuck each one where you'd find it if it was an actual book belonging to that library. One book is in the young adult section. Another is in a section that has books about book collecting. The third book is in nonfiction in the "teaching" books. I think its Dewey Decimal (I LOVE that phrase, "Dewey Decimal"!) number is 371.

With the books released, I felt empty-handed, so I did the only thing I could do: I went to find some books. CANNERY ROW was either checked out or the library doesn't have it; I didn't check the card catalog. (It's really a computer; why do I keep saying "card catalog"?)

I ambled up to the donations table, not expecting much, but it's always worth a look. They discarded THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE a few weeks ago. That too, was a satisfying day, but nothing compared to this one, because when I looked down at the discards, I saw THE GREATEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD!!!
I couldn't believe it. At first, I thought maybe a fellow Bookcrosser had placed it there because I've been so Johnny-One- Note about this book. On and on, blah, blah, blah. I've been thinking and dreaming and writing and talking about this book. The stink of obsession was rising and becoming a downright miasma! And then my coveted book appears before me!

So my question is: If a tree falls in the forest... no, that's not my question! 

My actual question is: If I had gone to the library with no releases and visited the donation/discard table, would THE GREATEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD have been there?

You bet I'm freaked out in a very nice way, but it's not like this has never happened to me before.

Rewind back to the early 1990's, if you will. I was seriously jonesing for a book called THE PRODIGAL WOMEN (1942?) by Nancy Hale. Of course, it was out of print -- I can't seem to fixate on something on the current bestseller list!

So there I was, jonesing and jonesing for that damn Hale book for months and months, picking idly through my mountain of "to be read" books. Then one weekend in January, Manfred, Manfred, Jr., and I took a 200 mile trip to visit Manfred's grandmother. She was celebrating her birthday that weekend, and the party was to be at the nursing home in which she was staying. It was really nice; a few years in the past, it had been a convent. Some of it was still convent; the place was run by nuns. I never say this about nursing homes, but it looked so neat and clean and smelled so good, I wanted to fast-forward the years and move in immediately.

Before the party started, there was a little lull. Manfred got cornered by one of the residents who was starved for talk about current events. Manfred, Jr. went off with his cousins; they had found a pool table. No matter that they could barely see the felt on the table or that the pool cues were almost as long as they were, it was game time.

I wandered into a little alcove just off the room where the party was to be, and saw a couple of well-stocked bookshelves. Suddenly, a book bound in bright red jumped out at me: THE PRODIGAL WOMEN!

I was too startled to completely process. My THE PRODIGAL WOMEN?

I stared at the spine. Yep. Nancy Hale. Reader, I grabbed that book. It came off the shelf with an audible crack and left some bright red cloth binding dye on the shelf. Clearly, no one had read it lately. If someone was planning to, let's say, right after the party, well that was their tough luck. I found my jacket (it was January, thank goodness) tenderly wrapped the book in it, put the jacket on a table, and went into Manfred's grandmother's party, which was just starting.

After the party, when we were ready to leave, I casually walked out with my jacket in my arms. It was freezing. "I'm burning up!" I insisted, walking quickly to the car. To make a long story only slightly shorter, I brought the book home and began to scrutinize my own bookshelves. Catholic nursing home, I thought. Penance. Three days later, I sent them a Gail Godwin novel, VIOLET GRAY (or was it VIOLET CLAY??), with a short but sheepish note of explanation.

Garage Sale

First day of spring, and I went to my first garage sale of the year today. I hit a sale that promised "100s of books". "Yeah, right," I thought. But when Manfred, Jr. and I finally found it, there were a good number of books. Problem: Most of them turned out to be stuff that I really don't like. There was a ton of bestseller fiction. Spy novels. Mysteries. Romances. Westerns. A lot of it looked really ratty and had $1.00 price tags. I wanted a Stephen King book, DIFFERENT SEASONS. There were 2 copies. One was bent and grubby looking and the other had toothmarks on the lower spine. I'd prefer not to think such thoughts at all, but I suspect the mice had been at or around these books. I passed.

I found a small, hardbound copy of the Steinbeck book OF MICE AND MEN for 25 cents. That was nice. Another pleasant discovery was a respectable copy of GONE WITH THE WIND nestled in with beaucoup copies of the wretched SCARLETT: THE SEQUEL TO GONE WITH THE WIND. I grabbed it up protectively. Yet another nice little potential treasure was something Manfred, Jr. pointed out to me: a copy of the screenplay for the film SENSE AND SENSIBILITY. It was nice, but I didn't want it for $2.25. I think I'll probably regret not buying it later. It seemed a shame to leave it behind in all that dreck.

I'm getting to the point where the only book sale that remotely pleases me is the annual Sigma Tau Delta (the English honor society) book sale at Central Missouri State University. Even that's not as great as it could be. One year, I donated some of my excellent books, leaving them in the English faculty's lounge. Not ten minutes later, an Engish prof sashays in, thumbs through the donations pile, picks up my just-barely-former books, and traipses back down the hall to his office. Brazen! I guess his book lust just got the better of him. Also, I'm sure that my nice, clean copies with the pristine spines soothed his fastidious mind and orgasmically rocked his literary world. At least for a while.

If I could design my own book sale, which is what I was doing in my head last night prior to sleep, I'd ban nearly all of that genre crap where the author's name is bigger than the title. Stephen King and Larry McMurtry are the exceptions to that ban. No romances of any kind. A smattering of "chick lit" (acutally, that form's not showing up much at garage sales yet). Westerns? Mysteries? ONE TABLE AT THE VERY BACK. And: Absolutely no READER'S DIGEST CONDENSED BOOKS!

I need to pause and give credit where it's due: No matter how disappointed I was in today's sale, there were no READER'S DIGEST CONDENSED BOOKS to offend my eye. Why do I keep going to these sales and courting disillusionment? I guess I'm expecting to find the literary treasure of my heart.

Here's my fantasy: I'll push aside a stack of Robert Ludlum novels and FARENHEIT 451 will be revealed. Or perhaps the mainstream novels of Philip K. Dick. Or best of all, some biographies. Why do I hardly ever see biographies at book sales, unless it's a biography of Hansen?

It already feels like a long season, but I must trust it. Any given Saturday will probably find me hunched over a card table in someone's yard, pinching through the Louis L'amour looking for "the precious". I can't help it; it's where I belong. Fish gotta swim; birds gotta fly.

Reading In The Bathroom

In Sylvia Plath's novel THE BELL JAR, Esther Greenwood decides that the world is divided into two parts: People who have had sex, and people who haven't. For a long time, I concurred. But now that I'm older (notice I didn't say wiser!), I think the world is divided up like this: People who read in the bathroom and people who don't.

Growing up, our bathroom looked like a waiting room with magazines in little plastic wastebaskets by the toilet. My grandmother's bathroom was even better: She had huge stacks of TRUE CONFESSION in there. Summers and holidays when we'd go to visit, I'd eagerly hone my reading skills.

For me, there is no long bathroom visit (I'm trying to be delicate here) without some kind of reading material. I hazily remember my potty-training days; I remember being handed a Christmas catalog and told to "look at the wish book" until something happened.

Nicholson Baker addressed this topic with his typical vigor and humor in ROOM TEMPERATURE. The husband in the novel needs to complete a "Big Job" in the bathroom *right away*, but he simply can't go until he finds the perfect book to take in there with him. During a brief and frenzied search, his wife looks at him bemusedly: "Big Job?" "Big Job," he nods, finding the desired book and heading down the hall.

I've adopted Nicholson's "Big Job" line for my own purposes, mostly to puzzle my husband. I didn't realize until well after the nuptials (a year? Two years?) that he doesn't take a book to the latrine. I was confounded, but didn't say anything until he did.

"You read while you're...? He finally said.

"Doing the Big Job? Yes."

"Why?"

"Whaddaya mean, WHY?" I went on the offensive. "You never read in there, do you?"

He looked appalled. "NO!"

"WHY NOT?" Finally, I was going to find out his dark secret.

"Well, because..." He paused, and I could tell that he was trying to figure out how to put it to a crazy woman. "Because you're not in there to read. You're in there to...to do a job, and you need to concentrate on doing the job and getting out of there."

"Reading can help with concentration."

No reply.

"Hey, I'm normal! What about your father? He takes books in there!"

He shook his head and walked away, but I don't think it was to the bathroom. I was left with my revelation: There are people in the world who don't read in the can!

I went down the list of people I'd known and loved who were can readers:

Nicholson Baker, for one. Well, I don't know him or love him, but he goes on the list anyway.

My mother. My father. My grandmother.

My aunt. (she even has an attractive little table in there right in front of the toilet topped with interesting reading material)

My first husband (who I'll call Manfred, Sr. in this blog) took a book in there. Often it was science fiction, but he was flexible.

Then there was my interlude with someone who I'll call Geezer. Geezer was partial to Civil War history. I remember a huge tome by Shelby Foote.

I paused my mental list when I came to my son, Manfred, Jr. Does he read in the bathroom? I know he sings in the shower, but does he read in the can? This is someone I've known for almost 20 years, and a good 16 of them he's been potty-trained. Still, I have no idea. Logic would tell me yes, because he's an inveterate comic reader, and comics are light and easy to transport from room to room. Also, if he's in the middle of a good read away from the bathroom, he doesn't like to be distracted or interrupted. In addition, he has both a mother and father who are can-readers.

Don Robertson

I'm not much on writing fan letters to authors, but I should be. I appreciate what they do. It's really more than appreciate; their words feel like my life's blood.

If I were to write to an author, I'd like to write to Stephen King. I enjoy much of his fiction. Even more, I feel as if he's talking to his readers about books when he recommends a book via a column like the one in ENERTAINMENT WEEKLY, or even when one of his characters reads a book. I've had a warm glow in my heart for Mr. King ever since he dedicated FIRESTARTER to "Shirley Jackson, who never had to raise her voice."

The glow was intensified last week while I was at the library hunting up an author I read back in middle school and enjoyed very much: Don Robertson. He wrote a trilogy of books about a character named Morris Bird III, who grew up during the 40's and 50's. The first one is THE GREATEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD, in which Morris Bird III is 9 years old. THE SUM AND TOTAL OF NOW portrays Morris Bird III (Robertson always refers to the character by his full name!) in adolesence, about 13 or 14. THE GREATEST THING THAT ALMOST HAPPENED has Morris as a senior in high school facing a serious challenge.

I couldn't find any of these books (grrrr!) on the shelf, nor are they anywhere in the system, which includes several libraries (double grrr!). I did find a later Robertson novel called PRISONERS OF TWILIGHT, which takes place during the last days of the Civil War. I promptly snatched it up as a consolation prize. I turned to the back flap and there was an endorsement for Robertson's fiction by Stephen King. King praised Robertson, writing that Robertson is the latest in a long line of American storytellers "who wrote naturalistic fiction...that line descends from Mark Twain to Stephen Crane to Frank Norris...He has written as brilliantly as any of these men."

Zowie!

I also noticed, reading Robertson's biography that he's from Cleveland. (The Morris Bird III books take place there.) Double Zowie! I'm in love with Cleveland right now because of Harvey (AMERICAN SPLENDOR) Pekar.

Be Nice & Say "Double-Booking"

I recently read Sara Nelson's SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE TIME. I appreciate her voracious appetite for books so very much, but even more, I appreciate her for giving me a better term for when I'm reading more than one book at a time. She calls it "double-booking".

 That's such an improvement over mine. It's "book slut". Let me use it in a sentence to illustrate: "I'm being a book slut. I'm reading WAR AND PEACE and CHINA DOG at the same time."

The Novel I Never Wrote

I'm a sucker for a good first line, but suddenly, I've got an attack of shyness and don't know where to begin. Earlier this week on the BBC website, there was a quiz on first lines in books. I got 6 out of the 10 -- blew an easy question by over thinking it. After the quiz, people were invited to write their own first line. I'll post mine here:

"Reminiscences just aren't for me. Over the years, I've found that looking back only aggravates my whiplash."

Actually, that's true and not true. When it comes to books, I'll reminisce till the cows come home. The book is the hook that throws my past into sharp relief for me. Recite a title and I can tell you when I read it, where I lived, what was going on in my life and other increasingly useless minutiae.

I'm crazy (not an understatement) about reading, but I like any kind of interaction with books. I'm really involved with bookcrossing.com right now, and have been "releasing" my books" into the wilds" of Central Missouri.

I recently applied for a part time job at a local bookstore, but didn't get the job. After many years, the manager is probably adept at recognizing unrestrained book lust. During the interview, when she asked if (!) I liked(!) to read, my response tone was somewhat similar to the Cookie Monster's. When asked about customer service, the fervor dissipated and I was once again mild-mannered Bybee, maybe a little vague: "Oh yes, customers. Well, they're uh, important, I guess." Naturally, this translated to: I'll wait on them if I'm not in the middle of a good chapter.
But never mind the bookstore. There's also the local library. And there's my own library, which would be an impressive start to any bookstore.