Bookstores in W. Mass

Yesterday I took my mom bookstoring, one of my favorite activities, in honor of my 40th birthday (which was a few weeks ago). We followed the advice of an article in the New York Times titled: Well-Marked Trails for Bibliophiles. We visited Whately Antiquarian Books and The Meeting House in So. Deerfield. They have been on my list to visit for a while, but I hadn't gotten a chance to go before yesterday. So, Whately Antiquarian is home to 35 rare book dealers. I found a first ed. illustrated Rudyard Kipling for $25-- absolutely a beautiful book with a mix of color and b/w drawings. I can't wait to read it with Max. I also picked up a mint condition Pickwick Papers, with type large enough that I may actually be able to read it. What is the problem with some of these old Dickens editions from the 1920s and 30s? The type is so small and the kerning so tight I can never read for more than 5 minutes. But this one is totally readable. Now the trick is to read it!

I also bought a first edition of my favorite Vikram Seth book-- The Golden Gate and a Dave Eggers novel.

Arthur and the Forbidden City

Well, I didn't love this book, but I adored how fun it was to read aloud with Max. I have such fun discussing literature and reading to him. I will be sorry about the day when we don't read together. I have learned that I love reading out loud and I am pretty good at it.

But the other day we were reading and the line was: "Arthur looked at something like a pig might look at a remote control." and Max said: "That's not a very good description because I don't think I know how a pig looks at a remote control." and I thought: "He's right. It's a poor analogy because it doesn't really describe how Arthur is making sense of what he's seeing."

Literature and kids go together like ice cream and hot fudge! Maybe not all kids, but one can hope.

Vita Sackville-West

grew up in a house that had 52 staircases and 365 rooms. Think about that. How freaky!

I love how much...

my kid loves books. Yesterday we flew home from Florida. We had a stop-over in North Carolina from around 7:30-9:30. Max and I cuddled in a seat and read, read, read. We are currently reading Luc Besson's Arthur duet-- Arthur and the Minimoys and Arthur and the Forbidden City. Granted we were at an exciting part-- 100pgs. to the end of the book. But people stopped and listened; they smiled at us. One man said that I could read audiobooks for a living. Another said that he wished he could sit near us on the plane so that he could hear what happened in the story. Many people complemented Max on how well he listened. Max, Lisa and I discussed what was happening and a few times Max didn't understand a part and we went back and re-read it with some explanation.

I watched people in the airport with their children a lot this week and I did not see much (if any) reading aloud. Kids were playing video games, taking pictures with cell phones, watching dvds and playing on computers. Some older kids were reading to themselves. I did not see families reading to young children. However, I noticed when we did it people were delighted. They wanted to be a part of it. Many older women smiled at me and Max, as if remembering times when they read to their young children.

We are all really enjoying the story, despite a poor review in School Library Journal. And we had seen the movie, so that might have helped us see the action in our minds. But we read and read for hours to finish the first book in the duet. When we were done, Max asked me: Is there an epilogue or something to tell us what happens next? Well, I don't need to tell you that I kvelled! My kid knows what an epilogue is and he knows how it is used as a literary device. How much does he rock?!

So we finished Arthur and the Minimoys and started Arthur and the Forbidden City. I read ahead after Max fell asleep and it gets pretty romantic/kiss-y. I hope he'll still enjoy it, but I can't imagine that it will be as fun as the adventure/battle parts. I guess we'll find out.

Ragtime

E.L. Doctorow is coming this spring to the college where I work. Many are looking forward to this visit and so we are all reading his works. I have just finished re-reading Ragtime and remembering how much I enjoyed it for it's seamless weaving together of a strong, beautiful quilt of a story, and it's vivid imagery.

I loved seeing the lower east side through Evelyn's eyes: "...Hebrew letters looking to her eyes like arrangements of bones". And of course the very erotic scene between Evelyn and Emma Goldman. It was interesting that Mother's Younger Brother became a participant in this scene between two women instead of merely a voyeur. I believe had the book been written today he might have been the unseen watcher, of a tender yet highly charged encounter between Emma and Evelyn, but in the 1970s our dominant cultural imagination had to see the climax as the providence of a man. (see pgs 52-54 in Random House hardcover edition).

I also found the end chapters of Mother's Younger Brother's journey to Mexico to fight with Pancho Villa and our own Nation's foray into that same war as very pertinent to our situation today. Teddy Roosevelt accuses Woodrow Wilson of "finding war abhorrent". However, history shows us that after Wilson's practice war in Mexico and his entrance into WWI on our country's behalf, he apparently didn't find it so abhorrent as to avoid it. The sentence that makes it so personal for me is: "Neither Theodore Roosevelt's son Quentin, who was to die in a dogfight over France, nor the old Bull Moose himself who was to die in grief not long thereafter, would survive Wilson's abhorrence of war."

It makes you wonder how gung-ho our President would be to wage war if every time he did so his own daughters were enlisted to be on the front lines. War seems easy to wage if someone else's children are fighting it.

Anyway, I digress. It was a great read and I'm glad to have the opportunity to visit and re-visit with a writer of Doctorow's talent. I am looking forward to hosting him this spring. I am also looking forward to hosting Spring (I am soooo over winter).

Barker at the grounds at the Vermont state fair, Rutland (LOC)

Barker at the grounds at the Vermont state fair, Rutland (LOC)
Originally uploaded by The Library of Congress

From the Library of Congress flickr site. Barker at the grounds of the Vermont state fair, Rutland. 1941.

Deb on LC Flickr site...

On Jan. 18 the Library of Congress opened it's new pilot project on flickr. The LC has uploaded over 3000 photos from it's collection onto a flickr site called The Commons. I am looking forward to viewing them and hopefully adding tags when I get a chance.

Here is a link to The Commons.
Here is a link to the Library of Congress blogpost
AND
the NPR story about it.

Hugo Cabret Wins the Caldecott!

The Invention of Hugo Cabret was one of my favorite books this year. It is a combination of beautiful prose and breathtaking pencil drawings. Sometimes the prose takes the story and sometimes the pictures. Here's a link to the book's website. It's well worth a look!

The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

Here are some of the drawings. Magnificent!

Me at Blogging workshop

Me at Blogging workshop
Originally uploaded by deblev

Blogging Workshop

Shame on me. I taught a Blogging workshop for the Valley Press Club last Wednesday (almost a week ago), but I barely mentioned it here. Color me chagrinned because one of the things I taught in the class was timeliness of posts. sigh.
Well, it was my first blogging workshop to an audience larger than my college community. I think it went very well for a first try. See photos above.

Matrimony

Nope, not a treatise on marriage, gay or straight. It's a quick read I just finished. A friend from work encouraged me to break out of my monstrous book queue to read this instead. It grabbed me at the beginning because the main character started college the same year I did, 1986, and at an alternative college in Western Massachusetts, that could have been Hampshire, my alma mater. It was called Graymont and wasn't as much a portrait of Hampshire as it seemed initially.

I enjoyed the book due to it's Hampshire/not-Hampshire connection, but the situations were contrived and the characters were a little aloof. However, I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, I get a certain pleasure out of a book that I can read quickly (in under two weeks) and feel accomplished when I finish it. Silly, but I'm such a slow reader, it just makes me feel good.

Cheers to snow!

Charlotte's Web

Max, Lisa and I recently listened to George Plimpton read Charlotte's web. We listened to it on the way to NY. Max really loved it and I had forgotten how delightful it is. E.B White was a total word smith and so many of his images were delightful. What fun! I really love listening to books on the ipod on long trips. Almost as much as I love reading aloud. I hope Max will want to read Trumpet of the Swan.

Blogging workshop...

I'm about to teach my blogging workshop to professional communicators. I am a little nervous, but I think it will go ok. I hope I've prepared enough.

Hawksbill Sea Turtle

Hawksbill Sea Turtle
Originally uploaded by takau99

I am new to SCUBA diving, I just received my certification last summer. I love to look at underwater photography on the web, so I often look at flickr.com. I joined the SCUBA Diving group on flickr so I can see photos like this one!

Chabon v. Diaz

V.
No, it's not a welterweight match-up on ESPN. Michael Chabon, pulitzer prize winner for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Junot Diaz author of the much-lauded The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao are two contemporary writers. Chabon writes from a place where his Judaism and that of his characters is very central. His recent novel, The Yiddish Policeman's Union, takes place in a slightly alternate universe where, after WWII, Jews lost the battle for Israel/Jerusalem to the Palestinians who lived there and were given a temporary homeland in Sitka, Alaska. The area is about to be reverted from a temporary home for the Jews back to Alaskan territory and everyone is having a little trouble with this.

Junot Diaz writes about Domincans in the Diaspora, namely New Jersey. His book is about a dungeons and dragons, nerd-y, sci-fi writing Dominican kid and his family in N.J. A lot of the book takes place in the Trujillo horrors of the island.

Why am I comparing these two? Well, they are very similar. Chabon writes a lot about the Jewish diaspora, peppers his writing with Yiddish-isms and Jewish asides that a non-Jewish reader wouldn't know and he makes no effort to translate or explain. Diaz writesa bout the Domincan diaspora, peppers his writing with Dominican-isms, Domincan/Spanish slang (I think it's Dominican slang because it was not at all similar to Mexican slang which I learned a lot of when I lived with a bunch of Oaxicans in San Francisco), and makes no effort to translate or explain.

The two books, read back-to-back, were very interesting for me because with the Chabon, I felt like the insider and wondered how people on the outside (ie: non-Jews) would relate to this book and with the Diaz, I felt completely on the outside, not in on the jokes or inside view at all and like I was missing a big part of the story. It was an interesting journey to read these so close together. In the end, I really loved both of them and thought they were both great books. However, I do feel like I connected with the Chabon on a gut level and I enjoyed the Diaz on an educational/peer-into-a-strangers-life sort of way. Two very different reactions and two very similarly styled writers. How cool.

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NPR series on blogging

In honor of the tenth anniversary of the blog, npr did a series on blogging.

NPR piece on the tin/aluminium annversary of the Blog...

NPR had a piece this morning on the Tenth anniversary of the weblog. In addition to the idea that most blogs are poorly written and pointless (an often heard criticism, get out your thick-skinned suit), they have nice tables about who blogs and why they blog and an interesting 'audio blog' that sent Max into gales of laughter this morning. They're going to have another installment tomorrow. I love radio.

Titles for Max for 2008...

Here are a few titles we can read as a family in 2008. In addition to reading very long chapter books, we have taken to listening to audiobooks on the ipod in the car.

Here are some titles:

Wind in the Willows
Wrinkle in Time
Three Musketeers
Call of the Wild
Fudge books

Suggestions welcome. He's 6, loves nuanced, interesting stories, mostly about animals, but will tolerate people stories if they're interesting (have magic or fairies, etc.).

cheers, deb.

The festival of lights has brought us...

more Spiderwick Chronicles
The Chronicles of Spiderwick: A Grand Tour of the Enchanted World, Navigated by Thimbletack".

The second Harry Potter. My verdict is still out on whether we should be reading this to Max, age 6. But he loves the story, and is following it, enthralled. And I must admit it is fun to read aloud. I also wonder what other parents think about what is acceptable book to read, or to watch. I ask this because I took Max to his daycare the other day (he had a snow day, and I wanted to get some work done) and the kids (3 boys, between age 5 and 7) were watching Transformers, rated PG-13 for violence and sexual content. Two of the boys who were watching this movie had brought it from home, and when I said I was uncomfortable with my 6 year old watching a pg-13 movie with so much violence, I felt like an over-protective freak. Do all little kids watch things like that? Are Lisa and I the only parents (who aren't evangelical home-schoolers) who are so compulsive about what our kid watches?

So after that little tirade... Lisa got me the new David Isay book: Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project.

And our friends got Max (us) a great Lemony Snicket find: The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story. This cracked me up!

And I'm getting Lisa the book: How Doctors Think. About (how intuitive is this) how doctors think.

Mom gave me The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. And I am so looking forward to it.

I'm sure we had other book related gifts, but I can't remember what they are.