The Bybeeary Goes Splitsville

For the first time in a decade, I am living in a room that can't fit all my bookshelves. Buying a smaller bed was not an option, so I had to put one bookcase in my bedroom, and the other two in the spare bedroom.

The Pulitzer fiction sleeps with me, of course.

Don't worry, I told the others. I'll visit you often.

And I do.

Books in My Hand and a Bookstore on My Horizon

Reading, I've been reading...What was that Nora Ephron said about using reading to manage her ADHD? Yes, I think so very much.

Here's what the past couple of weeks have looked like in my Read World:

Missoula - Jon Krakauer.  In his latest book, Krakauer turns his attention to an epidemic of reported rapes at the University of Montana. This book made me so angry, because things have not changed much at all since I was a college student. Unlike any other crime, blame falls on the rape victim, rather than the attacker. In these cases, the alleged attackers were university athletes, for whom every excuse seemed to be made. I hope that Missoula is read widely by everyone and starts a conversation that will continue.

Behind the Falls - Brenda Ernst Zalegowski. This YA novel was recommended to me by my enabler, Teri. Noah, a 16-year-old who suffers from chronic anxiety, moves with his parents to his father's hometown. After being homeschooled since kindergarten, he starts attending the small high school, because his well-meaning parents hope to get him ready to go to college. Noah seems to settle in both academically and socially, but incidents and accidents wreak havoc on his emotional stability. This novel is so full of angst, it may be the most perfect YA book ever written. A little lengthy and the characters have a tendency to monologue, but it all rings true and I have not been able to stop thinking and wondering about them.

The Good Wife - Stewart O'Nan. My Stewart O'Nan spring became summer and now it's my Stewart O'Nan autumn. This is such a great way to spend your reading days.  You know who else thinks so? Stephen King!  Uncle Stevie! O'Nan's gritty yet hopeful 2005 novel (not to be confused with the TV show bearing the same title) follows a young upstate New York couple through the arrest, trial and long incarceration of the husband. Patty, the title character, is a good wife, but that's reductive. She is so much more than that. I have read eight of O'Nan's novels at this point and they're all brilliant, but this one especially with its heart and guts. Highly recommended.

Stand By Your Man - Tammy Wynette.  Last weekend, I saw the musical of the same name based on Wynette's life, and the next day, I rushed to the city library for a copy of her 1979 memoir. What a great read -- a rags-to-riches story full of anecdotes about all those men, no-good and otherwise that she hooked up with, and all against the backdrop of Nashville. Wynette was only in her mid-30s when she wrote this book and would live just 20 more.  I felt sad knowing that she would die at 55 and there was so much pain still to come.

Last Night at the Lobster - Stewart O'Nan. This is actually a reread -- the first Stewart O'Nan novel I ever read. Since I am obsessive about reading everything he has written, I had to visit this one again. A wistful slice-of-life look at the closing of a Red Lobster restaurant a few days before Christmas (and during a big snowstorm) and the small staff and their manager that comes in and works that last shift. An interesting look at the ways different people behave when they know they are at the end of something. A short novel that reveals more than many long tomes. I was inspired to reread  Lobster because it's Stewart O[Nan, but also because a beloved restaurant in Sedalia, Patricia's, closed their doors this week after 30 years.

This weekend will find me on my way to Tulsa to visit The Spawn, and he has promised to take me to yet another used bookstore. I also hope to revisit the bookstore by Macy's where there were all those obscure Pulitzer novels. There's a gleam of anticipation in my eye even as I glance worriedly at my credit card. Someone hold me back, but not too hard.

Book Buying Diet Update

Three weeks!  So far...not too bad.  I still get twinges*, of course.  The other book bloggers are so mean, dangling pretty new pages in front of me!  Wah!

Of course, I need to turn that way of thinking around, and trust that if I don't get the book right away, it won't disappear from the face of the Earth.  I just need to add it to my Wish List and believe that I'll see it again at a book swap, a library or as a gift.

I've channeled my book buying 3 ways since March 21.  I've managed to keep myself in books, and I've even figured out how to appease my One-Click craving.

I. The BEL (Busan English Library)**
1. The Great Gilly Hopkins - Katherine Paterson
2. Pearl Buck in China  - Hilary Spurling
3. The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever
4. What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank - Nathan Englander
5. I Love You, Beth Cooper! - Larry Doyle

II. The Busan Book Swap
1. Lost Memory of Skin - Russell Banks.  Score!  I circled this book for a year, and I have been rewarded for my restraint.
2. Duma Key - Stephen King
3. The Railway Man - Eric Lomax

III. Free Clicking***
1. The Monk - Matthew Gregory Lewis
2. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - Mark Twain.

***

* I'm really going to be twinge-y this week when the Pulitzers are announced.  My Pulitzer Fiction guess is The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, but, as always, I'd like to see Joyce Carol Oates win.

** BEL has a 5 book limit and a 2 weeks' checkout time.  I feel so Spartan.

*** One-Clicking for books that cost $0.00!  An elegant solution -- why didn't I think of it before?

The Book Diet

Not the one in which I would eat just books (although I once had a dog who had a taste for Cheever) and not this one, either, (although I am intrigued by the premise).

The book diet I'm speaking of is the one in which I turn away from the cornucopia that is Amazon.  I also need to run right out and avoid my local bookstore in Korea, Kyobo, and the local in my hometown, Reader's World.  Oh, and the beautiful little used bookstore in Busan!

I haven't bought a book since March 21.  I'm feeling crazy and forlorn.

I'm moving next year, March 2015.  MOVING moving, as in back to the States.  Yes, I'm repatriating, after ten years, and so are the books I've bought/been given.  I had already cleverly worked out that it was going to cost a lot of money to ship these overseas,

so I began buying e-books.  I mean, buying and BUYING.  Buy Hard with a Vengeance.

"My name is Bybee and I'm a One-Clicker."

 It's so easy.  Amazon gives me what I want, and my book desire is satisfied in a moment and forgotten. Then at the end of the month, my credit card painfully removes a huge chunk of money from my account.  Of course by that time, it feels like they're being unreasonable, and even a tad sadistic for no reason.

To return to the US in reasonable financial shape,  I need to rein in the spending and get a handle on my book compulsion.  It hurts like hell being stalwart and all that, but luckily, I have the Busan Book Swap and my beloved BEL, the Busan English Library as resources to fall back on.  They'll have to feel like book-shopping experiences.  I'm doing both this upcoming weekend, and none too soon, either.

This restraint doesn't feel at all natural.  It's like trying to get dressed using just my feet.

I Love My Books, I Hate My Books, I Love My Books, I Hate My Books, I Love...

There is no end, and I can barely remember back to the beginning when I decided that moving from a studio apartment to a one-bedroom apartment was just the thing.  

The sum and total of my life now is books and boxes.  Finding boxes.  Filling boxes.  Taping boxes.  Running out of tape and going to the store for more.  Looking through the recycling for more boxes.*  Going to the post office and buying boxes.  Going to E-Mart and carrying out my groceries in a box that I can use later.  Putting books and books and books and books in these boxes and always, always seeing the shelves more than half-full.  In this case, half-full does not indicate optimism.

I've also culled nearly 100 books from the collection.  I'm still being judicious about it, but I'm about to topple over into ruthless culling.  It hurts to cull.  It hurts to not cull.  It hurts to stand hovering with a book in my hand for a half-hour, unable to decide between the two piles.  Moving day is approximately 18 days away.

Shoulda been a stamp collector.

*I was heading down to recycling every day with a spring in my step until Teri told me that the rats run through it.  Now I approach the place less often and with more trepidation.  Thanks, Teri.

Books On The Move

Oh, come on, I know you've got more books than that!

After seven years in Korea, I'm finally going to move from a studio apartment to a one-bedroom apartment.  This highly desired piece of real estate is just across the parking lot in the same complex, so my move won't be the big production it was back in 2009.  Still, it will be somewhat of an undertaking because of the approximately 550-600 books that must move with me.  (It was around 300 in 2009.) Unless I can assemble a team, it's going to be like eating the elephant.

Upon hearing about the move, my son compared me to Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872),  the famous book hoarder, and frankly, a guy after my own heart.  In his lifetime, he amassed thousands of books and manuscripts. Much of the latter was on vellum.  Phillipps moved house only once.  His family's possessions took a couple of days to move.  His library took eight months with a team of strong men working from dawn to dusk.  Is vellum heavy?  Just curious.  Luckily, that's not one of my challenges.

For a hilarious account of Phillipps' obsession, check out this book, which is where I saw the above anecdote.  The chapter devoted to him is titled "Crazy About Books".   Many of Sir Thomas's questionable antics with books have my WTF? light blinking rapidly, but I also sheepishly harbor some admiration for him because he went overboard and with such gusto.

I'm going out to look for some sturdy boxes now.

Summer Stack

Below is a list of books that were neatly stacked up on my mom's coffee table and on the bedside table in the guest bedroom awaiting my arrival.  Most are from her book-reading friends.  A couple are things I ordered when I was still in Korea and had sent to my US address.  One is actually the result of my total susceptiblity to the siren song of the local indie bookstore. Which books belong in which category?  Let's look closely:

Rhett Butler's People - Donald McCaig.  I really don't like the trend of novelists bouncing off of a beloved classic, but will admit that some attempts are better than others.  I also feel kind of oogy and unpleasant when the Margaret Mitchell Estate hand-picks authors they deem suitable to write the sequels to Gone with the Wind that will inevitably be written.  I suspect that not only do they hand-pick, they breathe all over the manuscript and squabble about content. Having said all of that, I'm willing to give Rhett Butler's People a try.  For all of his prominence in Gone with the Wind and his snappy repartee with Scarlett O'Hara, Rhett is a rather shadowy and interesting character, deserving of a novel of his own. As the years have passed since my first reading, Rhett reminds me more and more of an antebellum Sam Spade.  No, he wasn't a private detective, but he could have been.  The Pinkertons would've snapped him up in a second.   I'm looking at the title page of Rhett Butler's People.  I'm slightly sweating and practically praying that McCaig didn't...mess Rhett up.  (Mom's Reading Friends category)

Sorry to be So Cheerful - Hildegarde Dolson.  A 1955 collection of witty essays and sketches that were first published in places like The Village Voice and The New Yorker.  I read this book years ago and remember it being even funnier than We Shook the Family Tree.  Did my memory play a trick on me?  I'll know in a few weeks.  I'm so delighted to have this book that I'm saving it up like a piece of candy. (Frenzied Overseas Ordering category)

Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese.  I received this book from a favorite blogger last year, but can't exactly remember who.  I'm almost sure it was Softdrink from Fizzy Thoughts.  So many good things have been written about this book that I'm a little scared of all the hype, but I'm going to go ahead and read it so I won't have to scan other bloggers' reviews anymore. (Frenzied Overseas Ordering category -- Softdrink had a drawing and I entered and won)

The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch.  I really don't want to read this.  Having read the first few pages, I know that Pausch is dying from cancer.  He and his wife were having some creepy discussions -- almost arguments -- in which he wants to go out in a blaze of glory with one last kick-ass lecture about the meaning of life and she's petulantly reminding him that if he does this lecture, he'd miss her birthday, which would be the last they'd celebrate together.  I'm proceeding with trepidation, but it's short, so I can muscle through.  If I had my druthers, I'd rather read How Shall I Tell the Dog? by Miles Kington, which is a memoir that deals with the author's iminent demise. (Mom's Reading Friends category)

The Wilder Life - Wendy McClure.  Everytime I come to America, my Little House on the Prairie mania (which is mostly book, with strong accents of TV)  kicks smartly into overdrive.  I loves me some Laura.  What's keeping me from pointing my mom's car towards Mansfield, Missouri right this very minute?  Not to mention that I'm still mourning that I missed Allison Arngrim's book signing at the Great Mall of America last summer.  Maybe this summer will be when I finally get to see the only episode of Little House on the Prairie that I've never seen -- the one where Laura gives birth to baby Rose.  Wendy McClure lets that "calico sunbonnet freak flag fly" for all of us nerdy bonnetheads. This book would not let me leave the bookstore without it, I swear, although Ma Ingalls would not approve of either my use of oaths or my spendthrift ways.  As a bonus, the book was mistakenly swathed in not one, but two dustjackets, so I guess it's ready for a long winter.  (Siren Song category)

June 2011: Book Buying

Somehow, I managed to practice a little restraint this month.  I bought 2 books:

1. The Victoria Vanishes - Christopher Fowler.  A mystery.  A Bookleaves book group pick.  I don't know why I bought it.  I don't care for mysteries and I didn't think I would make it to the meeting.  I read the first chapter.  That's it for me.  I'll see if this book can find some love among my friends, neighbors and co-workers.

2. American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House - Jon Meacham.  I've been circling this book for months.  Suddenly, one of The Spawn's friends popped up online to announce that he was selling some books for 5,000 apiece (approximately $4.60).  I moved swiftly, then was glad I did.  Hardcover copy!

I don't think I can behave myself in July.  Two things:
1. I'm vacationing in the USA.
2. I really want an e-reader.

April 2011: Book Buying

6 books this month, but I really could have done worse. For example, I wanted to buy another copy of True Grit just because I liked the "bullet hole" cover better. Also, Vera, that biography of Nabokov's wife is singing a sweet siren song. In addition, I would have bought a copy of A Visit From The Goon Squad if I could have found it. There is no end. I feel like I'm turning into a modern-day Thomas Phillipps. This month found me at two different bookstores and romping about online.

1. The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam - Ayaan Hirsi Ali. We're going to read this for the May 20 meeting of my Cracked Spinz book group. Should be interesting.

2. The Story of an African Farm - Olive Schreiner. Thanks to Eva's excellent review, I was primed to pick up a copy of this novel only a few days later. The price was right, too! Only 3.00 USD.

3. My Antonia - Willa Cather. Willa Cather's name has been floating around me lately. I really should read her Pulitzer winner One of Ours, but she reportedly said that My Antonia was her best. The price was also a nifty 3 bucks.

4. The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery. We're reading this one for the May 22 meeting of Bookleaves. Gotta love that title. Also, since this is a French novel, I'll make progress towards reading more internationally.

5. Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner. I've already read it, but I loaned it out to Pablo and never got it back. That's OK. I still have his copy of Cloud Atlas. Now the 1970s are mostly filled in on my Pulitzer shelf.

6. National Velvet - Enid Bagnold. I tried to read this 1935 horse story before when I was a kid, but got bogged down for some reason or another. Elizabeth Taylor's death triggered in me an impulse to give it another try. Definitely a case of Just Say Neigh.

Library Loot: Val Lends A Hand

The title of this post should read "Val lends a CARD" because I have somehow misplaced my faculty card, which is what I use to check out books. Seeing my downcast look, Val took pity and lent me her card, with the admonition that I had to return it by midnight because my beautiful dress would turn to...oops, wrong story. Here's what has been checked out on Val's card:

Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s - Ann Douglas. A study of intellectual life and the arts during the 1920s. So many people figure that Paris during this decade was the place to be at that time, but Douglas asserts that there was plenty going on at home.

Scott O'Dell - Hal Marcovitz (Who Wrote That? series). A juvenile biography of the author of Island of the Blue Dolphins. Fun fact: O'Dell was born Odell Scott, but when he was working as a reporter and a typist scrambled his byline and rendered it as Scott O'Dell, he liked it so much that it became his pen name and eventually he legally changed it. OK, I'm on a roll now: Fun fact #2: O'Dell was on the set of the movie Son of the Sheik back in the 1920s. The script required a close-up of Rudolph Valentino holding a string of pearls. Valentino was hot, but he "had hands like a butcher", according to O'Dell. Apparently, O'Dell had the goods, so he became Valentino's hand double for that one scene. Fun and informative reading. I'd love to read the others in this series.

Now, to find my own card...

September 2010: Buying

Only 3 this month. I'm kind of impressed with my restraint. Of course, July and August were huge. Restraint is probably more properly called exhaustion.

Dancing On The Earth - Margaret Laurence. After reading The Diviners, I got interested in Laurence. When I saw her memoir, I jumped. Literally. It was resting on a shelf pretty high up, almost out of my reach.

After Dark, My Sweet - Jim Thompson. When I see a Jim Thompson novel, I feel as if candy is being dangled in front of me. Except if it really was candy, it would have some ominous ingredient like poisonous mushroom or deadly nightshade and the person dangling it in front of me would be some creepy figure that burned up the road to Hell years ago.

The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon. The BOOKLEAVES pick for October. I don't know if I'll like it, but I'm all about boosting my international reading stats.

Shelf Shots

After my huge book shopping binge in July, my small apartment was overrun with books. Not the best time to be watching Hoarders Season 1. Doesn't that show freak you out? I was getting all sweaty and nervous about clutter issues; I feared that it was time to either double-shelve or worse, "cull the herd".

Rescue came in the form of Jeremy, who is leaving Korea and has a ton of stuff to unload, including a 2-shelf and a 3-shelf bookcase. I asked for the 3-shelfer, but Jeremy thoughtfully pointed out that the shelves can be stacked. Wobbly as my spatial and math skills are, it didn't take me long to appreciate the beauty of a 5-shelf situation.

Long story short -- Jeremy hauled shelf and I crossed his palm with paper. After he left, I hummed and shoved some stuff around in my own little warped bookwormy version of Apartment Therapy:

The new shelves, stacked. I put my still-incomplete Pulitzer prizewinners collection here in chronological order. As you can see, I've now got room to grow the Pulitzer collection. On top of the shelf is The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, a Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, a booklet that lists local train times and subway schedules and Leonard Maltin's 2010 Movie Guide. The book next to the yellow pillow is Savage Night by Jim Thompson.

Here's a closer peek at the top of the bookshelf that's in my header. This mixture of books includes books I've borrowed, traded, found and bought in recent months. Also a mixture of unread and partially read.

The shelves below this one house my DVD collection, but the top one is the special place for my full-color collector's edition of Little House on the Prairie books. I think it's pretty clear by now that I'm a "bonnet head".

The Bookshelf Formerly Known As Pulitzer was moved over by the patio door. On top of the shelf is Jeremy's little wooden display thing, which holds my dolls from Mongolia, a matyroshka doll I found in Incheon's Chinatown and two toy turtles. On the next shelf are the Louis L'Amour Sackett series and my reading journals. On the shelf below are some TBRs. A little more than 2 empty shelves make me a happy bookworm, but you know what they say about nature (and it goes double for Bybee) abhorring a vacuum, right?

Bookweek In Ten Short Chapters

I'll bet you thought with these last few posts that I'm all about reviews. I'll bet you also thought that I was all about reading. Well, I am, but I've also been bookSocial and bookShopping this past week. Here's my bookStory:

1. My new(est) book group met to discuss Laughter In The Dark last Wednesday evening. We had a great time talking about the novel and trying to figure out who should be cast in a movie version while munching on pizza and chicken and washing it all down with soda and beer. Our next book is the 1889 humor classic Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome. I'm coveting the audiobook version, read by *sigh* Hugh Laurie.

2. This new book group has a name now. We are THE CRACKED SPINZ. That's pronounced "spines", of course.

3. I had to visit my bank in Gumi on Friday, so I made lunch plans with my first bookworm buddy in Korea, Pablo. Looking back, I think that I'm more interested in nonfiction now because of him. Pablo just finished a book about the immigrant experience in the UK called Dark Heart by Nick Davies. He described it at great length, and I added it to my wishlist. Pablo thinks that the US immigrant experience is probably parallel to what's described in Dark Heart.

4. On Saturday, I went to Seoul to meet some of my non-bookish friends and chow down at TomaTillo's, a new Mexican restaurant I'd heard so much about. Happily, the restaurant is at Jonggak, and one of the Bandi & Luni bookstores is right there in the subway. Exit 2. It's imprinted in letters of fire on my...well, anyway...I bought a third copy of Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain (one was loaned out in 2005 and never came back and the other was for CanadaBoy's birthday). I also decided to buy Haruki Murakami's memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I'm not exactly a Murakami fan, but I couldn't resist that play on Raymond Carver. Just when I was about to leave, I spotted -- BIG BOOK SCORE!-- The Egg And I by Betty MacDonald. I've been hoping that this book would pop up in Korea. I also have The Plague And I and Onions In The Stew and Anybody Can Do Anything on my wishlist. By abebooks website I sat down and wept.

5. My friends, burritos and lime margaritas were all waiting for me right outside exit 6 of the Jonggak subway. Approaching the steps, I ran smack-dab into ANOTHER bookstore! Who knew? I made a quick survey of the store, but didn't buy anything. I would've stayed longer, but I was thirsty.

6. Flash-forward 5 hours. My friends and I were still at TomaTillo's. We'd had our fill of Mexican food and drink. Now we wanted dessert. I craved a big piece of chocolate cake like nobody's business, but suddenly, something else was on my mind. I had to visit the Kyobo bookstore over by the U.S. embassy, which was about 10 minutes from where I was sitting. I had to get there before it closed, because I had an overwhelming feeling -- it was almost like panic -- that a copy of Olive Kitteridge was there, waiting for me. My non-bookish friends had roused themselves enough to have a conversation about favorite childhood books (Nancy Drew, Enid Blyton, Judy Blume, C.S. Lewis), but I regretfully said goodbye and hurried off down the street.

7. BINGO! BOOK SCORE! Olive Effing Kitteridge! Damn, it was expensive -- 26,000W for a trade paperback. I couldn't be deterred. It's a Pulitzer fiction winner. After that, I was all done in. I had to find a pillow.

8. Sunday. Itaewon. Talya's book group was meeting at 2 pm to discuss My Place by Sally Morgan. Just enough time for lunch and a visit to What The Book? where I found what I was after: The Log From The Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck for the Eco challenge and Girlfriend In A Coma by Douglas Coupland so that I might finish the Canadian challenge before the Canada Day deadline. I met up with Val who was trading in a bunch of paperbacks. She got 27,000W in credit. That's something that never happens to me.

9. Talya's book group AKA "Seoul Women's Book Club". More chocolate cake. I didn't finish My Place, but neither did most of the group. I'm going to, though. The next book is A Thousand Splendid Suns, which I read for my original book group, BOOKLEAVES.

10. Took the subway home. I got a seat and eagerly cracked open Olive Kitteridge. A few chapters later, I noticed that none of the stations we were going through sounded familiar. WTF? I missed my transfer at Guro and ended up somewhere near Incheon, which is way way west of where I live. Backtracking put me out of a reading mood, but not for long. Shortly after I left Guro for the second time, I was back in the biblio saddle again. That's me, yodeling.

A Mighty Fortress Is Their Library

This post is dedicated to Dewey, who always enjoyed hearing about my bizarre experiences here in Korea as I have repeatedly sought to improve my Library Situation.

The day of my interview with Wonder Woman University, I arrived on campus about 90 minutes early. Eager to interview? Well, of course, but (almost) more importantly, I wanted to check out their library. Luckily, there are many signposts at decent intervals because I walked by several campus guides dressed in smart little uniforms who took one look at me and immediately got that beseeching look that I know so well: Please. Oh, please. Don't ask me anything. Don't make me speak English.

As soon as I entered the library, I saw a fortress of turnstiles, but also noticed that students were scanning something to go through them. I approached the far corner of the Information desk. "Excuse me," I said. "Can I come in?"

Information Woman gestured a small rectangle. "Card? Card?"

"No, I don't have a card, but can I come in? I'm visiting your university today."

"No card?" Controlling her panic beautifully, she called for her assistant, a young man in his late 20s or early 30s. He spoke to me in English. "What do you want?"

"I'd like to come into your library. I'm visiting Wonder Woman University, just for today. I have a job interview, but I'm early, so I wanted to see your library."

"You don't work here?"

"No, just visiting." Maybe someday, I thought, then I'll be in here and underfoot every damn day. So there.

"You can come in, but you can't borrow any books."

"I don't want to borrow any books. I just want to see the library."

"You want to see it?" I thought he was going to ask me why, and I was trying to come up with a snappy, easily understood reason.

"Yes." Desperately. Look, Buddy -- you try going without a library for four frickin' years and see what kind of crazy things it makes YOU do!

He let me in and picked up the desk phone. "Who is your interview with?"

"No, it's not here -- it's over in She-Ra Building. I'm early."

"Oh!" He put the phone back. "You have time to kill!" By his smile, you could tell that he'd been sitting on that idiom for months, possibly years, waiting to use it. I idly wondered if working at a women's university was a dream come true for him, or if it was old hat by now.

"Where are the English books?" My time was being killed. Slaughtered, even.

"English books?" He was back to being perplexed.

"You know, like literature. I'm a professor." I tried to look professorial.

Deep thought. "Three floor," he announced, and walked me to the elevator.

When I got to third floor, I asked the student at the desk where the English books were, and she let out an exclamation of dismay.

If I hadn't come all that way and wasn't within spitting distance of my objective, I would've left in disgust. Come on, now, people. Work WITH me. I expected this deer-in-the-headlights behavior back in Gumi, but I was in cosmopolitan Seoul now. More specifically, this was Wonder Woman University, the Vassar (or so everyone had told me) of Korea!

After a quick conference with two other girls, Dismayed Girl took me by the hand and walked me around the corner and back a few feet. "Here and here," she said pointing. I thanked her, and she ran back to her desk, looking worried.

Alone in the stacks at last, I peered at the shelves. I couldn't make sense of the order. It was Dewey Decimal, but Dewey Decimal done by drunken cataloguers: Gulliver's Travels. David Copperfield. A Treasury of American Humor (1943). Gulliver's Travels. Gulliver's Travels. The Things They Carried. David Copperfield. Memoirs of a Geisha. Not as a Stranger. Gulliver's Travels. Gulliver's Travels (in Korean). The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Brave New World. David Copperfield.

Dismayed Girl ran back again, still looking worried. "At the end of this -- this line, there's more there." She pointed. I thanked her again and she ran back to the desk. She seemed to be rising to the occasion, but I felt guilty for being a foreigner and for being in her library and stressing her out.

Further investigation of the shelves yielded the same puzzling and repetitive arrangement, but even while I was laughing, a strange tenderness came over me. I would get hired here, and in my off hours, I'd come over and fix up the English books section! Obviously no one cared for it, but I would! Even at that moment, my fingers were on fire to pull books and start alphabetizing and getting chronological, but my time was running out. Too bad. I loved standing in the narrow aisles and breathing in that familiar and wonderful smell of old books, but I had to haul my bookwormy ass across campus to She-Ra Building and make like the job candidate of their dreams, and hopefully rectify my Library Situation once and for all.

Books: A Memoir - Larry McMurtry

No, a bookshelf didn't fall over on me and crush me in an avalanche of hardback volumes. I'm still here, but come to think of it, that wouldn't exactly be a terrible way to go.

My feeble excuse is writer's block. I've given notice at my current job, and I must write my resume and let the jobhunt begin in earnest. And therein lies the block. The laugh's on me -- I want to venture more into teaching writing, but I freeze up at a simple little task like a resume. Something's got to crack this frozen sea within me and soon. On the bright side, I'll have more empathy for any future students who have difficulty writing.

Meanwhile, blogging's not going any better, but enough's enough. I'll share the notes I took while reading Books: A Memoir by Larry McMurtry.

This book is not without flaws. It is really short, and for the amount of money the publisher charged for this book, it's a crying shame and a shameful crime that there are so many blank pages within. Also, it's written in a fragmented and splintery style that reads like a first or second draft. I'm so concerned that this slight offering is proof that McMurtry's general health as well as his literary powers are in decline.

Having said all of that, I love Books: A Memoir. When I finished it, I was hungry for more anecdotes about Larry McMurtry's life as a book collector and reader.

Larry McMurtry was born in Archer City, Texas in 1936 into what he called a "bookless" house. When his older cousin went off to WWII, he first dropped by the McMurtry ranch with a box of his boyhood books --19 adventure stories -- for young Larry, and a lifelong love affair with books was born. This box of books is McMurtry's madeline, and he refers to this gift numerous times in Books: A Memoir. "Very quickly," he writes, "once I had my 19 books, I realized that reading was probably the cheapest and most stable pleasure of life." He also comments, when discussing the boom of technological gadgets in the past few years, "I nowadays have the feeling that not only are most bookmen eccentrics, but even the act they support --reading -- is itself an eccentricity now, if a mild one."

Second only to reading, McMurtry loves being a "bookman" -- hunting and gathering and selling books. He turned to that rather than to being a writer-in-residence at some prestigious university because handling and hauling books was physical labor which felt more like real work, given his family's background as cowboys and ranchers.

McMurtry admits that he is an anomaly among bookmen (which includes women). "Many bookmen, and some of the best among them rarely, if ever, read. The acquire and they estimate and they sell; they collate, measure, hype. They read catalogues, they look in bibliographies, they submit quotes. But they don't have time to read."

In all of his years as a bookman, McMurtry has come across some interesting book collections. I was startled then charmed at how specialized (not to mention bizarre!) book collections can be. Here are some of those included in this book: Several hundred books about Byzantine coinage; a library consisting of hundreds of copies of The Great Gatsby; books by H.G. Wells; novels that poets wrote; and American erotica of the Depression era. After reading this, I wanted a weird collection of my own; I was irked that my own shelves lacked any real signs of eccentricity. After comforting myself that my Korea books and Don Robertson novels are a small start in that direction, I began to wonder if any other bloggers have strange collections. I'd love it if you 'fessed up. Now.

In McMurtry's personal collection of 28,000 books (Dear Mr. McMurtry, Can I come over?...) his own "odd shelf" (as Anne Fadiman called it in Ex Libris) consists of books written by women travelers that dates back a century or two. (He calls this collection his "lady travelers". First "bookmen" and now this, but I can't help but admire him for refusing to even acknowledge that thorny thicket known as PC.) I got excited at this revelation, wondering if he has Josie Dew's books. (Among others, she wrote The Sun In My Eyes, a recounting of her bicycling adventures across Asia.)

It was also fun to read about McMurtry's reading streaks. Back in the early 70s, he read The Guns of August and Nicholas & Alexandra around the same time and got hooked on reading about World War I. After a few years, he moved on to WWII, but he's still "much more engrossed by WWI."

A darker streak, and one that renewed my worries about his health was when McMurtry mentioned that he "recently got depressed for 1.5 years and could only read a minor literary figure named James Lees-Milne who wrote several books including 12 volumes of diaries 1942-1997" which McMurtry "became dependent upon during my depression." He has read all 12 volumes several times and is sure he'll "keep rereading them for the rest of my life." Of his love for rereading, McMurtry writes, "If I once read for adventure, I now read for security."

I visited McMurtry's Book Town in Archer City several years ago, so when he writes about it in the final pages, I could more fully appreciate what I noticed with pleasure when I was there -- his scrupulous attention to what is on his shelves: "One essential practice is the purge. Junk inevitably seeps in, and the iron rule is that good books do not pull bad books up: bad books pull good books down." I laughed out loud when he referred to a customer's habit of always poking through piles of books stacked on the floor as "the midden instinct".
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I want to return to Archer City so bad. Some of my sweetest dreams have Book Town as their backdrop.

Although there is much that is enjoyable about Books: A Memoir, because it is a little on the skimpy side, I wouldn't recommend buying it unless you're a true McMurtry fan or you have an "odd shelf" for books about books. However, you should run, not walk to your nearest library and check it out or put yourself on the reserve list.

A Weekend That Spilled Over Into Monday...Nothing Wrong With That!

I'm a firm believer in getting the bad stuff out of the way first. Today, on the train back from Seoul, my seatmate, a nice-looking 30ish Korean man, wearing a dark business suit was reading The Secret. In Korean. Sad but true. That book is a bestseller over here, as well. I was reading Housekeeping vs. The Dirt and fretfully wishing for a magnifying glass. I silently did a quick little "Great Monday Compare" between my book and his. No matter how you slice it -- I win! Nyah, nyah.

I'll do a blog entry about BOOKLEAVES in the next few days. I took some pictures the old-fashioned way, with a disposable camera [It pains me to admit this! Why don't I just buy a digital camera and have CanadaBoy show me how to use it?] and I need to have the film developed and put on a CD. I'm hoping the pictures came out well...and that I don't look too much like a hag compared to my fellow expat booklovers. Didn't know I had that vain streak, did you, huh? In my defense, you'd worry too, if you were in a bookgroup where everyone else was born during the Carter or Reagan administrations. Speaking of CanadaBoy, he made a cameo appearance at book group via text message.

A weekend in Seoul wouldn't ring true without a little side trip to What The Book? of course. OK, let me be perfectly honest: TWO side trips. Aaron wanted to go after book group on Sunday afternoon, and Bernadette and her boyfriend wanted to see what it was like in there. I had just been there Saturday night, but I was definitely up for another sashay around the shelves.

Here's what sashayed off the shelves, up to the cash register, into my bag, out of the store and home with me:

1. Villette - Charlotte Bronte. [Okay, now I've got all the books I need to take up my Bronte Challenge again. It's only been a year since I experienced Shirley, but I think I'm recovered and rested up now.]





2. Cannery Row - John Steinbeck. [I found this when I went back with Aaron and Bernadette. Big score! I've been circling the Steinbeck for months, waiting. WTB? has Sweet Thursday, the sequel, but my inner Rigid Completist Bookworm has to read Cannery Row first. I didn't ask them to order it; I just waited for it to appear. I can do that --be patient about a book -- sometimes.]







3. An Angel At My Table: An Autobiography Vol. 2 - Janet Frame. [I've been sort of peripherally aware of this New Zealand writer for several years. The aforementioned inner Rigid Completist Bookworm doesn't like the thought of starting with volume 2. I told her to shut the hell up, but truth be told, I'm sort of itchy to find volume one.]



4. Korea - Lonely Planet. [The latest edition is out, and none too soon. My other copies are in rotten shape from constant reference. Plus, I tore the Seoul subway maps out of both of them.]





5. The Disappointment Artist - Jonathan Lethem. [Nick Hornby AKA my hot lit-crush, spoke well of Lethem's The Fortress Of Solitude in The Polysyllabic Spree. I might be remembering incorrectly, but I think my hot girl-lit-crush, Nancy Pearl, also spoke well of him in Book Lust. So I've had "Lethem, Lethem, Lethem" buzzing in my mind's ear for a few weeks now. Happily, What The Book has several of his novels. I had almost decided on As She Climbed Across The Table when I decided to give Lethem's book of essays The Disappointment Artist a cursory glance. Looked good, real good. Suddenly, the beginning of the title essay snagged my eye. He mentions his Aunt Billie in Kansas City, who was children's author Wilma Yeo! I was freaking out. (Quietly, which is so difficult.) You know that "six degrees of separation" stuff? Jonathan Lethem and I have those 6 degrees going on!!! Wilma Yeo was his father's oldest sister. She married Jack Yeo in 1938. My great-great Aunt Lou's husband was either a brother or nephew to Jack Yeo -- I put in a nearly-incoherent international phone call to my mother late last night, and she is double-checking with my 90-year-old grandmother about the relationship. My grandmother had told me long ago that I was kinda-sorta related to a writer; she knew I'd be thrilled since writers have always been my rock stars. I really wanted to meet Wilma Yeo, but until just a few years ago, I worried overmuch about "imposing on people". Sad. Stupid. From what I've heard over the years, Wilma Yeo was generous with her time and attention. She died in 1994, so I missed my chance. I did read and enjoy The Mystery Of The Third Twin, though. Anyway, back to the Lethem book: after seeing the essay about Philip K. Dick, I was 98% sure I'd buy The Disappointment Artist, but once I saw our Wilma Yeo connection, I was hellbound if I was going to leave that store without that book!]

The weekend was not all book-related, however; I glutted myself on English-language television channels like CNN and AFN. I don't have cable in Gumi, so I enjoyed show after show after show until the wee small hours of the morning. You know you're television-deprived when you're so damn happy to see Dr. Phil and you hang on his every word even when he's being a pontificating ass! I also watched the Super Bowl this morning until halftime, when hunger struck and I checked out of the hotel and went over to Quizno's for a(nother) Italian sub. It wasn't until I got back to Gumi hours later that I found out about the Giants' upset victory. No joy in Mudville for Mr. Bybee and his brother. On the bright side, now that football is finished, it's just a matter of weeks until the baseball season starts and my beloved Cardinals have a chance to redeem themselves and make me forget 2007.

If you catch any spelling errors in this post, it's Blogger's fault. Now my secret is out: I'm naked without spellcheck.

In Their Shoes (Another reading challenge, as if I need to be encouraged!)

I'm just a girl who cain't say no,
I'm in a turrible fix -
I always say, "Come on, let's go!"
Just when I orta say "Nix"!
-Ado Annie-

I joined a new reading challenge, In Their Shoes, which runs through 2008. Another challenge. Yeah. But this time, I truly could not help myself. This is my genre. See? I'm beside myself! I'm speaking in italics like a feckin' Cosmo Girl!

(Deep cleansing breath, as they say during labor and delivery. Okay.)

Seriously. This challenge is one that's got Bybee's grubby little bookwormish fingerprints all over it: Read autobiographies, biographies and memoirs all year long. So fun and so easy.

Too easy. In fact, my Tough & Cool Inner Bookworm is sneering openly at me right now. She's never quite gotten over my abandonment [she says abandonment, but I prefer postponement] of the self-inflicted Bronte Challenge earlier this year. I wish I had that doorstop-sized biography of Jackson Pollock that I read a few years ago; I'd use it to knock T&CIB upside her head.

I heard about this challenge just in the nick of time. Last weekend, I succumbed to Amazon's siren song (again) and bought a biography about Lillian Hellman. My infant guilt pangs were growing rapidly because I couldn't justify another new purchase so soon after my summer madness, AKA Bybee's Book-Buying Binge, 2007. Thanks to the In Their Shoes challenge, I can justify not only the Hellman book, but I've more or less got carte blanche to go hog-wild in what is practically my favorite reading category.

My fingers are fairly tingling to make a list, but first, I need to scan my swollen shelves. I've got a lot of books to suit this challenge, but I gobble them up almost as quickly as I get them in. I'm a little pissed at myself that I went ahead and read Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, so I don't have the fun now of reading it for the challenge. Well, I couldn't help it; Bechdel's memoir/graphic novel is excellent -- ferociously intelligent. Oh, well...I'll have the pleasure of recommending it to others in the challenge. (Meanwhile, I'll be looking for other memoirs in graphic novel form.)

Another book I plan to recommend is Private Demons: The Life Of Shirley Jackson by Judy Oppenheimer. Sure, it's out of print, but I urge you to put those hunting and gathering skills that lie deep within you to the test. It's that good. Here's looking at a re-read!

Okay. Here's what I found for this challenge that I still haven't read. And this is just what's at my office. I haven't checked the apartment yet, but know that biographies of Julia Child, MFK Fisher, and James Tiptree, Jr. are there, still waiting to be read. And the Hellman book will be here in a few weeks.

Widow - Lynn Caine
The Piano Shop On The Left Bank - Thad Carhart
The Hungry Ocean - Linda Greenlaw
Ten Thousand Sorrows - Elizabeth Kim
Saving Milly - Morton Kondracke
Still Life With Rice - Helie Lee
Hour Of Gold, Hour Of Lead - Anne Morrow Lindbergh
After All - Mary Tyler Moore
A Daughter Of Han - Ning Lao T'ai-t'ai
Dreams From My Father - Barack Obama
Truth & Beauty - Ann Patchett [yep, you guessed it! I'll also be hunting down The Autobiography Of A Face to read with this one]
The Inner Elvis - Peter Whitmer, Ph.D.
The Hiding Place - Corrie Ten Boom

Okay, I'm saying that's it on the challenges! I'm not joining any more! But you all know I can't stick to that. Feel free to reach through cyberspace and worm-slap me, if you see the need.

Sulking Bookworm

It's the old disease again. I want the book I don't have. This time, I want a book that's really old (1954), really expensive, and out-of-print. Grand slam!

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Of course, since I have a slight (?) touch of bibliomania, I can't put the book (pictured below) out of my mind. Picture Gollum in The Lord Of The Rings rasping endlessly about "The Precious", and you'll have a fair idea of life here for the past few days. I pity the people who know me. They're envious of the ones who will never meet me. Manfred, Jr. looks haggard for his 22 years and seems ready to flee.

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This particular episode began when I was reviewing my wishlist on amazon. Coming across an item that had been on the list for a few months, Ghosty Men, I decided to go to Wikipedia and read up on the Collyer brothers. The article there is quite detailed, and listed a novel based on this case: My Brother's Keeper. I clicked on the link and saw this really gorgeously campy cover and felt the subtle stirrings of the biblio-barbarian within me.

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Heading back to Amazon, I discovered that the book was out-of-print, but there were 28 reviews posted. Read all together, they are a veritable chorus that raves about the book and begs any publisher that might be reading their reviews to please, please reissue this book. By the time I got to the 28th review, that was all she wrote. The whole enchilada. With One-Click at the ready, I would have a used copy of the book in ten days to three weeks...

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Or not! Used copies start out at over $32.00. That's for an "acceptable" copy, which means that it probably looks terrible. Prices went up from there all the way to $300.00 for a "Collectible" copy. My mouth watered at the description of the dustjacket and binding on that one. Well, I do want My Brother's Keeper, but not for that much.

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Leaving that site and doing more research, I saw that the book was put into a Reader's Digest Condensed Books version in 1955. Yes, you see correctly. I have colored that series title with my 10-foot-pole category color. A book should never be condensed. Soup, yes. Some of my whining in this and other blog entries, sure. But a book? No. Never. I wouldn't even do something like that to Atlas Shrugged.

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I should confess that since RDCB are already an established evil on this planet, I have paged through them from time to time, treating the condensed books within as appetizers of what I might like to later experience as full-course meals.

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(There was also a sort of primal experience with an RDCB when I was pregnant with Manfred, Jr., but that's another blog entry...)

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When I start sniveling too much, Caitlin usually suggests that I check out Bookcrossing. I took her advice. Joy! One copy was marked "available". I hurriedly pm'ed the owner, shamelessly begging and tempting her(?) with Digging To America. No joy. She had released the book and forgotten to document it on the site, but even if she still had the book, she probably wouldn't send it because mail between Australia and South Korea was so expensive, and this copy was a hardcover, an ex-library copy.

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OK, so now I'm back to moodily scrolling through lists at abebooks and amazon. I want the book, but what if I shell out mucho dinero and read the book and hate it? I can afford to take the hit, but I don't want to. Yet. I can't give in to these wild biblio-cravings all the time, can I?

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Damn. Forget the holidays; this is what makes me homesick: I miss the library. Manfred, Jr. did some searching of his own and saw that My Brother's Keeper is available at 998 libraries in the United States. Thanks, kid.

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If I could be a superhero, I think I'd want to be Mr. Fantastic. Then, I could just stretch my right arm out halfway around the world and into a carefully chosen library, pluck the book from the shelf, whisk it past the circulation desk and back to Korea. Then, when I had finished, I could do it all again in reverse.

Rodney

While riding the train one evening, I met a woman who used to be a high school English teacher back in the U.S. During the course of our conversation, I asked her if she likes to read. She said she did, then she mentioned a former co-worker named Rodney. She said that he has more than 200 books at his workplace, and that people come and borrow them all the time.

200 books? All in one place? That made me smile. Of course, a shadow of doubt crossed my mind, as it always does. What if it's all crap? I shook my head resolutely, and decided that in a pile of 200 books, there would have to be a gem or two...or twenty. Right?

This woman told me where she used to work, where Rodney works. I saw the place the other day, coming home on the bus. Yee haw! Now, I've just got to meet Rodney. I'm bound to run into him in some sort of social setting. Can I control my book lust enough to keep me from barging into his workplace with a hearty smile and a good-sized empty bookbag? Stay tuned.

Kick-Ass Bookworming

Satisfy your need and greed to dwell in communion with a REAL bookworm, not these wormy-come-lately types who think they're all that just because they've read all of Oprah's recommendations! Visit the blog Pages Turned
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I was really sorry to hear about Anne Bancroft's death at 73 from cancer. She was an actress I liked very much. Like other fans, I was mesmerized by her performances in THE MIRACLE WORKER and THE GRADUATE, but my favorite movie of hers is 84 CHARING CROSS ROAD, in which she plays Helene Hanff, a feisty, opinionated, energetic New York booklover who has a lengthy and affectionate correspondence with a London bookstore located at the address that provides the title of the film. The film is based on a memoir by Hanff.

As I watched Bancroft-as-Hanff ordering deliciously large crates of books from England, and talking on the phone to the bookstore loudly and slightly nasally, and positively pop-eyed with book lust, I had a shock of recognition. Scenes at her books-are-taking-over-and-who-the-hell-cares? apartment made me want to just crawl into the movie and live there forever.