4 posts tagged “book”

What do you most hate sharing with other people?

I have to admit - and though I'm ashamed I'm not going to dwell on it - I'm not a sharer. I'm particular about the condition of my stuff and 9 times out of 10 people do not return it in the same condition. In my own defense though, I'm not always as careful with peoples items and ergo choose to not borrow unless I know the person doesn't care or I know I can replace if necessary.

If I had to pick one thing I don't like to loan/borrow - it would be books. I don't fold corners, dog-ear the covers, break the spines (quite a feat if I must say so myself, considering I don't dog-ear the cover either!) or fuzz the paperback covers. I'm very careful with my books - and I don't expect anyone to be as careful because let's be honest - it isn't their book. I'll lend books to some, but they know how I am and they usually start off the borrowing conversation with, "If anything happens, I'll just buy you a new one." I don't think that's ever happened, but I like the reassurance to be there :) Point in fact, I recently borrowed The Other Boleyn Girl from Jane and I asked her, "Do you care what condition the book comes back in?" - and though I had no intention of letting Ripley chew on it, I wanted to know what her reaction would be if Ripley did.

This weekend I had a small bit of success in the fact that I remembered where my Earthsea books were! I lied in bed on Saturday, thinking about how Shelfari wouldn't let me put the word "nipples" in my book review of Fruit - about a boy who thinks his nipples are talking to him. Then it hit me, a polaroid in my mind of me holding Fruit and finding my Earthsea books and then I remembered the box in the closet. Such a good thing to wake up to!

When I dug out the books though, I was sad to realize that I had the first book in mass market, the other three in paperback. Yes, three. Apparently I did read the forth book and after I read the back cover again I remembered how very much I liked it! I felt a bit ashamed at having forgotten about reading it but I was reading so much at that time (I was working at Barnes & Noble and they let you borrow books as employees and I borrowed a lot!). Anyhow, so I've decided I'm going to do some creative exchanging and get the first book in trade paper with the matching movie promo covers (at the time, the SciFi channel movie was coming out - so all they had were movie promo covers).

I also found my many, many, Russian instruction books. Seeing them all made me sad. I bought and tried so many and still I couldn't seem to find the time, energy, or help to learn it. I also found my copy of As I Lay Dying by Faulkner. I bought this on suggestion of this guy I "kind of" had a crush on. I say "kind of" because I liked him, but he was a wreck and I never did anything about my like for him. Plus, he came to our store and then transfered in like a week. Since I have the book I'm going to try and read it.

We went to Barnes & Noble again this weekend (I'm visiting that place so often now, I love it!) and I picked up The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin because the back cover sounded good. I was bummed when we got home because I left Ripley on the bed with the book for about ten minutes to come back to find she'd chewed off a good portion of the corner :( I hate damaged books - especially when I'd just paid for them - and full price. That'll teach me. I haven't started reading it yet - but its going on my list! We also saw - but didn't pick up - the first volume of the Vampire Hunter D series. In an afterthought I remembered that A. Dawn Wolf had been reading these as well. B&N didn't have the first, only the other eight volumes, but I found the first at Borders the next day. So - that's going my list too even though I bought it more for Paul. No book is safe!

I've read a lot more of The Handmaid's Tale and I'll be making a separate post about that later.

I feel strange today. I really couldn’t explain it…just strange. I feel like my mind is running over every thought at least a hundred times when one is certainly enough. Today is defiantly not a day for concentrating on a computer, trying to code out problems. Today is a day for lounging on one’s bed and sleeping until one can’t sleep anymore.

I think is has a lot to do with a book I’m reading called “The Lake of Dead Languages”. It’s about a woman who attends a private high school and after tragic events, graduates and then returns nearly twenty years later to be a teacher. At first it was very intriguing, the author has an interesting sense of description and yet at points her descriptions are consuming and make the reader feel like their drowning in the sense of being told but not seeing.

It was intriguing until she began to talk about what happened while she went to the private school twenty years back, and she began to explain about her two room mates. It became extremely unintriguing, almost frustrating to me because I felt like I had lived through an experience similar to the main character’s before. She speaks of having two room mates, and being close friends with one of them long before the third joined the team. Then she begins to tell this story of lies and betrayal and deceit and how her once close friend was now trading her company for both the other room mate and a boy. Despite the fact that it’s a pretty common scenario I still had problems reading it because I knew what it felt like to be the odd one out, to one day see something between your two friends that proved they were in fact leaving you out of much more than a homework study.

Perhaps the reason I feel so strange is because I simply feel sad. This book has dredged up many high school memories I had gladly stuffed away and soaked with gas with the intention of burning them to the ground, if only I could.

It’s also made me realize the kind of person I am.
>I don’t like being left out of the loop.
>I don’t like being lied to.
>I don’t like people who assume they know how I’d react and so therefore keep secrets from me.
>I don’t like hypocrites, people who say one thing and then do another.

I can’t imagine too many people who can refrain from doing all these things, and so I suppose I should just count my blessings with the couple of close friends I have and leave it at that. I mean I’m not perfect. I don’t think I leave my friends out of the loop, but then again the only friend I talk to on a pretty regular basis is Jane – and she usually starts the loop with me. I usually don’t lie – I like to see people’s reaction to the truth – plus if I lie once I’ll have to lie twice. I don’t assume anything, and I think that’s what kept me from committing most of the acts on my list. I mean a good example is that if I kept Jane out of the loop, I’d then have to lie about the loop, and then keep the loop a secret and then I’d be a hypocrite.

I should just go home and finish the book tonight – then I’d be rid of it and all the memories it resurfaced.