Yesterday was very soggy. It rained from noon until 10pm. To escape the deluge, the roomie and I headed to the commercial mecca of the local mall, which has a Borders, a Barnes and Noble, and a Best Buy next door. The finances are such that we didn't buy anything aside from tacos, a box of Nerds, a box of Gobstoppers, and Cadbury's Dairy Milk, but it was nice to browse and windowshop.
I saw a few things in Borders that I might shoot for if the budget allows. There was a gorgeous, two-volume set of Baum's Oz. Twenty bucks per volume, but they're hardbound with gold-embossed pages and chapter artwork, and I loved the Oz world as a child. They and Nancy Drew were the first real experiences I had with reading. Well, they and Thinner, by Richard Bachman nee Stephen King. Yes, it was a strange dichotomy, but it was one that worked.
My mother and grandmother would go to used bookstores and garage sales and flea markets and buy books by the boxful and then, on my birthday, they'd give me this enormous treasure trove of old books-Nancy Drews with 1950s cover art, Encyclopedia Brown, Trixie Belden, The Hardy Boys, The Boxcar Children, Raggey Ann and Andy, Miss Osborne the Mop. Whatever was in the box would be my big gift, and I'd spend the rest of the day just rooting through the box and leafing through the pages. To tell the truth, I can't remember many of the fancier gifts I have been given, but I can still remember the boxes of books.
From a literary standpoint, the books were awful, template potboilers and formulaic mysteries, but to a kid denied the simple pleasure of running through the sprinkler in the high, sweltering heat of Florida summer or the fun of trick or treating in the neighborhood on Halloween, they were magical opportunities to escape, just for a little while. They meant I didn't have to be scrawny, snaggle-toothed, mangle-boned Guera. I could be Nancy Drew, intrepid, independent girl detective, with friends named Bess and George, plucky chicks who wouldn't ditch you to go to the club and smoke pot. True friends unto the bitter end. A sprained ankle would thwart my adventuring for days, if not mean that my mom would be carrying the empress into the porcelain throne room, but to Nancy, it was just another obstacle to be overcome en route to catching the baddies. Vicarious living at its finest.
Not all of the books were derivative. I can't remember when I found the first Oz book, but I was surprised to find it there. The cover was a faded watercolor of Dorothy and the gang, and I keep seeing a fellow with a jack-o'-lantern head, so it was likely not The Wizard of Oz, but it was definitely in the Oz ethos, that I know. Anyway, it made the most delightful sound when I opened it, a sharp, leathery snap and a sound like peeling tape. I devoured it in two days, and God, how I loved it. It was bright and vivid and full of life, and the words were infused with magic.
Before the end of the book box era, I had collected most of the Oz books, as well as most of the old Nancy Drews. In fact, many of the Oz books, I later learned, were first editions and very valuable. I don't know what became of them; the last I saw of them, they were in a cardboard box, filling the room with that wonderful spicy, old-book smell. For all I know, they perished in the house fire when I was eleven or succumbed to water damage and mildew as they slumbered in the storage room of the old farmhouse in which I lived for a time.
That was one of the things my mother got right, I think. She could be petty and cruel and paranoid and terrifying, but she nurtured my love of books and let my imagination grow and take root, and she never, ever forbad me from reading a book because of its content or subject matter, and it was very seldom that she told me to stop reading. She gave me the foundation and the palette to write the fic I now write, and I will always be grateful, even as I dance on her grave for all the things she got wrong.
So, yes, I think I'll shell out the forty dollars Borders is asking, and I'll consider it money well spent. And I might even pick up a set for my mother. After all, if she hadn't had the foresight to bring home those boxes of battered books, my imagination would have withered on the vine. She tapped the well and primed the pump, and because of her, my spring has never run dry.
And that was what I found in a Borders on Tuesday afternoon.
I saw a few things in Borders that I might shoot for if the budget allows. There was a gorgeous, two-volume set of Baum's Oz. Twenty bucks per volume, but they're hardbound with gold-embossed pages and chapter artwork, and I loved the Oz world as a child. They and Nancy Drew were the first real experiences I had with reading. Well, they and Thinner, by Richard Bachman nee Stephen King. Yes, it was a strange dichotomy, but it was one that worked.
My mother and grandmother would go to used bookstores and garage sales and flea markets and buy books by the boxful and then, on my birthday, they'd give me this enormous treasure trove of old books-Nancy Drews with 1950s cover art, Encyclopedia Brown, Trixie Belden, The Hardy Boys, The Boxcar Children, Raggey Ann and Andy, Miss Osborne the Mop. Whatever was in the box would be my big gift, and I'd spend the rest of the day just rooting through the box and leafing through the pages. To tell the truth, I can't remember many of the fancier gifts I have been given, but I can still remember the boxes of books.
From a literary standpoint, the books were awful, template potboilers and formulaic mysteries, but to a kid denied the simple pleasure of running through the sprinkler in the high, sweltering heat of Florida summer or the fun of trick or treating in the neighborhood on Halloween, they were magical opportunities to escape, just for a little while. They meant I didn't have to be scrawny, snaggle-toothed, mangle-boned Guera. I could be Nancy Drew, intrepid, independent girl detective, with friends named Bess and George, plucky chicks who wouldn't ditch you to go to the club and smoke pot. True friends unto the bitter end. A sprained ankle would thwart my adventuring for days, if not mean that my mom would be carrying the empress into the porcelain throne room, but to Nancy, it was just another obstacle to be overcome en route to catching the baddies. Vicarious living at its finest.
Not all of the books were derivative. I can't remember when I found the first Oz book, but I was surprised to find it there. The cover was a faded watercolor of Dorothy and the gang, and I keep seeing a fellow with a jack-o'-lantern head, so it was likely not The Wizard of Oz, but it was definitely in the Oz ethos, that I know. Anyway, it made the most delightful sound when I opened it, a sharp, leathery snap and a sound like peeling tape. I devoured it in two days, and God, how I loved it. It was bright and vivid and full of life, and the words were infused with magic.
Before the end of the book box era, I had collected most of the Oz books, as well as most of the old Nancy Drews. In fact, many of the Oz books, I later learned, were first editions and very valuable. I don't know what became of them; the last I saw of them, they were in a cardboard box, filling the room with that wonderful spicy, old-book smell. For all I know, they perished in the house fire when I was eleven or succumbed to water damage and mildew as they slumbered in the storage room of the old farmhouse in which I lived for a time.
That was one of the things my mother got right, I think. She could be petty and cruel and paranoid and terrifying, but she nurtured my love of books and let my imagination grow and take root, and she never, ever forbad me from reading a book because of its content or subject matter, and it was very seldom that she told me to stop reading. She gave me the foundation and the palette to write the fic I now write, and I will always be grateful, even as I dance on her grave for all the things she got wrong.
So, yes, I think I'll shell out the forty dollars Borders is asking, and I'll consider it money well spent. And I might even pick up a set for my mother. After all, if she hadn't had the foresight to bring home those boxes of battered books, my imagination would have withered on the vine. She tapped the well and primed the pump, and because of her, my spring has never run dry.
And that was what I found in a Borders on Tuesday afternoon.