I’m not going to copy and paste my post from another blog. So if you like me, and you like books, read it here.
Our new book blog.
It’s been up for a few weeks. Time to start promoting it! Ever wonder what a book blog written by two PhDs who’ve left the house of the scholars and banged the door behind them would look like?
The Baltimore Book Blog. Certainly not the only book blog, nor the first in Baltimore. But this one’s by us.
And it’s fun. Come stop by!
Charlotte’s new favorite thing: books on your lap.
Our new apartment is in an even older building than that from which we recently moved. While it’s been converted to have central air conditioning and forced-air heating, two ornately covered radiators are still in the living room and the dining room. We have the couch against one, with the window into/onto the “sunroom” behind. It’s a good set-up, even though said window hasn’t been opened in decades (literally).
Already, it’s covered in books. And most of them are Charlotte’s.
Her new favorite thing is to run at you, board book in hand (always right-side-up, usually open to a page with a dog or a cow), thrust it into your hands, and then charge your lap (or your knees, if you’re in a chair). If you ask, “Charlotte, do you want Daddy to read you that book?” she yells “Doh!” which is, I think, how she says “yes.” (She says “no” for “no”.) Often it’s something by Eric Carle or something involving animals. When the story is over, she closes the book, claps, yells, and promptly exits your lap. The performance is finished.
Meanwhile, she yellst either “Dog!” or “Gog!” at the dogs, “Duckkk” at the ducks and “Mmmmmmmmmoo” at the cows. It’s completely adorable.
My old boss told me that she read somewhere that the single most accurate way to predict good performance at school is the number of books in the child’s home. Not the parents’ education levels (poor Charlotte), not the time spent reading. Just the books.
And I shudder to think what’s going to happen to the Kindle Generation.
Mrs. Former Boss can’t remember where she read it, and I’ve been too lazy to look it up for confirmation. But I can’t help but believe that the fact that we’ve been reading to and around Charlotte since before she saw daylight and took a breath has a little to something to do with her infatuation with books.
I hope the substance is not vital. The first thing I ever read aloud to her in utero was by Jean-Paul Sartre. I’d hate for her to grow up with my, ‘er, sunny outlook.
Fortunately for Charlotte, we live four tenths of a mile from a nice children’s bookstore. And, fortunately for us, it’s mere yards from the local coffeeshop.
Both reading Junger.
I think it’s funny (somehow) that my wife and I are both reading books by Sebastian Junger currently. Adventure reading, from our 4th floor apartment full of books, notebooks, pens, and baby toys. She’s reading A Death in Bellmont (which I read this fall and loved), and I’m reading Fire.
This is a short post. Wow. You might like them if you like anything that I do (Chatwin, Hemingway, Ondaatje, etc.).
In other news, I will be less boring this week, in addition to being less employed, less stressed and less exhausted (ha! to the last one).
So I like books?
Whence being insulted when a person looks something up in a book, when the insulted person didn’t and doesn’t know the answer either? Resentment at another person being able to solve a problem?
Dropping out?
I wonder if it might be good for me to drop out of all this internet/cyber crap. Digital cameras, Facebook, blogs, Flickr. I spend a lot of time putting [carefully selected parts of] my life on display and checking out other people’s. I don’t think this is healthy for me as a father struggling to live in the proverbial moment.
Then again, this could be brought on by my frustration over having to send my relatively expensive camera to Canon again, after they got crap under my lens last time they repaired it. And the sudden jolt when I realized that I won’t have my camera Friday when my old friend comes to town — as if it didn’t happen if I don’t record it all as a JPG.
I sent paper cards to a few folks recently, folks to whom I used to write regularly. And it felt great. I miss spending time reading books and writing, rather than reading about pens and authors’ silly personal secrets on the web. I used to write more than I read about pens and Moleskines, and this is no longer anywhere near the case.
I was going to start a serious, full-time dad blog latter this summer. Now, I don’t know.
It feels like the whole world is online, though, and you miss everything if you’re not. But then again, what are we really missing?
I’m spending too much time consuming and not enough time creating.
New Thoreau Journal volume.
Among the awesome Christmas presents I received this year, I had requested this new volume of selections from Thoreau’s journal. I own the only complete edition currently available (the huge ones from Dover), which were birthday presents from my wife and from my parents five years or so ago. I’m infinitely fond of them, but they are a bit…unwieldy. I have a few of the selections, including the Odell Shepard edition (excellent) and the Dover Thrift edition (which I bought after a thunderstorm in July 2003, at Walden Pond, the day before we moved away from Boston). These make great gifts, great reading on a camping trip or train ride. But they can be so short! I’m hoping this new volume is as great as it sounds. It’s on my nightstand right now, though I’m well into The Road to Oxiana right now.
House of Our Own books.
Last weekend, in Philly, we went bookstore hunting, among other things. I had written down a lot of stores and addresses. We only actually went to two of them: Book Trader in Olde City, where I went in August when I was there for a week; and House of Our Own, an independent shop in West Philly.
House of Our Own had a second floor full of used books. Within two minutes of getting there, I had an arm full of Michael Chabon and was mourning having to leave behind Hemingway’s works on bullfighting. I’ve seldom been to such an organized bookstore, and the lady working there was incredibly nice. They had sections for everything: American Radicalism, Economics, Ecology, Eco-Economics, Peace Studies, Nonviolence, Gandhi (!), Community Organizing, etc.
Our train was leaving shortly, and we had a long walk to get there. So I didn’t get to check out the first floor or hang out in the reading nook. They put bookmarks in the books for you, which is one of my favorite things. I buy a lot of books when I travel, and it’s nice to remember where I got them.
History, in 6 glasses.
I have always been both fascinated by and obsessed with drinks. Not alcoholic ones, mind you. Beverages. When I was a kid, I was always always thirsty. I needed juice or soda or milk constantly. I realize now that it was because I could literally not stand to drink water until I was 20 years old and was probably mildly dehydrated all the time. I think I’ve mentioned that I’m 29 and have been drinking coffee consistently for about 21 years, daily for 20. I’m American, so you know I’ve had my share of Coke. Etc.
So I began reading A History of the World in Six Glasses last night, and I am enjoying it immensely. I was tempted to consume the beverage in question while reading the six parts. Still am. But I read for my lunchtime whenever I can, and I can’t very well get tanked at work. (That only happens when I need to talk to someone and have to track them down at a community happy hour and — poor me — have to drink beer in the afternoon……..trying to think of who I can track down this week……..) Perhaps after the third part, when the drinks under examination are coffee, tea and Coke, I can indulge.
A reading-kind-of-day.
I wish I could sit home with a good book on a day like today. I like my job. Here I am, hyped up on coffee and with a few minutes to spare. And I’m blogging on company time, on a computer that is supposed to be “monitored.” But, like I said, I like my job. A lot. Being a VISTA is great, and I have a nice little office with nice people in nice little offices up here on the top floor. I have a lot of lunch meetings, but not today. Today, I get to do my favorite thing aside from biking up to Charles Village to meet Mrs. P.: get a coffee/snack and hole up in my office for an hour reading a good book. It’s a good way to spend lunchtime.
I wussed out and took the bus to work today. I rode the bus three days last week, but that’s because The Duke was tire-less. I’ll ride my bike in the rain, and I have. But “severe storms” — no. Not if I don’t have to. Not today. The bus picks me up outside my apartment building and drops me at Penn Station, across Charles Street from my office. It’s a good deal. I am soaked now from a coffee run with a co-worker. My sandals are on the AC vent drying. My bike is at home with new rim tape, new tubes and new tires with frikkin Kevlar in them. I feel like I’m cheating or being disloyal.
I am tired. I went to see Candlebox with my brother Sunday night, tickets to which show (along with a Tshirt) were my birthday gift. It was a hell of a lot of fun, but I was beat yesterday. Yesterday, I worked from 9am – 8pm and ate pasta and green beans when I got home and watched TV and went to bed. I’m still tired, but that could be the weather now that I think of it.
This blog got all “this happened, and I did this, etc.” all the sudden.