PTSD and Fumbling, or Homeless 3

Well, gang, I just finished my first 2-hour volunteer shift at the Lakewood Branch of the Jefferson County Public Library. I know the accompanying picture hardly seems appropriate to many of you, but to me, coming here today was terrifying, overwhelming, though it was a piece of cake once I signed in and got started. Let's break this whole thing down a little.

PTSD

I know that I've mentioned Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder often on this blog, and some of you may be wondering what that actually works out to be in everyday life. (I've covered this material before, but I thought an update might be helpful.) We've all heard of it, of course, ever since WWI when it was first discovered and labeled "shell shock," and most of us still associate it with warfare. "Oh, yeah. That's what the Vietnam vets all came back with, right? Some kind of mental problems because of everything they saw and lived through over there? Poor guys. It's not surprising that would mess somebody up!" But men and women who have seen combat are not the only people who can develop PTSD by any means; even children suffer from this condition, if they have lived through something so horrifying that it permanently scars their psyches. Prolonged verbal, emotional, physical or sexual abuse often cause children to develop PTSD, and rape victims, witnesses to violent crime or suicide, and survivors of terrorist attacks commonly suffer from this disorder, as well.

However, there need not be any violence or abuse for a person to develop PTSD. Any event that is so horrifying and traumatic that the brain is forever marked by it can trigger the condition. These include natural disasters, and enduring prolonged illness oneself or watching a loved one slowly die of a terminal disease. In my case, the combination was a flood in English, Indiana, in 1991, where my family was living at the time, my mother's diagnosis with lupus, and a heart attack which left my father with only 20% of his heart muscle still functioning, after which my parents finally died by slow stages in 2011 and 2007, respectively.

Symptoms

The symptoms of PTSD vary and manifest themselves differently in people, but I'll give you the run-down on my own situation at present, since I'm the one doing the blogging here.

Sleep Interruptions

This is exactly what it sounds like; I may have trouble falling asleep, and when I get there, I wake up several times a night, feeling as if something isn't quite right with the world, and lie there trying to fall back to sleep, sometimes for several hours. As you  might imagine, this can have a negative affect on efforts to hold down a job.

Nightmares

When I do sleep, I will likely dream about my parents, their illnesses, their absence, the gaping holes it left in my life when each of them died, and how desperately I still wish I could talk things over with them sometimes. Not often, but occasionally, I dream about the flood, as well.

Panic/Anxiety/Depression

During my waking hours, any or all of these may visit me, the difference between the three being (1) totally unnecessary but very real feelings of absolute terror, as if a lion is staring me down with a very hungry look in his eye and I can't decide if running would help; (2) just generally feeling nervous, as if something terrible but completely undefinable is wrong with my world, which may not sound too bad until you do it for hours at a time; (3) the inability to care about the most basic things, like making sure I've eaten something in the past 24 hours, coupled with a debilitating sense of exhaustion and feeling absolutely overwhelmed by the thought of doing pretty much anything.

Hypervigilance

I don't suffer with this one as often as I do the others, but it has been disturbing me lately, probably because of my fears about my impending homelessness if I don't find some place to stay before my deadline of January 17th. My dear friend and current roommate pointed out to me the other evening that I was jumpy and responding more strongly than necessary to noises that happened in other rooms of the house or of the bar we were in. This is hypervigilance--constantly, and unnecessarily, being on the alert, a sense that at any moment, I may be called upon to leap into action to deal with a crisis. When I was an undergraduate, I once got a phone call in the middle of a Hebrew exam because my father had been taken to the hospital, AGAIN. It took me years to cease being terrified every time I heard a phone ring or an ambulance siren drive by anywhere near me.

SO,
     as I contend with all of that, is it any wonder that the thought of re-entering the workforce is overwhelming to me? Hence, the volunteering at the library. It's a "job" in the sense that I am expected to be at a certain place, at a certain time, to remain there for a set period of hours, and to engage in assigned tasks while there. This is a baby step, sort of practice for getting my mind used to working again, since I can simply walk out of a volunteer position if I suddenly develop a panic attack or what have you. Therapists call this "desensitization" or "exposure," allowing the mind to get used to an experience, see that nothing bad happens, and stop producing disturbing thoughts or fears just because I enter a "job" situation.

The Washington Township Public Library
in Salem, Indiana, where I had my first paid job.
(from the "Salem, Indiana" Flickr group)

I'm doing library work here. I got my first paid job ever at my hometown public library when I was 16. I've worked in the largest library on the campus of Indiana University, both in collection maintenance and for the Middle Eastern Studies librarian. I could do library work in my sleep, and on occasion, when I pulled an all-nighter getting a paper written, have at least been among the walking dead while working in the stacks. As soon as I stepped into this peaceful, cerebral environment today, allowed my beautiful books to envelop me and began shelf-reading (making sure books were in the right order), the world made sense again, and I belonged. That didn't stop me from being terrified on the drive here.

BUT,
     despite initial terror, I completed my two hours without incident, during which time I shelf-read one side of an entire row of non-fiction. For the uninitiated, I can assure you that is pretty quick work, and I felt quite pleased with myself to know I've "still got it." It was a minuscule step toward wellness, toward working again, toward getting established and back on my feet and not being homeless any more, but it WAS such a step, and it scared me, and I did it anyway. And dammit, I'm proud of myself.

First Hodge-Podge

Original photo courtesy of Caron,
then heavily edited by yours truly

Welcome to Hodge-Podge Day here on The Beauty of Eclecticism, another semi-regular feature I am introducing for when you need updates on numerous of the disparate threads and interests that hold my life together--or sometimes try to strangle me--in one post. There really is no better metaphor for this variegated aspect of my life than the crocheted crazy quilt, a device which I learned to make at my mother's knee when she finished several projects and had numerous scraps of various yarns left over. Hence, the newly-established badge for Hodge-Podge Day. If anyone else feels the need to do some hodge-podging, you are welcome to lift the badge and use it; a simple link back would be good. (Let me know if enough of you ever want to turn this into a weekly meme, and I'll set it up here.)

Item the First: Volunteering

When you're suffering from multiple emotional health issues, and have been out of circulation from the human race for a while, finding a volunteer position can be a great way to begin to ease yourself back into the world. A couple of hours, one or two days a week at most, is a stress level most people can handle, especially when they're not being paid and can walk away any time if they feel it necessary. For me, libraries are definitely the way to go. I avidly use libraries as a patron, so what could be more natural than giving some of my time back, learning to have a very small schedule of hours when someone expects something of me again, and getting my toe back into an academic world. It's a completely symbiotic relationship, and one that I hope even may lead to a paying job eventually, once I'm ready for that again. I got my first paying job at 16 by volunteering at my hometown library; maybe, in a few months, lightning may strike again for me. In the meantime, I had my grand tour behind the locked doors of Lakewood Library today. I am the newest official volunteer of the Jefferson County Public Library system, and I start next Tuesday. I think even I can handle two hours, one day a week, for the time being.

Item the Second: The Poor

Photo courtesy of Barnes and Noble

I'm beginning to realize just how many of us desperate and destitute there are in the Denver Metro area. Yesterday, Brigid the SuperPreschooler and I had our day together, and even though I had not one dollar in my pocket, I took her to Barnes and Noble to play with their lego station and train table, two activities she dearly loves. As I sat watching my little girl play, the second person in the past three weeks walked up to me and asked if I could help her out to buy a little food. Until recently, I'd never actually considered standing in the Wal-Mart parking lot holding up a homemade cardboard sign asking for food and gas money, so I've never fully appreciated until now how much it genuinely hurts me to have to say no to these people. This woman had two little ones with her; if I'd had that dollar in my wallet, I swear I would have given it to her, considering how many, many people are fighting to help me. Poverty is the painful gift that keeps up a vicious spiral of giving.

Item the Third: Good News?!

Let's not mince words--and I rarely do!--a lot of my life sucks right now, and I tend to share that with you in jagged detail, don't I? I thought it might be healthy to give a short recap of what went RIGHT in 2013, for all our sakes.

I started this year with a mystery illness that left me in horrible abdominal pain and nausea, having to take prescription pain killers and nausea meds every six hours and visit the ER at least once or twice a month. 2014 begins with the mystery solved, my surgeries just a memory now, and the scars nicely healed. They're big and very visible, but they are a reminder that I survived, and I wear them as badges of honor.

Brigid and I safely made it to Denver, where we have found friends--and in her case, family--waiting to help us. We have not gone hungry, and we managed to make it all the way through 2013 with roofs over our heads, a state of affairs that seemed in imminent threat of changing a few times. Thank God, and thank you, all of our wonderful friends.

My applications for food stamps and Medicaid have been successful, thanks to the good people of the state of Colorado, my newly-adopted home. I can buy food, I can get medical care, and though that's not enough, it's two of the major stressers of my life removed at a stroke.

Finally, 2013 saw the end of the specter that has haunted my waking and sleeping hours for 18 years. My student loans were forgiven. All that I went through to see that miracle occur was a hellish experience, but at least it was not in vain. I start 2014 penniless, but debt-free, and there are worse places to start by far than Square One.

A Small, Sweet Pearl

" 'After all,' Anne had said to Marilla once, 'I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.' "

--Anne of Avonlea

by L. M. Montgomery

(photo by Tanakawho)

 

Today was not a grand adventure or a major event.  That will come tomorrow; I'm turning 35, and thus far, all that's been revealed to me about the big surprise coming up is that Michael, Brigid and I will be dining with my in-laws tomorrow night, Brigid will be staying there at Grandma's house, and Friday morning, Michael and I will be setting off to some "major metropolitan area" to do something that I am assured I will be "thrilled about" that will take up most of the holiday weekened approaching.  My family knows my tastes pretty well, so I have no doubt the surprise will live up to their promises, but for tonight, I remain in suspense.

 

(The only picture I have easily available of the vehicle in question [see below]
is from our wedding day five years ago--hence the snow.)

 

However, I got another lovely birthday present yesterday evening, in the form of my little Ford Focus resurrected from its coma and breathing new life thanks to a new transmission.  (In case you're wondering, yes, everything you've ever heard about how expensive it is to replace a transmission is perfectly true.  "Somewhere between 'Ouch!' and 'Boing!' ")  Sweet little SuperToddler Brigid loves my car almost as much as I do, so we were both deeply excited to hear that "Blue Car is fixed!"  In celebration, she and I spent the day simply enjoying our re-established freedom, i.e. our ability to leave the house even when Papa is at work and has taken "Green Car" with him.

 

We went to her favorite restaurant, The Olive Garden--expensive tastes, my child--where we BOTH ordered off the children's menu.  It's cheaper, it's actually less food, and it's pretty much the only guaranteed way in that particular establishment to order garlic-free food.  Thus, a meal without IBS pain for Mama, allowing her and SuperToddler to continue their day out together.  I'm learning as quickly as I can how to manage this thing.

 

 

Naturally, at some point in the day we had to make a stop at the bank, which is never really fun but unavoidably necessary.  The nice lady behind the counter gave us a pretty blue balloon, which brightened up the proceedings immeasurably!  Still, we were both much more pleased with our next port of call, one of favorite places in the whole world.

 

THE LIBRARY!  Brigid gets excited the moment we pull into the parking lot.  It's funny, because we spend most of our time playing with the toys in the Children's Department; we looked through a book or two briefly, but took much longer creating a "perfect tower," as my budding architect deemed it, with Duplo blocks.  Still, we're building positive associations with books, reading, and the public library system, and I always consider that time well spent.

 

Finally, we found our way to Wal-Mart--surprise, surprise--where we picked up a few household supplies, but it was mostly an excuse to extend our day just a bit longer.  Besides, we enjoy toy shopping together, believe it or not.  It allows me to have a direct say in what comes home with us (or at least to try), and at times, I'm as excited about our new finds as she is!  Tonight was DEFINITELY one of those times.  Remember THESE little beauties?!

 

Ah, the View-Master!  How my heart lept with joy when I caught sight of one on Wal-Mart's Toy Department shelves tonight!  How I mentally kicked myself for ever letting my precious childhood friend and its little film reels get away from me!  The SuperToddler wasn't interested at first--too busy with more tangible-looking treasures--but when she figured out that I was really enjoying viewing something she wasn't seeing, human curiosity reeled her in, and the magic of those tiny "3-D" images did the rest, like with every other kid since the thing was first invented.  We had at least an hour of fun with them when we got home, and I'm already fondly imagining shopping for new cards on Amazon or even for vintage cards on E-Bay.  So THIS is why people have kids!  It's the only way to have this much fun again once you've gotten old and boring!  It was a lovely day, just a day out for me and my girl.

 



January Medieval Summary

Where did I go?  Has anybody seen me?  I'm sure I was here just a second ago!

No, seriously, I've been a bit absent this week, and a little less active in blogging for a while now than I had been before the New Year.  There's a reason for that, which I now feel prepared to divulge.  I've been taking on a new challenge--over a year after being diagnosed with diabetes, I'm attending diabetic education classes and beginning the long slog toward getting my disease tightly under control, in order to live as long and healthily as I can. 

International Diabetes Federation

What with frequent blood testing, constant thought about what and when to eat, counting carbs until I see grams and ounces in my sleep, and generally dealing with the emotional repercussions of a serious diagnosis that I've been denying to myself for months, spare mental and emotional resources have been running a bit low.  Even some of my favorite weekly memes have slipped through the cracks recently, and I have decided that something has to give. 

Though it saddens me, I've decided to suspend my monthly "Read Your OWN Library!" Challenge for the time being, so that I can focus on other blogging commitments for a while.  I want to reconnect with friends at some memes, definitely wish to concentrate on my Medieval Reading Challenge for this year, and have a couple of upcoming guest posts I am very excited about.  I want to make sure I don't spread myself too thinly, so that I can keep being fully engaged in everything I am doing.  For all those of you who have been doing the RYOL Challenge with me, thank you so much, and hopefully we will be back in the future.  You're a small group, and people I've come to count as genuine blogging friends.  Thanks for your understanding and support.

Moving on to the Challenge at hand--can you believe that January is over already?!  Those who are joining me in the Medieval Reading Challenge this year, how has the effort gone for you so far? Did you dive in as soon as 2012 began, eager to bring Medieval tomes to life again?  I must admit, with everything that has been happening, my reading life generally got off to a sluggish start this month, and though I'm back in fine form now, the Middle Ages haven't worked their way in yet.  I hope for much better things in February; after all, I've got 12 of them to get through!  I'd better get a move on.  Whether you're reporting triumph or disgrace, however, we still want to hear from each of you.  Give us a post summarizing your first month's efforts, and link here with the linky below.  Good luck to us all as we begin the month of February!

2012 Challenge Omnibus

Happy New Year!

And now that 2012 has begun, we have much challenge business to attend to.  First off, the Read Your OWN Library! Challenge is rolling on, especially since I received books for Christmas and now need to chip away at my backlog of reading material more than ever.  Here, as a refresher, are the outlines of the challenge.  (More details are available at the link above, which will take you to the RYOL headquarters.)

1.  The goal is to read books we've owned for more than 6 months, but still have not read for some reason.
2.  There are three levels to the challenge, but each requires that we read one such book each month, write a post about it, and link up to it here at The Beauty of Eclecticism.
3.  When you have completed the first month of the challenge, you will receive the code for a lovely and talented badge, crafted by yours truly, to place on your blog and announce your achievement to the world.  You only get this badge once, however, unless you switch to a different level for the next month, in which case, you can collect them all!

In the December just past, my chosen book was The Chimes by Charles Dickens, one of his famous Christmas Books.  The link will take you to my full review of the book, which was actually my least favorite of the three Dickensian Christmas Books I read in 2011.  Since it still got three stars from me, that should indicate the high overall quality of the series.  (Because the jury was still out on whether or not Dickens was a skilled writer, yeah?  *pardon my eye-roll*)

My chosen book for January's read-my-own is Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.  It will be the last title in my quest to complete the Regency and Victorian Reading Challenge, so as usual for me, let's here it for double-dipping!

Let us also remember that the 2012 Medieval Challenge has officially begun, and will last throughout the year.  (It also has its own HQ page, if you click the link above.)  This challenge has three levels, as well, and depending on which you choose, you'll be reading as many as twelve works written between the years of 400-1550 CE.  There will be a linky post here on the last day of each month, where those who have finished a medieval book that month can link up their reviews.  At the end, we'll all see how we fared, and whether those legendary and hallowed tomes lived up to their lofty reputations.

Read Your OWN Library! Challenge

And so, we begin!  Welcome to the introductory installment of a perpetual monthly reading challenge, in which we attempt to make a dent in the library we already own, for once.  If you've checked out the page on this site dedicated just to this challenge, you know that the guidelines are simple.

-Read a book you've owned for 6 months or more but have never read before.
-Report on it in a post on your blog, and link TO THAT PARTICULAR POST here at The Beauty of Eclecticism.
-Link back to this blog in your post.
-Decide how committed you want to be about this; are you (1) just going to read one book you already own?  (2) Promising yourself you won't buy any new books or e-books until you finish this long overdue read first?  or (3) Swearing off even library books until you've read AT LEAST one in your towering "to be read" pile?  Let us know in your post.
-If you'd like, fill us in on how you came by this book, and why you never got around to reading it until just now.  I love to hear how books and book lovers met.
-Check out the other blogs represented here, and please leave comments--silent hovering makes me sad.

My first choice is Stuart Little, by E.B. White, in the beautiful, full-color, 60th anniversary edition.   I decided I'd go easy on myself this first time out with a fun, short book (at least, I hope it'll be fun; I can tell by looking that it's fairly brief).  The reasons I own this book are two-fold.  First of all, I adored Charlotte's Web (also by E.B. White) as a child; it was my favorite book, and I read it about once every six months for several years.  I eventually decided I should find out what else White had to say about the world.  Secondly, I was thrilled when HarperCollins started releasing the Narnia books in their full-color editions, and was overjoyed when it became obvious that they meant to do this with a number of series.  Over the years, I've slowly been collecting them all.  I bought this copy of Stuart Little at least five years ago, in either a Borders (may they rest in peace) or a Barnes and Noble.  At the time, however, there were more important Princess Diary installments to be read, so Stuart faded into the background until I forgot about him.  It's time to correct that oversight.

There now!  There's my challenge for this month.  Since this is the first month we're doing this, simply write us a post telling us what you're planning to read and any other fun tidbits.  Next month, you can report back and let us know how it went, along with what you've chosen to read next.  Happy reading!

Update:

Gina at Hott Books quite rightly pointed out that we should probably have an exception for Freebies, those review copies that we all love to receive for free in exchange for nothing more than our honest opinion.  (Isn't that always an awesome deal?)  So I'm adding that very important exemption.

Updates, Announcements, Confessions

Confession:

I'm beginning to understand now why so many bloggers dedicate an entire blog just to their reading life.  Trying to keep up with reviews, reading challenges, and everything from just general life that I want to blog about all in one place is somewhat baffling, because it means I could easily write about 5 posts a day.  My whole point in naming this blog what I did, though, was to highlight the quite disparate threads of my life that all meet in my one brain, so I'm not prepared to start splitting everything off into forty different blogs.  I've done enough of that already.  So, multiple posts looming ahead; fair warning has been given.

Updates:

NaBloPoMo.  (If that means nothing to you, click here to read the relevant post in the archives.)  I finished my first month of NaBloPoMo, and did indeed meet my goal of posting every day.  Having done it once, I was thinking of taking a well-earned break from it, until I found out October's theme: BETWEEN.  Talk about a theme speaking to a person!  Michael and I are between jobs, lives, future plans, rocks and hard places--if it's a major circumstance you can get stuck between in life, we're pretty much there right now.  In other words, I'll be continuing to NaBloPoMo until further notice.

Brigid the SuperToddler did NOT develop any black eye after falling and banging her nose on the coffee table last night--YAY!  I prayed earnestly about this, and all I can say is thank God.  She has a little cut on her nose, but she's going to be just fine.

Announcements:

DRUM ROLL PLEASE!  **crashing cymbals**

I'm hosting my first ever reading challenge/blog hop here at The Beauty of Eclecticism, called the Read Your Own Library! Challenge.  Rules and further explanations are available here, and I hope you'll join us, because it's going to be lots of fun!  If you have books on your shelves that you've owned and been meaning to read forever, this challenge was made for you (and me, because I'm in exactly the same boat).  Tell your friends!  This will be an on-going monthly challenge, and the link will open here on the 5th of each month.  This will give you a few days to decide what book(s) you're going to read and get your post written.  The link will close on the 8th of each month, by which time I assume that everyone who is going to enter for the month will already have done so.  Hope to see you there!

The Beauty of Eclecticism is on Facebook!  Yes, your favorite blog has its own page on Facebook now, and WE NEED "LIKES," so come like us, won't you?  In return, we'll give you daily updates on blog doings in your Facebook feed (provided Facebook doesn't CHANGE the Facebook feed yet again).

You may have noticed that there's a new link in the right sidebar called "Commonplace Book."  A Commonplace Book is a place to record awesome quotes and other useful information one stumbles across while reading, and I decided that a dedicated blog to store such things would be my one concession to separating my reading somewhat, so that it doesn't totally overwhelm The Beauty of Eclecticism.  Click on the link (or click here) and check it out.  Quotes!  Get your fresh quotes here!

--End of Bulletin--
We now return you to your regularly scheduled life, already in progress.

Busy Work

So, it occurred to me the other night, after reading back over the post entitled "How to Sound Well-Read," that I may have left one and all with a false impression that I did not enjoy college.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In fact, I loved being a university student, and it certainly wasn't because of all the parties (which I did not attend) or other unauthorized recreational activities (which I did not engage in).  We must remember that at the time, I was a good little Pentecostal preacher's daughter.  No, my primary joy in life during college was all the reading I did, because I did a massive amount of reading and research--it's just a shame that I couldn't get class credit for most of it!

Indiana State University
(my FIRST alma mater)

My favorite activity was to lose myself in the library stacks of whichever academic institution I was attending at the time (I've graduated from three), in those innocent, halcyon days before I had a cell phone, so no one could find and bother me.  I studied everything from medieval Islamic art to the Jewish Talmud, read everyone from Owen Wister to Anne Rice, and discovered British comedies like Jeeves and Wooster in the AV department.  I developed a life-long passion for research, as a matter of fact, and whenever I want to know more about a topic, or whenever I'm worried that my SuperToddler might be suffering from this or that ailment, all those hours of searching library catalogs and shelves stand me in good stead.  Probably the single most helpful thing I learned in more than ten years of university studies was how to do adequate research.  Usually, I was just setting out to satisfy my own random curiosity about a topic or a person; hour upon hour I spent in the basement or the back corner of the top floor of a library, my beloved books and I the only inhabitants of the planet, as far as I knew during those long sessions.  As I said, most of it earned me no course credits whatsoever, because I couldn't seem to find a class that was dedicated, for example, to the question of what actually happened to the famous library of Alexandria, and even if a class and my interests coincided, it was hard to fit a semester on Norse mythology into a tightly-packed degree program in linguistics.

Unknown nice librarian lady, Minnesota, 1974. 
(Thank you, Wikimedia.)

I have three master's degrees, and not one of them has helped me to eke out a lucrative career for myself.  The time I spent in the library stacks, however, continues to benefit me on a daily basis, whether I'm drawing once again upon the stores of knowledge I acquired there, or figuring out the best way to begin a major research project because I'm curious to know more about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  I have the tools to know where to begin, which authorities to consult and which so-called "experts" to blythely ignore, because of a couple of library systems that ran like well-oiled machines, and were always there for me when I needed them.  THAT was the worthwhile part of ten years of college.

I must say, the classes I enjoyed most were the ones in which I was allowed to choose my own reading materials.  Granted, these were not that common, but especially in graduate school, university departments begin to trust their students more to work independently, and they also realize that they can't tailor a class for the varied interests of every single student on campus.  Thus, the independent reading course was born.  For anyone who's never experienced it, this is exactly what it sounds like--you work out a reading list with the professor, you go away and read it all, you meet with the professor once a week to make sure that you're on track, and at the end of the semester, you present yourself to take an exam that the professor concocted based on the master list.  In some cases, you write an extensive paper as the final project, which is even better, since YOU get to control what's on the "exam" if it's entirely a treatise of your own making.  I did a couple of these independent courses, and actually quite enjoyed it.  There are days when I miss academia.

Which is why I've begun to suspect that for me, blogging has taken the place of independent studies.  Having set myself the goal of trying to post something every day, I know that I have a specific task, I know when the deadline is, and I seem never to have a shortage of things to write about.  I've even found ways to add the assigned reading component back onto my daily life; I've joined not one, but THREE review programs that give ME free books and give the PUBLISHERS in question an honest review of the book.  It's a little like writing book reports again--you remember, I'm sure: "My Book Report, by Jenny Campbell," written in pencil on that 2nd-grade paper with the blue lines on it, and the 'y' always a little crooked, much to my chagrin.  Still, it's a way to keep taking independent reading courses, since I get to pick which of the publishers' new books I want to review, and I get the textbooks FREE!  Nobody ever gave me THAT deal in college, I can promise you.  Here's an example: I find American military history interesting.  Not interesting enough that I would ever take a whole semester-long course of that and nothing else, but still interesting.  So, when a publisher offers me a free, hardback biography of an American general I'd never heard of before, but who was instrumental to our victory in one of our big wars (I don't remember which one; I haven't actually started the book yet), I'm going to happily take them up on it.  Like I said, this gives me the same opportunity to keep learning and the sense of accomplishment that attending college did, without me having to go into $20K a year of student loan debt for it.  Book reviewing, here I come!

Reading with Happy Feet

DISCLAIMER:

Penguin Books, to the best of my knowledge and memory, has never given me so much as a free #2 pencil.  (They sent me a couple of free catalogs once, when I requested them, but they do that for everybody.)  The following gush is completely unsolicited; I just love Penguin, and always have.

Can anyone explain to my satisfaction why I, like generations of Britain's bibliophiles and casual readers, should be so utterly captivated by one of the world's simplest book cover designs ever?  I mean, I can take a guess why Penguin's multiple but dead-similar lines of covers were popular for decades.  The clean lines, the clear, crisp text, the bright colors that allowed the shopper to distinguish at a glance between genres, all combine to create an aesthetically superb effect.  I understand that.  Now that we've all finished being amateur marketing experts for a moment, let me just say that those perfectly reasonable-sounding arguments still don't answer my question.  You see, they don't satisfy me; they are NOT "to my satisfaction," as I requested, whereas the plain-jane Penguin cover, monochromatic and seemingly unassuming, is deeply satisfying to the souls of both my inner art critic and my inner bibliomaniac.

Photo courtesy of
the penguin blog

I must admit, I had never seen such a Penguin cover in my life until about two months ago; until then, I had only ever encountered the more contemporary yellow-jacket version typical of university bookstores, or the latest, sleekest, predominantly jet-black model which was rolled out by Penguin at about the same time that I started graduate school.  My ignorance of Penguin's iconic image of a by-gone era stems largely from one simple fact; I always bought and read Penguin USA versions.  More and more, however, I have insisted on having copies of books from their country of origin whenever possible since I began collecting the British originals of Harry Potter, and when I stumbled across Penguin's postcard collection on Amazon, I was hooked.  It was a side of Penguin I'd never seen before.  The British side.  The aspect of a famous publisher from a time when even its paperbacks were wrought with a level of care and skill rarely met with today in any format from any publishing house.

Puffins:
I miss you, Dad.

Of course, the blogosphere has been abuzz with the gorgeous new Penguin hardback classics (one of which, Cranford, I reviewed in an earlier post), and though these beauties bear no resemblance to the 20th-century Penguin triband at all, I love them, as well, and am slowly collecting them.  (It's going to be REALLY slow collecting, though, since I'm not supposed to be buying any more books in the immediate future.  I know; good luck with that.)  AND NOW, I learned from a fellow blogger today that Puffin, Penguin's children's division, is publishing ITS classics in adorable, newly-designed hardcovers, as well.  Christmas presents, anyone?  I cannot allow there to be a nice edition of Anne of Green Gables somewhere out there in the world of which I don't own a copy!  Seriously--I have no idea how many copies of that book I actually own.  It's getting ridiculous.  I can't even tell myself that I'm buying and saving them for Brigid, because she doesn't need five copies of the same book any more than I do.

Anyway, this meandering panegyric to Penguin of a post is all in aid of saying only this--I can't wait until Thursday (payday), when I can order my used copy of The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes--one of the missing volumes that I mentioned in my last library project post--in all its green-banded, Penguin-ish, 1959 glory!  Hey, at least it only takes a small, used paperback novel to make me happy, and I'm certainly not the only one.  There's even a Penguin Collectors Society!  Who knew?!

Loving Loopholes

Don't you just HATE it when you've set yourself the task of reading the books you already own before you buy any more or check out any more library books, and then you discover that one of the books you've got is part of a series, and NOT the first in the series, so now you HAVE to buy another book?  Yeah, me neither!

So, here's the story.  As Michael and I have completely run out of our beloved Midsomer Murders, the British mystery series that we had been devotedly tearing our way through whenever we had a SuperToddler-free 90 minutes to watch one, we switched to streaming 1980's adaptations of Sherlock Holmes from Netflix.  Michael read the books by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle when he was young, but I never have, despite the fact that I own a beautifully hardbound, illustrated copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in my legendary personal library.  The episodes we've been watching are actually quite good, and they piqued my interest, so I decided I would make this my next undertaking in the "Read Your Own Damn Library!" challenge.  I had just opened the book, and was reading the first paragraph while enjoying the feel of the gilt-tinged cover in my hand, when I noticed that the words on the page were not squaring with my expectations at all.  Dr. Watson was talking about having just been married, and how he hadn't seen Holmes in months, so he stopped by the rooms they had formerly shared in order to pay a little visit.  HUH?  Even if I've never read the books, I've seen movies, I've watched Data play Holmes on Star Trek: The Next Generation.  I've been exposed to bits of the story like anyone else who was born into an English-speaking culture, and I had clearly missed a lot of ... something.

Wikipedia to the rescue!  Oh, how did I live before I could consult with my trusty Wikipedia?  Okay, we'll save that episode of waxing rhapsodic for another time.  (But let me just say, did you know there is also a site called Wiktionary?  A writer's best friend, I assure you!)  Sufficeth to say, I consulted my faithful friends online, and discovered that my beautifully hardbound and illustrated edition of Sherlock Holmes is only a selection, and not one that contains the vast majority of the Holmes canon, or the beginning of it, for that matter.  Amazon Time!!  So, I found old Penguin Classic paperback copies of each of the pieces of the puzzle I needed, and will be ordering them incrementally.  Obviously, they're used, so it'll be $1 here and $.75 there, until I have them all.  See?  It's all a legitimate part of reading the library I already own, right?  Riiiiiiiight.  I don't believe it either, but it's fun to pretend.

Embracing Defeat

Oh, mea culpa, and yet, the relief of admitting and embracing my defeat is actually quite pleasant.  After plugging away valiantly for a while--and then not getting a single line further since the last time I wrote about it--I have given in to the crushing gravitas that is A Distant Mirror, and said good-bye to the "Calamitous 14th Century."  At least, I have for now; I hope to get back to it someday.  Since I began this project of actually reading the books that I own, I've begun to understand why so many people publish lists of the books they say I simply must read BEFORE I DIE.  I need to get around to it eventually, but it's not high on today's To Do list unless I want to be depressed, or so bored that I can't stay awake.  Yes, I'm talking about you, Proust!

Anyway, I put away the 14th century today, and got out my copy of The Know-It-All, the book that really launched A. J. Jacobs' career as a writer of lifestyle travelogues.  For those not familiar with the book or its author, this is the guy that set himself the task of reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, and The Know-It-All is his running commentary on the project as it was in progress. 

He also went on to write The Year of Living Biblically, in which he tried to better get in touch with his Jewish faith by following every letter of the Mosaic Law for one year.  That book is simply a wild ride, an often hilarious romp through the absurdity of religious texts once they're out of their context, and an all-round good read.  I highly recommend it.

I don't know yet if I can recommend The Know-It-All, but it's heavily favored to go more quickly than A Distant Mirror  did, because A. J. Jacobs tends to be a lot like PBS reality shows--much more intelligently written than other people's efforts in the same genre, but still light and fluffy enough to be a little bit like cotton candy for the mind.  We'll see if this book holds my interest.  (When in doubt, just blame the books for not being interesting enough!)

I must add one further update to the library project while I'm on the subject.  I said at the outset that I would try to resist the temptations of new e-books and library supplies.  Yeah, my library card has still been pretty well-traveled the last few weeks. 

My Kindle was growing a layer of dust, forlornly sitting on the end table by my chair with a dead battery, until my FABULOUS mother-in-law gave me gifts cards for $50 worth of Kindle books.  $50 + shopping for new books = very happy me.  Oh, dear.  This reading project is going to be with us for a while, I can tell from here.

Read Your OWN Damn Library!

So, the book project is coming
along--sllloooowwwwwllllllyyyyy.  First, I read Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell.  The purchase of this book was kind of frivolous, I must confess; for a while now, I've wanted to start my collection of the Penguin Classics Hardcover set (they're pretty!), and this seemed a likely place to begin.  It felt a bit like cheating to read this one first, because I bought this book just a few months ago, so I was still "in the mood" to try it, if you know what I mean.  Still, it was a good entree to my "Read Your Own Damn Library!" adventure.  If you saw the miniseries of Cranford on PBS, let me tell you that the book, predictably, is better.  Less melodrama, more humor, and more of the matter-of-fact of everyday life.  I liked the miniseries IN SPITE of its dripping tragedy.  I just liked the book.  Period.

Next came The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War, a buy that fit in much more with the spirit of the project.  I bought my copy of that one in 2008 at the Jefferson County Friends of the Library booksale in Colorado, when Michael and I were living near Denver.  I've had a love/hate affair with Walt Whitman ever since I saw the movie Dead Poets Society at the age of 11.  (If you don't understand how that film connects with Walt Whitman, you REALLY need to see the film.  It is by far Robin Williams' finest hour, with the possible exception of Good Morning Vietnam.)  Walt Whitman's most famous collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, is basically all about the brash self-aggrandizement of a young genius who has not yet learned to channel his gift into something that will benefit mankind (in my not-so-humble opinion), rather like Orson Wells and Citizen Kane.  The Civil War infinitely humanized Whitman, and his best work is the post-Civil War project, Drum Taps.  The author of The Better Angel, Roy Morris, Jr., seems to totally agree with this assessment, which of course means that I enjoyed the book hugely, =0) !  However, it was also informative, as I had never realized that Walt Whitman was a flaming homosexual.  This was an eye-opening read, a page-turner that I hadn't expected would be a page-turner when I picked it up.

The current read-in-progress is A Distant Mirror: the Calamitous 14th Century by the late Barbara Tuchman.  This woman is an inspiring figure for me, a self-taught historian who literally changed the way history is written ever since the mid-20th century, largely through this particular book.  To my undying shame, however, I have never actually read the ground-breaking book before, so I have set my hand to the plow, as it were, and am determined not to look back until I have completed the task.  It's slow going, I admit, with lots of re-re-re-re-re-re-reading Harry Potter to break up the non-fiction seriousness.  This is not because Tuchman's writing style leaves anything to be desired; on the contrary, she is brilliant--humorous, engaging, and great all-round entertainment value, as well as a first-rate historian, despite the poo-pooing of stuffed-shirt professional historians of an earlier age.  Nevertheless, she's writing about the age of the Black Death, and it can be heavy reading.  This book is roughly 700 pages.  Reading 700 pages of Harry Potter and reading 700 pages of the Plague are VERY different experiences.  Updates forthcoming.

A Grand Adventure

I am embarking upon a HUGE undertaking--to actually read the books I own. I shall endeavor (though I feel sure I shall fail at some point) to cut myself off from the public library, from reading Star Trek novels on my Kindle, from all outside sources of avoiding my OWN, ever-growing library until I have actually whittled away at some of the books I have simply "HAD to have" in my life and then promptly proceeded to never yet read. I'll keep you posted on the outcome, and on exactly how many of my books immediately make their way to Paperbackswap.com, once I've actually read a few pages and find out how many times I wish I HADN'T bothered to move them all the way across the country more than once. Wish me luck!