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Sunday, April 16, 2023

The Past Casts a Long Shadow

I had the afternoon to myself*, so I did what I typically do on a Sunday when I have an itch to explore and the weather is lousy for hiking: I visited a bookstore.

After having finished The Chronicles of the Black Company, I was looking at replacing it in my "to be read" pile with another book, but I was more interested in chasing down a diabetic cookbook that I could use. I know how to break down existing recipes and eliminate sodium and carbs at least decently well these days, but it is also nice to occasionally find a cookbook where that groundwork has already been done for you, such as this one from America's Test Kitchen, the Consumer Reports of Cooking.**

The nice part about perusing a bookstore is that you never know what you're going to end up with when you walk in the door. Sure, you could stick to exactly what you're looking for --and when I've got things to do I will do just that-- but if I'm browsing all bets are off.

I know, I should check out Naomi's
His Majesty's Dragon, but I'm not a big
fan of alternate history. Although the premise,
a mashup of the Napoleonic Wars and
Dragons, does sound interesting.

At some point I found myself over at the magazine racks, perusing so-called "bookazines",

Like oh, say, THIS.
Although to be fair, I'm pretty
sure that Larry Elmore isn't gonna
lose any sleep on my interest in painting.


which seem to be books in the form of single issue magazines, when I found myself kind of crowded out by a family who didn't seem to notice me there. I mean, I'm not a small guy, and I was there at least a few minutes before they were, but I suddenly found myself crowded out by them. Rather than bitch about it, I just decided to relocate for 5 minutes or so and then come on back to finish my browsing.

When I did I found that the family had indeed moved about 10-15 feet away, but they were in the middle of a knock down drag out argument. Well, as much of one that could be had in a bookstore.***

"THAT is not a book!" 

"You want me to spend my hard earned dollars on THAT?"

"A book has paragraphs in it! Not THAT!"

"Are you really going to read THAT??!!"

Yes, those were the parents. 

I couldn't see what the book in question was, but it wouldn't have shocked me if the kid --my guess she would have been early teens, but you never know-- had found the graphic novel/comics section and pulled out something from there. 

Even then, I felt for her, because I lived that same argument 40 years ago. Many times.

***

The first time was back when I was in Second Grade, and my mom took my brother and I downtown and we stopped at a bookstore there. We were each allowed to get one book, and I chose a book on primary colors and my brother chose a book about cats. When my dad got home that evening, he saw the books and threw them away, saying they were "kiddie books" and "you're too old for books like these". 

Yes, there was drama, in no small part from my trying to explain to my mom and brother --who was bawling his eyes out-- that dad had said "kiddie books" and not "kitty books". 

Several years later, in the midst of some of the worst bullying I received in middle school, I buried myself in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. It was a way of coping, losing myself in the books and loving the narrative voice. Then one Sunday afternoon when I was sick and rereading The Fellowship of the Ring once again, my dad came in and told me that if I didn't stop reading those books and "read something else", he'd take them away.**** I believe the words "rot your brain" and "something for grownups" were in that tirade somewhere, but all I saw was red.

I fumed for several days, but eventually I moved on to Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara and I discovered David Eddings' The Belgariad, likely to my dad's chagrin. 

This was the book cover I knew
back in the day. From Goodreads.

***

But from my own experience I vowed I would not be that parent to my own kids.

When my oldest was in the middle of her "princess craze", when every book she ever read just absolutely had to have a princess in it or she wouldn't read it*****, I took her downtown and we perused the absolutely gigantic children's section of the downtown library. 

The Secret Garden, found in the secret
garden adjoining the Children's Section
of the Cincinnati Downtown Library.
From the Library's Flickr account.

We went through a lot of books, and I had absolutely no luck in getting her to try another book without a princess in it, until I stumbled upon this:

No, this is not the library's copy.

"Does it have a princess in it?" my oldest asked, curiously.

The fact she didn't reject it outright was a good sign, so I quickly flipped through the book and said "there's a noble lady in it, is that close enough?"

"Hmm... okay."

I rejoiced when her back was turned and we checked the book out (with a bunch of princess books, because you knew that was gonna happen). Later that night I read the book to her, and then she asked for it again the next night. And then for the next month she would get out her watercolors and scrap paper and "make a book" in the same style as Marguerite did.

And that was that.

***

So yeah, I saw the drama this afternoon and really did I feel for the kid. Yeah kid, I know what you're going through; just remember this afternoon --and what it felt like for you-- when you've got kids of your own.




*Work kept me fairly close to my home office, otherwise I'd have likely gone with my wife to see my youngest play in a concert this evening. As it was, she went on and is spending the night at her parents' house, using the concert as an excuse to check in on them as they're hitting 90.

**At least that's what I call them. Consumer Reports, please don't go knocking on my door for a cease and desist; it's a compliment of the highest order.

***I was once at the downtown library branch and someone, about 20 years my senior, came in looking for his kid who hadn't shown up when they were supposed to. He first demanded that the staff call for the kid over the intercom, and when the staff refused he then proceeded to start hollering her name at the top of his lungs: "TRACY!! GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE!!" They tried to shush him up, but you can imagine how that went over, so he was grabbed by library security and a policeman on duty, and forced over into a corner. I couldn't tell if they put him in handcuffs, but I took that as my cue to leave the building.

****He couldn't throw them out because the books belonged to my mom.

*****This was before her interest in Harry Potter, by the way.

7 comments:

  1. Yes, yes, you should check out His Majesty's Dragon, if you're at all interested in Naomi Novik's stuff far better to dive into her more recent Scholomance trilogy (it starts with A Deadly Education). While I definitely enjoyed the Temeraire books, I loved Uprooted and Spinning Silver much more, but the Scholomance trilogy is by far my favorite of her work.

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    1. I seriously considered Scholomance today --it was sitting at a display table next to Uprooted-- and I was amused by the title having the same name as the 5-person dungeon in WoW. Knowing Blizzard, their lawyers were likely trying to figure out if they could get some money out of Naomi for that book title. I know she writes well, as I've listened to excerpts from His Majesty's Dragon and I've thought that it might be worth it just to pick up and read from her prose alone, but I've between Eric Flint and Harry Turtledove I've really come to dislike alternate history as a subgenre. Still, I may yet give the Temeraire books a try at some point.

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    2. Oh, and welcome to the blog! I'm pretty sure that I've seen you comment on others' blogs --I think SWTOR ones, but that's just a guess-- but glad you dropped in to comment.

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  2. I'll also throw in a vote for Uprooted and the excellent sequel Spinning Silver. I've only read the first of the Dragon books. It was good but I didn't go on to read the rest. I have the Scholomance series mentally bookmarked for the future.

    Working in a bookshop, I overhear a lot of conversations between parents/guardians and children about what is or isn't suitable to spend money on but 90% of all those conversations revolve around the child wanting a toy or a game (We also sell tons of those) rather than a book and the adult insisting it's a book or nothing.

    The other 10% is probably "That's too young for you/too old for you". In twenty years, though, I don't recall ever hearing any adult refuse to buy a book because it wasn't sufficiently booklike. I do hear many somewhat embarassed tweens and teens struggling to explain to an adult what manga is but it's pretty much always in the context of the adult being eager to understand the new-to-them concept and the teen being reluctant to explain. I also hear a lot of variations on "I'd rather they were reading [whatever it is - manga, graphic novels, Minecraft guides, the latest Tik-Tok sensation] than not reading at all", which is a socio-philosophical point worth a PhD thesis or two.

    As for my own experience growing up, my mother read DC comics to me out loud before I learned to read and that was in 1963. She was more than happy to let me have all the comics I wanted when I could read - at least she didn't have to read them as well! And I went on to study English Literature at what was, at the time, the #1 university in the world for the subject, so don't go telling me reading comics doesn't count as reading!

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    1. What I observed might be a more purely American thing, because of the desire of a subset of immigrants and those of lower classes to "get ahead" and push their kids into being high achievers. The latter are the type that push their kids into doing everything possible so they can get into a "top university" and become a lawyer or doctor. Or they push their kids into athletics, hoping they can land a full scholarship to a university that way.

      When you combine those tendencies with the anti-intellectualism that pervades a lot of American society, it can be a pretty combustible mix. Think of the subplot in Dead Poets Society and you've got the idea; although it was set in the 1950s, that could have been easily been set in the 1980s or today.

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  3. I don't like being judgemental, but every time you tell one of these childhood stories, your parents sound... not great. I'm surprised you turned out as well as you did!

    Consider this another vote of confidence for Uprooted (and Spinning Silver). I also read all the Temeraire books and really enjoyed them.

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    1. Well, uh, you're kind of right.

      "We like you, Red, but your parents are kind of shit," was how one friend from college put it my Freshman year. And he also said I needed to chill a bit and not be so uptight. Which I did admit I also needed to do. (It took a year or two of college for me to unwind; was it any surprise that I decided to spend my summers up at UD instead of coming home for a summer job?)

      I'm quite aware of my shortcomings, but like I've told the kids I realize that I'm a product of my generation and upbringing, so I know I have blind spots, but I've tried to raise them in such a way that they won't inherit those blind spots (whatever they are; I don't know but I can guess).

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