Whether it was shopping at Rita's [long closed] brick-and-mortar bookstore where even the science fiction was alphabetized! or going to Barnett Books [OMG I can't believe THEY are closing!] and running into Amee, unplanned, every time, there was nothing like the thrill of finding a long-desired treasure that no one wanted, for pennies! I'd leave Rita's and then go onto amazon.com and run all the ISBNs and see how much I saved. Best, I think, was $125?

I've been shopping online since I first used Webcrawler in the early 1990s. [First purchase may have been those Emergency! VHS episodes I watched at Meen's...] Rather than reselling books, mainly because I'm too lazy, I either keep them or, more recently, donate them to be resold for charity.

This article really hit some sensitive spots, not unlike fibromyalgia trigger points. I'll blog this but, for anyone who hasn't added my blog to her RSS feed... Bargain Hunting for Books, and Feeling Sheepish About It

By DAVID STREITFELD

Yesterday, after I'd taken cookies (not the ones in the lovely basket from my chiropractor) and candy left by one of our Service officers [that's like a sheriff, not like a cleaning lady, which my office doesn't have] to the food bank, I went home and asked my mom for her car keys so that I could bring her car to fill her gas tank.At the pump to my left, I saw Brian Reilly. Once the hot guy in high school (with his bi-level haircut and black leather trench coat, back in the day when he wouldn't be searched for guns), then a patrol officer (he was the one who came to our house the day my dad broke his hip and the kids playing hockey in the middle of the street wouldn't move their nets for the ambulance), he pretty much made his career when he was net-surfing and wound up making, along with similar arrests, the biggest child porn bust in the City. (He also, in theatre camp I believe, dated a lady who would be one of my bosses at Yale.) Brian, it seems, has worked his way up the ranks as a detective in the Special Victims Unit, which tracks, among other things [and I'm using "things" on purpose] the child abusers, the rapists, the child molesters. I, being I, begged - yes begged - for a job doing data entry. It's confidential, he said. I responded that I'd sent my resume to volunteer to do data entry for the Megan's Law list, which isn't confidential but, rather, public.

"That was you!?" He got the email but not the resume. He also doesn't get a secretary. I'm to re-send the resume on the off-chance they get an OK for a volunteer. [There's not much I can do, but I'm a good secretary.] I also, mid-sentence, offered my hand for that child-porn bust, because, not that it's my right to have pride in him, I did, indeed, feel pride - I was proud of him.

We chatted about block watch (I gave the name of our local officer, and mentioned that I've got kids older than these cops) and we went our separate ways. I guess I have cockles, because seeing him warmed the cockles of my heart.

It's snowing. My boss called me at 9:30 and told me to stay home. Good; I'd have to change into grownup clothes after dressing quickly to snake the toilet and, frankly, I was already exhausted.

My dad asked my mom if I was going to work. No? Then I could take him to the barber. After I phoned to make sure that Joe was there, I put chocolates in my car, moved my still-undone holiday cards out of the passenger seat, and loaded in Dad. I showed him that the tacky license plate frame that's on Barack's rear plate is the bejeweled one he got me at Caldor over a decade ago. (Yeah, I only just found it, but there was no way I wasn't going to put it onto my car after he got it for me.)

By the time I'd finished dropping off cookies at my bank and got back to the barber, Dad had shown off pictures of his granddaughter, given Joe his box of chocolates, and had his hair trimmed. It still hadn't started snowing, so I dragged Dad on two more errands.

Chocolates for the lady at the cigarette store, who hides the "deals" so that they're there when I stop in, and who gives me nice-smelling incense. My dad asked me to get him a pack; No, your oxygen will blow up. [le sigh] I did grab all the change out of my ashtray (not going to work, I didn't get a paycheck, yet, either) and bought him a donut in the same plaza. Then to the chiropractor, to bring chocolates for them and to apologize but their thank-you card is on my desk at work. (Oh - Doc sends me a basket for being the legal secretary in an office with which we have mutual clients/patients, not because I'm his patient.) His rockin' office manager Renee gave me a hug, Doc gave me a hug AND said my face looks thinner and that I look great. All in all, a good visit!

My dad likes to go home via the beach, along the same route I ride my tricycle, and to stop at Driftwood, the boat dock. When we were little kids, Dad - pre-Alzheimer's, back when he was my Daddy [he earned my loyalty in those days, which is why I do my best to remember that he's sick], would take us up there to look at the water. We only stopped for a minute; even though I didn't take him out of the car, except at the barber, he was tired.

The rest of the way home was weird. Our street is only three blocks. I turned onto the first block, showed him where a neighbor had put in a small fountain with a lighthouse [he loves lighthouses]... he asked what street we were on. (I turn 39 next week, and we moved into this house on my first birthday. 38 years, shy a week, and he didn't know.) On the second block, he recognized Joe's house, and I had to repeat why I don't talk to that gossiping shit anymore. I pointed out, at the end of the block, Melissa's house, and told him that Meliss' had just had a baby. He doesn't remember Melissa, or the wrong name he called her [Maureen] although we've been friends since the 1970s.

A beige car pulled up in front of our house as we pulled into the driveway. Now, when I was fighting for Workers' Comp to pay the medical bills when I busted my wrists at my last job, they followed me home and watched my office for several days. (When my boss walked out to the office porch, they took off. Not my imagination; the other secretary saw them, too.) I really thought that this might be someone either following me (I mailed my application for assistance with my medical bills, yesterday) OR that it was, again, an insurance agent harassing the lady in the house next door to ours. I walked up to the car, and the aforementioned Meliss' in the back seat was next to her bundle of joy. We yelled at her husband for saying that I can't see the baby because I'm not family. [Her husband isn't really horrid. They're good neighbors and friends. We got into it at the block watch merely because we sat next to each other - much to Officer Moscotto's amusement. He changed my tricycle tire. I made sure that, even though they're not quite on our block, they were at our block party this past summer.] We talked about important stuff for a few minutes until my mom got a hoodie, ready to yell at me for not getting my dad in - Dad was heading to the car to see the baby - and came out to meet Isabella. I was sorry to see them go, but Meliss' looked drawn and we all thought she should go in.

We never made it to get our nails done - I'm sick of the festive hand-painted design I've had for two weeks, and want the pale pink I usually wear - or to Trader Joe's one plaza away. This means that I really don't have any ingredients to make nice dinners for my Mom :( Oh, we'll make do! but she seems to not hate my cooking.

Quiet weekend. I need to finish the heat neck pillow I'm making for Tad (the first project I've nearly finished with Eddie the Sewing Machine), and to activate my new cell phone. (Yay for free-after-rebate!)

I just changed my sheets to my favorite Wamsutta satin weave. I'm going to post, and then I'll curl up with The Visitant. When I'm done with that, I've got a whole bunch of Traveling Pants and DVDs from Monica.

No candles upstairs (oxygen tanks), but Samantha got me one that she put with the mojo bag that she gave me before we went to lunch (!) so I'll sit down and enjoy the gentle flame with Hugh.

Unless I'm lucky enough to get to hang out with the ever-mentally-stimulating Tad, I'm curling up and reading ALL weekend.

Books or Tad will make my brain happy.

my mom had wanted a specific book for chanukah, a book she'd read years ago. she said that used was fine, but not to spend a small fortune on shipping.

 

i found it on half.com, and, keeping in mind that i could combine shipping, looked in the seller's stuff for "Holocaust" books. i think there were three titles i didn't already own. i've read everything that came in the package, with the exception of my mom's book, and the "romance" stood out among all the other books.

Bodie Thoene's Vienna Prelude is sold as a Christian book, but I've got to say that, as a source of historical fiction, it was amazing. the book covers the mid-1930s in Germany and Austria, an era with which i'm not that familiar because most of the Holocaust books I have take place in the concentration camps, from 1939 through 1945 and then sometimes to present days. One portion struck me as religious (i didn't see it as a "Christian" book until i looked at the above-linked web site):

..."We have food enough to feed a dozen children," Karl replied quietly. What more does a child require? A little love. Happy times. A warm, clean place to sleep. Mama has been tucking children into bed for nearly thirty years. My mother and grandmother and hers before her have rocked babies to sleep in this old house. By the grace of G-d, we can provide all that is needed for these three little souls, and a dozen more if you choose to bring them here."

Money is nto required," Frau Marta added. We have lost a son.* There is much love in our hearts for many more." She raised her eyes to the crucifix above the Herrgottseck. "He says that if we offer a cup of cold water in His name to a child, we have done it to Him. Dear Elisa, bring the children! For Jesus' sake I will feed them fresh bread and ..."

--Vienna Prelude
XXX, P. 283

The first thing that went through my mind as I read that was, They are of the Yad Vashem, the Hand of G-d, the non-Jews who helped the Jews during the Holocaust. The passage is a rare Christian page, about taking in children as they leave Germany for... anyplace that isn't Germany.

It was a great book with a LOT of history (Thoene's husband has a degree in history, and a lot of research went into the book).

___

* The "lost" son had gone over to the Nazis.

 

---

 

i worked on those paying posts last year to earn money to keep my mom in large-print books, just like she kept us in books as we grew up. now, thanks to her cataract surgeries, she can see well enough to read regular-sized print, and there is still money in my paypal account. i'm considering getting the rest of this series; Vienna Prelude is the prelude to the Zion Chronicles. i ordered the next book today.

had i seen these books sold as "Christian," i might not have gotten Vienna Prelude. all too often, i've read books of certain genres and have found that the story was hidden behind the message the author was paid to send. (for example: i used to look for "nursing" books when i was a pre-teenager, before i hated everyone, and wanted to work with the public. i was so disappointed when many books under the "nursing" umbrella were poorly-written romances whose only nod to healthcare was that a nurse would fall in love with a doctor, and it would be reciprocated.)

for that reason, i'm telling people about this book - not only Christian friends, but also Jewish friends and friends of other faiths who like a good history book, and who might not automatically be looking in the Christian Fiction section of the bookstore.

my sister Sonya is Christian. while the Thoene book wasn't the historical smut we love, she's got to let me know if she's read this because, if she hasn't, i'll have to send it to her. (lu and monica: sonya had sent me LAMB after she read the first page. by the time i'd finished the beginning, i was online ordering copies for the two of you.)

Currently reading :
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
By Barack Obama

One of my favorite blogs shares great quotes from the author's vast book collection. Since there are, so very often, poignant lines in the books I read, I have decided to steal the idea from him. The following is actually from a television transcript, but it's BY an author, so I think it fits.

"I guess it doesn't make any different once a man is gone. Medals and speeches and victories are nothing to them anymore. They died and others lived, and nobody knows why it's so. There's nothing we can do for the ones beneath wooden crosses, except perhaps to pause and murmur, Thanks, Pal."
- Ernie Pyle, WWII Journalist, via History Detectives:
Episode 4, Ernie Pyle’s Typewriter, Albuquerque, NM Bloomington, IN and Portland, OR

Ernie Pyle died on April 18, 1945, as a result of "machine gun fire from an enemy machine gun nest," riddled "with some 40 gunshot wounds." He was 45 years old.

His writing from the perspective of "the common soldier" won him the Pulitzer in 1944.

Thanks, pal.

One of my favorite blogs shares great quotes from the author's vast book collection.  Since there are, so very often, poignant lines in the books I read, I have decided to steal the idea from him.

This is the first time in a long time that I've been able to read a few books in one weekend. I've been so uncomfortable, physically, that it's taking me a week to read what I used to read in two days.

From The Hunt Ball:

"...It's only been in the last two decades that a recognition of preservation for black folks has taken route."

"And there's not a damned thing to preserve for women."

"Women's work perished in the using," Sister said with a shrug. "So it was. And in many ways so it is. I can't be bothered getting angry or feeling shoved aside. I remember the protests in the seventies. I wasn't against them but it was alien to me. I figure you make hell with what you have. I may be on the shorter end of the stick than the white man, but I've still got some say-so, some ability to relish this life."

and

"I totally agree, but I'm not going to a lab and blowing up people in white lab coats. you can make cange out of the barrel of a gun -- thank you, Chairman Mao, another hypocrite for you -- but it doesn't stick. Sooner or later, when the people have the ability, they sabotage or organize against the change. Or they try to turn back the clock. The only way change can work is with consensus, and that takes time, talking to people, listening to people, respecting the differences. it's the longer route, the seemingly harder route, but, ultimately, the successful route, and Betty, there is no other way. We have all of history to prove that point."

--Sister Arnold, Master of the Hunt

It's odd that I'd read a book with "hunt" in the title. This is a book primarily about foxhunt. The way it's written, with the animals' points of view, one can believe that they enjoy the game. I'd love to know what they really think: do the foxes like to run like the hounds do, enjoying the thrill and playing with the people who, in this book, take care of them (worming them, moving them to better foxholes for their own safety and not for the humans), or do they despise it, having to run for their lives to humor humans? I'll never know, but this was beautifully presented, nonetheless. I've read this and Outfoxed and should look for the rest of them (used, of course - I love Rita Mae and don't begrudge her her commission! but hell, new books? beyond my budget).

(cross-posted)