Posts under ‘Overbooked’

I like older people, and I don’t mean geriatrics that may bequeath me large sums of money or moth-eaten stoles. I like older people who have more experience than my peers and me and generously offer the biased roadmap they’ve scribbled in perilous attempts to navigate potholed adulthood. When you’re older, I think you’re more comfortable believing you’re right. Or certainly less shy about coming right out, pun intended, and saying it. Younger people don’t want to step on too many toes or be arrogant, so there’s a lot of relativity in everything. Is that shirt red? Well, some people might say it’s red. Of course, color-blind people - who are just as good as non-color-blind people can’t determine if something is red at all. Or you know, burgundy, which the shirt might also be.

I’m always pleased when a particular book rides the waves of popularity and becomes a ubiquitous fixture of public transportation, drugstore check-out shelves, and the media. I’ve never read the Harry Potter series and probably never will (I find most fantasy novels difficult to read), but I love how some kids who otherwise hate to read, waited hours to get the last enormous book.

Same with The Da Vinci Code. I have no desire to read it, mostly because I don’t think it will blow my mind. I remember this particular Valley Girl-ish co-worker back in college who swore Dan Brown, “Like, totally changed my life! Really! You should, like, borrow my copy!”

I declined. Good for you, but not my scene. I’m skeptical of what lots of people purport to be great, anyway. Like Orlando Bloom. What’s the appeal? Am I the only person who thinks his face resembles a ferret’s? And that he’s a poor man’s Justin Timberlake, but with ratty hair?

While Cade devours the latest and last Harry Potter book, for which he waited over an hour in a bookstore cattle drive, I’ve finished Seedfolks. The spare and lovely children’s book about a Cleveland community garden is just under a hundred pages and my edition has Sid Fleischman’s reflections on it and his writing process. I liked this part:

Yesterday, I read Susan Minot’s Rapture, a book about what two people in an on again-off again relationship are thinking while engaged in a sexual act. Some people think it’s depressing, because the couple is clearly not in love, nor in a healthy relationship. I think it’s really well-written and true to life. Here are some excerpts:

If books truly are the “children of the brain,” as someone once said, then I haven’t mommy blogged in awhile. (Hey, maybe not quite my children. But someone’s children, right)? Because I’m swamped with job hunting, tutoring on the side, and finishing the school year, I haven’t been reading a book each week. I’m currently reading Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands in preparation for the new job - a book which really isn’t that dull and even has large font - but I can’t read more than ten pages at a time. Too many other things beckon me. The dishes curse under their breath about my not having washed them. The clock whines to be heeded. My bed holds me down and won’t let me sit up.