Monday, March 23, 2009
March 23, 2009: Assorted notes
I cannot hear about how the Kindle is going to "Revolutionize the Literary World!" without feeling horror. See, I like books. I collect books like floors collect dust. I frequent bookstores even when I'm running out of space and my Amazon wish list is near-overflowing at this point. When I move into an apartment, it's going to involve lots of heavy boxes.
I used to have more books, though. Shelves and shelves of children's books. Most of them are gone, donated or sold. I kept a few, though, the ones I refused to sell. One of these was an old copy of "Stories from the Peterkin Papers," by Lucretia Hale. It probably wouldn't register as "old" by any hobbyist's standards, but on aesthetic grounds, it more than qualifies. The cover was torn in places and the pages were yellowed. It had to be a couple decades old, at least. I bought it at a church book sale with about four books. Even as a child I had a fascination with yellowed and somewhat torn books, so I picked it up. And reading it reminds me of my grandmother's old house and nostalgic things.
Somehow, in my memory, the "Stories From" got erased. So at the bookstore (see what I mean about self-control?) when I found a copy of The Peterkin Papers, I was shocked to find out that the stories were different. There were a lot more of them, mainly. I'd never read them! But at least one of the stories from my copy was missing. We have a mystery to solve, I thought, and went ahead and bought the book.
Turns out the copy I had was a 'selected stories' edition - as the "Stories From" should have made clear. The missing story - or stories, I can't remember - was from The Last of the Peterkins. So now I have another book to track down and several more stories to read. Which is fine by me. They're charming stories. And now I can reacquaint myself with them.
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Things I've been listening to lately that I didn't discuss earlier:
- Kristin Hersh's "Coals". What else is there to say at this point except that everything she's released lately is great?
- The new Cathy Davey demos, up at The Torture Garden. Her third album is going to be phenomenal. I can already tell.
- My friends have developed an obsession with the German musical Elisabeth. I have no idea what's going on, but the music is good enough.
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