Sunday, July 24, 2011

What Books Say About Their Readers


Get ready for books, games, fried chicken, corn and more at MGH Women's Board's 91st Annual Picnic and Bazaar this Tuesday, July 26! For several years, I’ve volunteered to help weed through donated books in order to select ones in sellable shape for the huge Used Book Sale. The Olney community has always been so generous, providing thousands of tomes of bestselling fiction and nonfiction, children's books, cookbooks, test prep guides and more.
Fellow volunteers and I often wonder about the reader who owned and donated a specific eye-catching title. When we receive boxes of books on one particular subject, we know that issue was certainly on the donator’s mind. Some of the most interesting contributions we've seen include:
Self-help guides involving marriage and family from Dr. Phil, Dr. Laura, and Dr. Ruth
The Complete Illustrated Kama Sutra
Advice books from the 1950s on how to be a good wife
Several copies of Alcoholics Anonymous' 12-Step Program
The Metrosexual Guide To Style: A Handbook For The Modern Man (look for stylish guys around town)
An autographed copy of an Ansel Adams photography book
A photo of George H. Bush, signed "To my good friend Michael" (I guess Michael wasn’t that good a friend)
Women Who Do Too Much and Women with Attention Deficit Disorder: Embrace Your Differences and Transform Your Life (an apt description of many Olney women)
The Lawyers' Book Of Ethics by Judge James N. Court (all of the pages are blank)
Religion guides (are people spreading or shying away from faith?)
money management guides, like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Investing for Dummies, and books by Suze Orman (in this economy, people either have no money to invest or have given up and chucked any financial advice)
We also receive in boxes from people cleaning out their attics/basements/houses: outdated encyclopedias; mildewed magazines from the early 1900’s, especially Life and National Geographic; obsolete travel, computer, and software guides; appliance instructions; yearbooks; and moldy, ripped books. I think many people have a packrat mentality, a fear of throwing out or even recycling something because SOMEONE could use it.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Summer Inception

My family enjoyed a relaxing July 4th weekend. After Saturday morning's swim meet, we followed no schedule in meals or errands. On Sunday we got up late, ate breakfast around 9:30am, scrounged up lunch around 2pm, and never left the house except for a mid-morning Costco run. This trip was surprisingly laid-back, sans teeming crowds because Costo actually was not packed with hungry customers in a hurry.

The cloudy skies made us even sleepier and by 3pm, everyone was napping. Around 5pm, my younger daughter -- who had fallen asleep on the family room couch around 2:30pm -- wandered upstairs (where everyone else was snoozing) and into my room and groggily asked, "What time do we have to get up?" Then she climbed up onto the bed and chattered about a funny YouTube video, her question quickly forgotten.

Soon everyone trooped downstairs for dinner. My daughter queried, "Why are we eating dinner again? What about breakfast?" Puzzled silence by all. She persisted, "And why didn't anyone bring me upstairs to sleep? Why did you all leave me downstairs by myself? Why did you all sleep in your clothes?"

Then it dawned on us all: she thought that we had slept overnight and that Sunday night was Monday morning. To her, the sunless, gray skies looked like 5am, not 5pm. So the movie "Inception" is right: time passes much more quickly in a dream than in reality. My daughter passed 8 hours during a 2-hour nap.

Hey -- let's slow down, not speed up, these lazy summer days.