Why I Love Second-Hand Books

I was using Stumble earlier and fell over this particular blog. It is by a woman named Christine on her Wordpress blog, shereadsbooks.org. This pretty much explains why I love used books. These are all her reasons and I feel the same way about each one.

Sure, new books are okay, I guess — but I love second-hand books. I don’t shop for used books because they’re all I can afford (well… sometimes they are, but it’s still not the primary reason). I shop for used books because I genuinely prefer them.

Why do I like you better, second-hand books? Let’s count:

1) You are cheap, cheap as all get-out. I love that I can go to a used bookstore and get my school reading for $20 instead of $100. I love being able to buy ten books at a time … at a buck apiece. And being able to get a book for a small cash outlay means that I’m more likely to try out new authors, whose books I may afterwards buy at full price — if they’re good enough!

2) You are used. It might seem strange, but I don’t like reading new books. I don’t like new books as objects: too shiny, too crinkly, too bright. I like my books to have some character: some dents, maybe some tears, yellowed pages. It’s a character thing, and also a mark that a book has been well-read, if not necessarily well-loved. I feel more connected to other readers, somehow, when I know I’m reading something that’s been in other hands before.

3) You are found in charming places. I’ll go to the big shiny bookstores when I have a gift card or something, but mostly I like the shopping experience at used/discount stores better. One of my favourites has tiny aisles and giant piles everywhere and styles itself the “world’s messiest bookstore,” an epithet which is probably deserved. Finding a book there is like treasure-hunting.

4) I can treat you badly and not worry about it. I bend corners and use things like mugs and table edges instead of bookmarks, and I throw my books around a lot when they’re being moved between my bag and the shelves, or rather from my bag to the floor and eventually possibly onto a bookshelf. Used books are already a little dingy, so hey, what does it matter if I accidentally break the spine?

5) Marginalia, mementos, and other things are enclosed. Sometimes used books come with surprises inside. Old receipts. Photographs. Cartoons. Grocery lists. I found a copy of Alias Grace with a very sweet dedication in it. And my $2 copy of E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India has this to say on the inside back cover:

I don’t understand — I still don’t really understand why he wants to see other people. Why does he need to kiss them? Yuk. it must be that he needs to put himself in a situation where something could happen and see if he could allow it to. almost as thought he’s testing his feelings/love for me. Perhaps he wants to see if he could kiss someone else too. if he feels something when he kisses them then… to me this seems a bit naive. i’m sure if i put myself in a situation where i was with someone i’d always found attractive i’d be able to kiss them. if I put myself in that situation with brooke actually i don’t know. has about danielle? I have this feeling if i did it would be disappointing. I’m not sure — the thought of him kissing someone else makes me want to throw up. I can talk about this forever with everyone and still I feel nauseous when I think about it.

Gee, I’m sorry to hear that! Maybe he wants to kiss other people because he’s a big jerk. You know, just my two cents.

6) Did I mention the “cheap” thing?

Limitations of the Craft

I've known I wanted to write professionally since about my sophomore year in college. I had a knack for it. I'm not being conceited; everyone has something they are born to do and I was born to write. The hardest part, though, is knowing what to write and how to write it. But the wall I kept running into was what is acceptable to write? How far can your content and subject matter go before it is deemed unacceptable? What things are taboo to write about? What things can an author subject a reader to before they are called "twisted individuals" and cast out of literary circles? Most of the subject matter I am referring to is sex, which is one of the four things that most literature is about (and the other three have eluded my mind). Sex is always a sensitive subject, dependent on the reader, mostly on their age and religious preferences. I'm not saying that I'm going to start writing imitative works based on the Marquis de Sade, but how much of a novel can deal with sex and how much is too much? Michael Cunningham's novel A Home at the End of the World deals with the experimentation and depiction of two young boys going through puberty together. Bobby is a boy who has a rough home life and Jonathan has a rather normal life. They experiment together sexually. In the ensuing years, they lose touch and Jonathan accepts his homosexuality. This book, as well as the musical Rent, opened my eyes to the ways it can be handled in modern literature and culture, but that is from a more liberal culture. Southern and Christian cultures (most times both simultaneously) put sexuality on the back burner and homosexuality is either something to be changed or something to be ignored.

This entire argument could be turned in and changed into a different discussion on what is deemed indecent. This is where the limitations come in. We are told that you can write about anything you want, but that is not true. In one sense, you are only able to write what people will read. In another, you can only write what is decent and acceptable in the social mores of your specific culture. We're supposed to write what we know, but what if all we knew was deemed indecent by popular morality? What is more unacceptable? Holden Caulfield's ramblings about necking or Moses and the Israelites purging their way to the Promised Land? I know that is a far out comparison, but the point is what can be more unacceptable- sex, murder, blasphemy, treason? How far can the boundaries of acceptable content be pushed?

A Pet Peeve

The GF pointed out to me that I always harp on her about getting anal about songs and artists that she finds annoying and stupid, such as Lady Gaga and Kesha. But what she pointed out to me was that I get just as anal about stupid misspellings of names. I didn't realize my true hatred until she pointed out that comparison. I'm talking about "Anakin killing Tusken Raiders" type of hate. It just occurred to me that I told the roommate that I was going to start calling girls named "Elisabeth," "E-lie-za-beth." I'm really picky and anal about it. The only name alteration I like is Jacen and that is Han freakin' Solo's son. I don't know what it is. It's almost like people using text language and spelling in a facebook status update that they posted through facebook and not through their phone. Something such as, "sittn at the apt bored outa my mind....what to do, what to do???" I don't understand this, but that is for another post and time. The name that started this whole rant was Lawryn. It's like some Southern belle named her phonetically for how she said her name. I think I will list the ones that annoy me most.

Ashleigh
Meghan
Kayleigh
Ayden/Aaden (I also hate this name, in principle.)
Nevaeh (spelling Heaven backwards doesn't make it a good name.)
Rylie
Arron
Jinger
Johannah
Jordyn
Rachelle
Mackynzie
Madelyn
Cara
Collin
Khloe
Kristina
Khristina
Rhian
Brice
Sofiya
Jadan/Jayden/Jaeden
Kourtney

...and these are just a few. I just think that if you need your baby to be unique, give them a pencil and tell them to draw or write or design something. Don't handicap them with an uneducated spelling of their name. Giving them an individualistic name will not help them in any way except getting teased more frequently in elementary and middle school.

Stepping down from the soap box in 3.....2......1.....off

The Amber Calm

This is the first thing I ever got published. It is pretty much non-fiction, but I put a few fictional nuances in it to make it so.

The wind poured in through the open window of the car. The late night air was heavy, a product of the humid weather. It made it difficult to breath and it didn’t help that I had been suffering from a cold the past week. My eyes were heavy with sleep and I really wanted to lie down for the night, but I was also very hungry. Thomas, my roommate, suggested Waffle House, so I agreed. We were in his Intrepid, driving to Waffle House. There are two in town, one near the campus and the other on the north side of town. We were going to the one further away because they have better service and food. We left out of the dorm parking lot, heading out the back side of the campus towards the highway.

The amber of the streetlights cast shadows across the road that shone in ways I had never seen before. The way the light-not just from the streetlights, moonlight, too-came down over the buildings and through the tree limbs, then down onto the street as we passed over, struck me as odd, like an amber-gray cloud stretching over the land. The air smelled of the rain that had just passed from the last hurricane. The smell of fresh-cut grass and rainwater mixed with the smoky smell of Thomas’ Newports. The yellow lines split the road until we turned onto the highway. The radio blasted “Minerva” by the Deftones. Once we turned, the road was cut intermittently by the whole lines in the middle. My mind focused on the music, because I liked the song and because it was 2:15 in the morning. I gazed out the window and watched the interplay of the light on the different surfaces around us. It shaped itself around the car as we passed under each new light, and projected itself, not only onto the ground below it but on the whole area around it. The light sent streaks across Thomas’ dirty windshield.

When we finally got there, the place was almost a ghost town, except for the waitress, cook, and the drunk guy who was sitting on a stool at the bar. We sat in a booth in the corner. The waitress, a small Asian girl named Lin, walked over after we sat down and placed our silverware on the table. We both ordered the All-Star Special: a waffle with bacon, hash browns, and scrambled eggs. After Lin had taken our order, Thomas went to the jukebox.

While he was picking songs, I gazed out the window towards the road. It was dark and hardly a car was on the road. Serenity. I am awake, yet the city sleeps. There was a small hill that rose up in front of the Waffle House, giving it some cushion from the highway. Further down the road toward the city limits, a large hill carries the road down and back up again. I stared down the road at this small valley. I thought, What did this place look like before we were here? Back when no one lived here, when it was just trees and nature? At the moment my thoughts were fully formed, the opening bars of “Folsom Prison Blues” took me from my Walden.

A few minutes later, our food was brought to us; first, the main plate (eggs, and hash browns, with toast), then the waffle and bacon. The food was the most delicious meal I had eaten in days; whether it was from hunger or my sleep-deprived thoughts, I had no idea. As we ate, the music played on.

After we were both through, we paid our bills and walked outside. Thomas lit up another cigarette and sat down beside me on the curb. We sat in silence-he enjoying his nicotine fix and I, enjoying the peace of a truly silent night. A light fog was settling over the air, making orbs around every bulb of light outside. When we got back to the dorm, I lay down on my bed. I looked out one of the windows over my bed and stared up at the sky. It was charcoal all over, except where the amber of the streetlights shown. Where the amber and charcoal met, the sky created the darkest shade of amethyst. I closed my eyes, almost as the shutter of a camera in my mind, trying to forever save that moment. When I opened them again, it was morning. The sky was blue, and the moment had ceased.