A pop culture education

Most parents will tell you that part of anticipating a child coming into the family is looking forward to sharing one's culture. And pop culture is a lot of that. Noel was shaped by the records in his father's collection; I devoured the classic books on my parents' shelves. We were excited about introducing our children to the things we loved.

That ended up being on a slower timeframe than I think we had imagined. Yes, we shared some classic children's literature when they were young, but it took a while for CG to develop an interest in the television, music, and film that consumes her parents' lives. AA, meanwhile, has always gone his own way and developed his own obsessions; we worried, early on, that he would have nothing to talk about with his peers, but it turns out that Pokemon is a universal language (thankfully).

Another factor, though, is that it turns out the easiest way into popular culture's archival depths (aka the stuff that was meaningful to us when we were younger) is by way of current culture. And those entry points need to have some family appeal. They need to be things that we can watch or listen to with our child. CBS's Supergirl, for example; we made plans early on to include CG in our viewing of it, based on the creative people involved, its empowering messages, and the geek appeal factor. But once we're all hooked, when the show makes references to other parts of the DC universe (or even does a version of a classic story, like its retelling of Alan Moore's "For the Man Who Has Everything"), it's a simple matter to give those ancillary materials to CG and let her expand the connections.

We all treasure the moments when we bond with our children over shared culture. But those moments aren't really the heart and soul of a cultural education. As suggested by those records of Noel's dad and those books of my parents, the most important thing is to leave a lot of culture lying around, and wait for your kids to burrow their way in, by any route they choose. CG uses our Amazon Echo to stream music from our collection while she reads, and sometimes we can suggest other artists she might like. She developed her love of comic strips from the many collections with which we seeded her shelf. But as rich as our libraries might be, they'd be a prison if that's all she ever explored. She made her own way to manga and anime, and together she and Archer have ventured into gaming and design, areas their parents would never have been able to lead them.

And now they teach us, and amaze us. That's the part that we didn't know enough, years ago, to anticipate, and it's the part that now seems most miraculous.

Envisioning

When I'm working on a book, I naturally sometimes picture it on a shelf, in a bookstore, on a conference display table, in a reader's hand. When I do, though, the image of the book is indistinct. I don't imagine a particular color or font on the color. It's all kind of a blur.

I think I've had next to no input on the covers of my other books. Perhaps I've blocked it all out; I do remember that Clayton, my co-editor, had an artist he wanted to use on the jacket of our book Cosmology, Ecology, and the Energy of God, and asked me which of several paintings I preferred. For The Divine Decision and Handbook of Process Theology, to the best of my recollection, the covers were presented to me already complete. I probably had some kind of opportunity to approve or make suggestions, but nobody involved me in the design. And that was pretty much okay with me. I wouldn't have known where to start.

So when I'm asked (as I was last week by my editor) to weigh in on cover design, I feel like I'm completely at sea. I don't have any firm opinions about what my book ought to look like. I scroll through page after page of possible templates, try out various combinations of keywords at the stock image library. It's all far too indeterminate, with way too many possibilities, for me to express any kind of preference.

Somehow, though, with my editor's considerable help, we arrived at a cover design after a dozen emails back and forth. Forced to look at possibilities and think about options, I developed some opinions, some preferences, some absolutely-this and if-possible-this and certainly-not-that, all of which nudged me toward a dwindling number of designs and images. And after a week of this, like magic, we have a cover. I can see it. I know what it will look like, the image and the font and the layout and maybe even the color. My imaginary scenes of shelves and laps and tables and pages turning now have a detailed object at the center of them.

This is a new kind of excitement for me. I have no expectation that my book, specialized as it is, will set the world on fire. But being able to picture it as an object in the world, several months away from its emergence in that physical form, is unexpectedly thrilling.

Shelfie

I woke up to an email from a student, asking for a list of ten or so books "that you have found essential in the formation of what we know as Donna." Having taken a few minutes to put together a briefly-annotated list, I thought I might as well share it here. Links are to the Goodreads page, so you can add whatever takes your fancy to your "to-read" shelf or click on through to buy from Amazon.

Paula Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ -- a very readable account of the transformation of Jesus' message in the first few centuries of the common era, not just philosophically and religiously but also politically.

Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics -- an entire aesthetic and media theory in the guide of a comic book about how comic books work. Amazing.

Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms -- using records from the Inquisition, historian Ginzburg reconstructs the diversity of the intellectual enterprise from the side of both commoners and elites during the tumult of Reformation. A constant reminder that intellectual history isn't just the record of great thinkers, it's also the story of how ideas were received and transformed by the population, and how that transformation boomeranged back on the elites.

Erasmus, Enchiridion -- Erasmus is my favorite Reformation writer, and this is his great work on the life of faith. He's just such an amazing prose stylist, even in translation.

David Hume, The Natural History of Religion -- Hume demolishes the idea that religion began with pure revelation and has degraded to the conditions we see today, with wit and irony, in this brief little treatise. Essential to my understanding that every reality we encounter has an evolutionary history.

Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksenarrion -- my favorite book, which I reread every couple of years, a fantasy trilogy about a soldier who becomes an instrument of the gods. You may find it very silly if fantasy isn't your thing, but it's undeniably the work of fiction that has most shaped me.

Shusako Endo, Silence -- For years Martin Scorsese has been trying to make a movie of this novel about Jesuit missionaries in 19th c. Japan. The most powerful portrayal I know of the sacrifice of Jesus.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun -- an examination of women's lives in colonial America through the objects they made. Reads like a detective story, uncovering something previously anonymous and subterranean.

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead -- A pastor reflects on life and faith and relationships as he nears his own death. Engages with all kinds of great thinkers, but never ceases to be an unfolding revelation of a novel.

Paul Collins, Not Even Wrong -- One of the great non-fiction writers tries to understand his autistic son by digging back into the prehistory of autism.

Girls will be boys and boys will be girls

Twitter is a-twitter with critiques of these books from Scholastic: How To Survive Anything (Boys Only) and How to Survive Anything (Girls Only). Ryan North (creator of Dinosaur Comics), working off a tip from this Canadian books blog, breaks down the tables of contents and makes some excellent points. The authors can't be bothered to actually make the girls' version about, y'know, surviving things, like the boys' version is. Because girls aren't into danger, presumably, like boys. So their book has chapters about becoming a great babysitter and teaching your cat to sit (?) instead of handling swarms of bees and zombie invasions.

Here's the thing. Yes, this looks really bad. Yes, it does cater to gender stereotypes. But any parent who reads the Scholastic book flyers regularly knows that this kind of thing is pervasive in their offerings. The flyers have little subsections for books mainly of interest to girls (BFF quizzes, friendship-bracelet crafts) and to boys (who would win in a fight between a shark and a lion, gross stuff). It's rarer to see the same book marketed in boys and girls versions, but the model here is clearly The Dangerous Book for Boys and The Daring Book for Girls. The marketing on Scholastic's website even makes reference to "those books that are a little too dangerous/daring."

As far as I know (and I don't know far, I admit), The Dangerous Book for Boys and its follow-up did not provoke widespread condemnation as sexist. The intent behind them seemed to be taken in a positive way by parents, educators, and the culture at large: to recapture some of the adventure and exploratory spirit that used to be promoted for children by publications in the forties and fifties. Experiment, take a chance, go off the beaten path, be self-reliant, escape the cocoon. The division by gender was part of the retro appeal, but also was understood as a way to craft identities for boys and girls that weren't simply based on current stereotypes. The books seemed to react against the lazy assumptions about boys (video games, boogers) and girls (sleepovers, glitter) by hearkening back to a time when boys wanted to learn the skills to become men and girls wanted to learn the skills to become women. The books are less about gender than their titles make them seem. The real appeal to their audience lies in the promise of not being treated like a child.

Granted, How To Survive Anything doesn't get it. The whole life-skills thing gets buried under a pile of naked appeals to "things boys like" and "things girls like." And consequently, the focus is on perpetuating childhood obsessions rather than peeking over the wall at the more independent, less self-indulgent world of grown-ups. This attempt to capitalize on the success of Dangerous/Daring is a tone-deaf failure.

But the reason for its failure isn't just that there's a boy book and a girl book, clearly; otherwise, Dangerous/Daring would be equally reprehensible. It's the way the creators have executed that concept that deserves criticism.

And I'm not sure how much criticism even that deserves. When Scholastic markets books about horses to girls and football players to boys, they do have something positive in mind beyond making money. They are trying to get kids to read. And catering to preferences already present in the audience is presumably an effective way to do that.

There's something important about having a counter-cultural conversation about children and gender -- about pushing back against the pink/blue, rhinestone/denim, giggle/fart shorthand. And I'm not defending How to Survive, because those tables of content are indeed alarming. But let's not throw out the babies with the bathwater. Every instance of producing two versions divided by gender is not culturally regressive or demeaning to women. And Scholastic's publishing and marketing choices have the good intention of promoting reading for kids at a critical time in the development of lifelong habits. Sure, they could feed them only what's the very best for them -- classic literature, progressive ideas, moral uplift. Some of us can probably remember what it was like to be excited about reading comics, or books about celebrities, or thrillers, and to find those enjoyments disapproved by those who didn't think that reading was good, full stop, but ought to be purged of its junk food elements.

Count me among the people who think we ought to let kids pick from the full smorgasbord of options, because the act of reading is not analogous to the act of eating in one very important sense. Eating isn't a choice. So we should make kids eat their vegetables, because they're going to eat something else if we don't.  Reading is a choice. If they don't have choices they like, they're not going to read at all. Some kids (like my daughter) are going to venture way beyond the gender-coded choices in the catalog because they have acquired the taste already. Some (like my son) won't read unless the book fits with his pre-existing obsessions and quirks. For people whose kids' preferences are more bound to gender stereotypes than mine, it might be critical to offer them sparkles and princesses on the one hand, slime and ninjas on the other. I'd rather have them read than be spared the stereotypes, if those are the only options.

Thank you Mr. Carnegie

On Saturday, I took my kids to the library.

It's a supremely ordinary weekend thing to do.  Millions upon millions of parents and kids do it every Saturday.  Yet it thrills me every time because of what libraries mean to me, and what they mean, period.

I spent countless Saturdays in Chattanooga's downtown library.  To this day, when I think of libraries, it is that modern-looking concrete edifice with its steel waterfall sculpture out front that I picture.  I came home from those trips with towering stacks of books, as many as I could carry, as thick as I could find.  I was blessed with parents who didn't obsess over what I might be reading, but facilitated my habit and left me alone to get on with it.

Sometimes I take my kids to the library just to return the piles of books we've managed to hoard and temporarily lose in various corners of our house.  But without exception, we leave with more.  Who can resist the treasures therein?  Don't we always want to leave with all of them -- or some subset so much larger than our ability to consume, it might as well be all of them?

As we were entering the library yesterday, I commented to the kids how glad I was that we had a library. Imagine if the only people who could read books were people with money, I said.  And I ask you to imagine it.  Imagine if we had to buy each individual book we wanted our kids to read, or that they wanted to read.  How could we feed their minds as full as we need to fill their stomachs?  I buy stacks of books for our kids; they come home on Scholastic delivery day with their backpacks bulging.  But it's not nearly enough for a hungry mind, for an expansive imagination, for a life stretching decades into the future with so much to learn and do.

Walter Dean Myers, the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, has taken as his theme "Reading is not optional."  I heard him in a radio interview explaining that we tend to promote reading as a wonderful escape, something that can take you around the world and into the past and future.  But what so many young people need to escape is not boredom, and what they seek is not entertainment.  If the children in our communities are not to be limited by their circumstances, they need the flexible skills to do more than their parents or neighbors, to imagine more than what is in their immediate environment.

If reading is not optional, then libraries are not optional.  I'm grateful that I live in the age of libraries, and I hope to high heaven that I don't live to see their end.

Birth day

Getting the author copies of your book is like holding your baby for the first time.  Every author knows this feeling. Opening the package, pulling out the books with their heft and their smooth covers, seeing the cover for the first time on a three-dimension object rather than a picture on a screen, flipping through the page, breathing in the newness.

I experienced that today. The author copies of the book that my colleague Clayton Crockett and I edited -- Cosmology, Ecology, and the Energy of God -- landed on my desk this morning.  The book has been a long time in the making, starting with the conference that we began organizing in 2008 and held in 2009, and continuing through the process of getting a contract and rewriting the chapters, all the way to finalizing the front and back matter.

I don't have any illusions that this book will change the world. But there are some really thought-provoking ideas in it.  There's some harsh reality, there's some hope, and there are important questions. It's aimed at a general audience, even though it's based in some heavy-duty philosophy and theology. You can't buy the book yet, but I hope that when you have a chance to get it at your local library or bookstore, you'll give it a shot.

Books and bridges

Archer's GT teacher found the perfect book for him to bring home for his nightly independent reading.  It's The Cardturner by the prolific Louis Sachar, best known for Holes but best-loved in Archer's room for Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School.

The Cardturner is about a boy who plays bridge with his blind uncle and aims to compete in the national championships.  The first detail about his day that Archer volunteered to me this afternoon was that Ms. Haynes gave him this book to bring home.  The second detail was the book's basic premise.  And the third details was that certain sections are marked with a whale.

Archer explained that the protagonist uses whales as markers because he once "zoned out" while reading a book whenever the author started giving facts about whales.  (The book was Moby Dick, as I ascertained from Archer later.)  So he decided to mark the passages in his book that are about how to play bridge with whales, so that readers who might zone out during those parts can easily skip them.

Naturally those parts are Archer's favorites, along with any description of a game.  Just now he skipped into the room after doing his reading for the night laughing hysterically at a round of bidding by the protagonist's amateur friends -- the first bid is made out of order, and then the protagonist's partner responds to his bid of 1 heart with 6 spades.  It's enough to make Archer helpless with amusement.

I'm always on the lookout for books that I think will jibe with Archer's game-focused, school-centric, and stat-obsessed worldview.  It's great to be introduced to a new one, and to know that some of his teachers can identify texts to which he's likely to respond.

Indexed

Late this summer, my co-author Clayton and I got the proofs of our manuscript (due to be published late this year) back for review.  It was my job to create an index of names and titles.  I have no one to blame but myself; I volunteered, thinking the task wouldn't be too difficult if we limited ourselves and didn't include concepts.

It wasn't too hard, as it turned out.  I got it done in about nine hours of total work.  What I didn't anticipate was that about three hours of that were spent working on the twenty pages of endnotes.  Every single note -- ten or fifteen to a page -- contained nothing but names and titles, by and large, and sometimes long lists of them.  I pushed through, despite the tedium, and turned in the index ahead of schedule.

Last week we heard from our editors with last-minute questions about hyphenation at line breaks and whether certain epigrams that would cost money to quote could be omitted.  Among the requests was a notation that the index needed two changes.  One, fictional characters' names need not be included. (Goodbye, Bickle, Travis.)  And two, index entries that referred to notes should contain not only a page number but also the note number on the page, e.g., 177n13.

I got this request just as I was getting ready to start fall classes, followed by a weekend of work travel.  So I responded that I would try to get them a revised index early this week.  It wasn't until today, though, that I got a bit of concentrated time to work on it -- and that only after having to warn my colleagues that some of what I'd promised to do for them would have to wait until this overdue task were completed.  I hope to knock this out this afternoon, I told them.

I should have remembered that three hours of original indexing.  The revision is taking, if anything, even longer.  In an hour and a half of steady, uninterrupted labor, I got to the end of the Gs today.  The procedure is this: Note every page number in the index that is 163 (where the notes begin) or higher; go to that page on the proof PDF and look for the name or title in question; add the note number to the page number; repeat.  I use Adobe Reader's jump-to-page and find functions to go to names quickly; titles are harder since they are often composed of common words and take so long to type in the search box that I might as well jump to the page and scan it.  Every index datum that gets revised takes a minimum of 20 keystrokes or so.  It's a slog, and I have no idea when I'm going to find another three hours or so to get it done.

If only I had known the proper formatting while doing it the first time; adding the note numbers would not have required much more effort or time than I was already putting in.  I should have asked for an index style guide, but I thought I had all the knowledge I needed.  Now here I am clicking, typing, reclicking, switching documents, searching, clicking, typing.  Is it too late to pay a student to do this?

Lifelong readers

For Cady Gray's birthday, we got her the last three books in the Harry Potter series.  Earlier this summer, she tore through the first four books in alarmingly short order and with great enthusiasm.  So it was a natural gift idea.  When she took them out of the bag, the first thing she did was stack them up and raise them over her head.  "Look at all these pages!" she crowed.

One of the best things about her sudden affinity for Harry Potter is the sight of her, night after night, with a giant thick book in front of her face.  When I trolled the library as a kid, I looked for the fattest books I could find.  The hours upon hours of reading that a tall stack of thick books promised filled me with joy.

My mom expressed a little disappointment that we were encouraging Cady Gray's interest in Harry Potter.  I get it; along with many others with her religious convictions, she disapproves of the series' emphasis on witchcraft and wizardry. "There are so many good books she could be reading," was her comment.

My way of thinking comes from a different direction.  Sure, there are good books and bad books.  But absent a moral opposition to magic, the general consensus from people who know about such things is that the Harry Potter books are good books -- imaginative, well-written, engaging, world-building.  And frankly, I'm less concerned that she chooses books based on a canonical standard of quality than that she chooses books.  That is, that she is reading, that she chooses to read and gets something out of that choice.

The cultural conversation frequently throws me for a total loop.  For years people have been apocalyptic about how reading is on the decline.  And then when there is a surge in interest and reading thanks to some massive hit series, suddenly the crisis is that they are reading the wrong thing.  A few months back,  one of my Twitter friends shared a link to a profoundly misguided essay on young adult literature that complained about a preponderance of dark themes. All of a sudden we're being asked to picture teenagers locked in their rooms devouring books that might harm them, when previously the hue and cry had been about their inability to sustain attention over a novel's length or remain interested in anything that's not a video game.  I don't get it.

It's not that the objections are without merit.  It's just that the priorities seem to be out of whack.  If we want kids to read, let's be happy when they want to read and are excited about reading.  That will lead to a lifetime of reading, and to encounters with all the classics we might think are the best the written word can offer.  A sure way to discourage budding readers is to tell them what they enjoy doesn't count as reading, or isn't worth their time -- that if they want to read, it has to be from this shelf of approved nourishing ingredients.  It's like telling kids who want to cook that all they can make is vegetables.

I could be completely wrong, and I suppose I'll know it when this generation of young people who have grown up on Harry Pottery turn out to be Satanist sociopaths.  Right now I'm too jazzed seeing my just-turned-seven year old showing a preference for the longest-lasting books she can find.  I've been there, and it was the best way to grow up that I could have imagined.

R.I.P. Richard Rutt

Last year, as I embarked on the beginnings of a multiyear and multistage project on theology and handwork, I read the only comprehensive history of knitting to be published in English in the last fifty years.  The author of this indispensable work, A History of Hand Knitting, was Richard Rutt.  It was clear from his extraordinarily winning book that he was an amateur historian, with very definite opinions and biases on controversial topics in the field, and also that he was a charming Englishman with a passion for his subject and plenty of energy for research.

On August 3, Rutt died in the UK at the age of 86.  Reading through some of the obituaries and remembrances posted after his death, I find what an interesting and multifaceted man he was.  As an Anglican priest, he rose to the rank of Bishop of Leicester after serving almost 20 years as a missionary in South Korea.  In 1994 he switched allegiance to the Catholic church, was ordained as a priest therein (although he remained married), and was made an honorary prelate (with the title of monsignor) in 2009.  The impetus for his conversion to Catholicism was not opposition to female priests or other liberalisms, as with more recent Anglican defections, but dissatisfaction with moves to bring other Protestant groups into full communion with the Church of England.

The bulk of his published works related to Chinese language translation and Korean studies, some of which were groundbreaking.  Knitters valued him for his singular History, however, as well as for a few patterns published in English magazines.  He was known for knitting his own vestments, bishop's miter, and sacramental textiles.  At the time of his death he was the president of the Knitting and Crochet Guild, a national organization that publishes the journal SlipKnot.


Rutt's book was one of the first pieces of my serious research into craft history, and produced a wealth of notes that will form a strand in my work going forward.  Rest in piece, Monsignor Rutt.

Nose in a book

Cady Gray is a reader -- and proud of it.  All we have to do is stock her shelves with anything we think she might like, and within a day or two she has found whatever's new, pulled it down, and started in.  She spends time every day walking around with a book in front of her face, lying on her beanbag chair or stretched out on the floor with an open book in front of her, or (my personal favorite position) curled up on the bed reading.

She comments whenever I find her like this that she is losing herself in a book, or that you can always find her with her nose stuck in a book.  Clearly she has embraced her bookworm identity.

At age 6, she is reading books that Archer's teachers are recommending for his level -- Harry Potter, Pseudonymous Bosch, and all the Roald Dahl she can get her hands on.  I'm ready to introduce her to Narnia and maybe even Bilbo Baggins.

The problem with your kid reading above her age level is that it's hard to gauge appropriateness both in terms of language sophistication and content.  I'm not too worried about content because she's a thoughtful and mature little girl, but obviously there are plenty of topics and tones that ought to wait.  She's starting the Harry Potter books at just the right time; if we can keep her from tearing through them all at once, she'll grow up with them and be ready for some of the darker stuff when she gets to it in later books.

I'd love to get your suggestions for books and authors the precocious readers in your family enjoy!

Authorship

You know that Kindle single I was writing about yesterday?  It became available today in the Amazon Kindle store.

I was in Little Rock waiting to pick up the kids from SLUFY when I saw the announcement from the A.V. Club's Twitter feed.  When I went to the single's Amazon purchase page, I was delighted to see that both Noel and I are credited as authors (Noel filled in for me at least once in each of the three seasons, and he did an interview with Breaking Bad's creator Vince Gilligan that's included in the e-book), along with editor Josh Modell and cover illustration Danny Hellman.

It occurred to me that I should make sure the single is linked to my Amazon author page, so I went to Amazon Author Central and clicked the link to add items to my bibliography.  Amazon's search engine then presents to you everything with your name on it, and you can click buttons underneath to claim the item as your book.  In a few minutes, hours, or days, after some algorithm confirms it, the items appear on your author page.

I flipped through the pages, skipping over the children's books by Donna Bowman Bratton, and not only found the Breaking Bad e-book, but also -- surprise and joy -- the upcoming volume of essays Cosmology, Theology, and the Energy of God that I co-edited with Clayton Crockett, which is due out from Fordham University Press in November.  The book has appeared in Fordham's catalog, but this is the first I've seen it available online for pre-order.

So whether you're in the mood for some great televised drama or some energetic theology, I've got you covered at Amazon!  Either or both make great gifts for a loved one -- or why not treat yourself?

Perfect timing

Books and albums have had official release dates for years.  Used to be that if you wanted to be among the first to read that book or hear that album, you made time to go to the store on that Tuesday.  (Why are release dates always Tuesday, by the way?  Anyone?)

Now thanks to internet pre-orders, you can have the book or album shipped to you, scheduled to arrive on its day of release.  Or if you have a Kindle, you can have the book appear on your device as soon as it's available for purchase.  I woke up this morning and found the next book in my all-time favorite fantasy series, Elizabeth Moon's Kings of the North, ready to read on my Kindle.

This process hasn't completely killed the tradition of going to the store on release day, though, as anybody who has ever attended a Harry Potter midnight release party knows.  It's become an optional, socially-intensive way of acquiring a highly-anticipated book or album.  We have the no-effort way, in which it comes to you, and we have the maximal effort way in which we make a big production out of the acquisition.  Either way, there's something wonderful about waiting for that piece of media you want, and devouring it on the first day you can get it.

Book order day

I've always been a sucker for Scholastic Books.  As a kid I circled everything about football (especially my beloved Oakland Raiders) and animals that appeared in the newsprint catalogs.  My parents indulged my every book-buying request, and I can still remember the thrill of my teacher handing me a huge pile of shrink-wrapped paperbacks with my order form taped to the top.  Heaven.

Now as a mother, I've tried to carry on that tradition, ordering large numbers of books from the fliers and harboring a secret pride when Archer or Cady Gray let me know that their orders were the biggest in the class.  They get books -- and I will always be happy to give them any book they desire -- and their teacher gets books.  Win-win, right?

But there's a new wrinkle this year.  Cady Gray's teacher is sending home the standard kindergarten-first grade level catalog (Seesaw, I think it is).  And the books are simply too elementary for her.  Even the small section of beginning chapter books is stuff she read last year.  What she really wants are the graphic novels and cartoon-illustrated books in Archer's fourth grade Arrow catalog.

No problem on one level -- Archer's book orders have been about 1/3 Cady Gray books for at least a couple of years.  But this is the first time I looked through Cady Gray's catalog and saw absolutely nothing that she would enjoy.  She's left picture books and easy readers behind, and that's what Scholastic is offering through her teacher.

And I feel terrible because I don't want Cady Gray to get nothing when her teacher passes out the book orders.  I don't want her classroom to miss out on the free books they gets when I order.

Maybe I should order a few things and give them away?  But of course I already have plenty of books she's outgrown that we already need to give away.  Does anybody have a solution for this dilemma?

Fine points of protocol

Earlier this week, I spent an hour with new freshmen talking about how to stay on the good side of their instructors.  Topics included classroom behavior, communication, and shared responsibility.  One question asked by a member of the group was particularly cogent: "Will my teacher expect me to have the textbooks on the first day?"

It's probably one of those unspoken points of consensus, I think.  At least I've never heard anybody talk about it -- so I don't know, I suppose, whether there is actually consensus.  I told the student what I would do in their shoes, and therefore what I tend to expect as an instructor.  The smart move is always to wait until after the first day of class to buy your books.  Maybe the instructor will let you know that an older edition (that you can pick up used more cheaply) is acceptable.  Maybe you'll find out that you won't need one of the books until late in the semester.  It might even be the case that a book marked "required" turns out to shade more toward "recommended."  So I would never expect the students to have books in hand on the first day.  On that day I show them the books, I let them know that they are available at the bookstore, and I point them to the syllabus that shows them when we will be reading them.

But you know, I found out today that I do expect the students to get the books before the second day of class.  A couple of my students came up to me after class to tell me that they've ordered the books from Amazon, but don't have them yet and don't know when they'll get them.  One even asked if she could borrow mine to do the reading that is assigned for our next meeting.

As I formulated a response (no, I need my books to prepare for class; you'll need to see if you can share books with one of your classmates to do your homework until yours come), I realized that my expectations are more specific than I had communicated to the freshmen on Tuesday.  No, you don't have to buy your books before you attend class for the first time.  But yes, you have to be prepared for the possibility that you will be assigned something out of those books a day or two later.  So here's what you do: either buy early on Amazon and forego the opportunity to finesse the textbook list, or buy at the bookstore as soon as you exit the classroom and forego the opportunity to get a discount.  Next time, I'll be able to give the whole answer.

A lifetime's worth

Yesterday I showed you my yarn stash, one that will certainly last me decades at the fastest foreseeable rate of consumption. Today I'm thinking about the book stash that I've had all my life and continue to accumulate. These days it's more on my Kindle than in physical form, thank goodness, but I still love finding a book I want to read and adding it to my queue.

I've always loved libraries more than any other social institution. My parents could park me there all day when I was a kid; in college I spent countless hours exploring their riches. I used to keep lists of books I wanted to read, first on sheets of paper (writing as small as possible, with columns for call number and title), then on Hypercard stacks and e-mailed search results. I thumbed through every reader's guide and best books list I could, in book, newspaper, or magazine form, to add to my list.

I've never stopped doing that, although at least 95% of the books on those various lists remain unread, and although long weeks and months go by when I read nothing except what I must for my work. It's still a joy to find the books and file them away, anticipating the joys of immersing myself in them someday, secure in the knowledge that I'll never be at a loss when I have the urge to read for my own pleasure. Just today I came across an enticing list of novels about domestic life in the midst of some other research I was doing, and I couldn't resist dropping everything for ten minutes to look up the authors on Wikipedia, Amazon, Project Gutenberg, and my local libraries' catalogs to see how many of the books in the list were easily accessible to me.

There will be a sight more books left over at the end of my life than yarn, I hope. But the whole point of such a stash is that it is an opportunity, not an obligation. Knowing that running out of one's chief pleasures isn't a problem -- well, it lends all of life an air of abundance.

Classic style

There are a number of ways to define the transition from childhood -- extended longer and longer as time goes on -- to adulthood. Maybe it's when you can legally drink at 21; maybe when you graduate from high school or college; maybe when you're paying your own rent or mortgage. I had the idea years ago that the moment when you started craving sleep in the morning instead of getting up as early as you could get away with marked an important step away from childhood.

We could, however, define it in a way that would put true adulthood decades away from legal majority for most people. Adulthood is when you start realizing that the classics foisted upon you in school are classics for a reason -- namely, that they're actually amazing.

In high school I read Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities. A few years ago I decided that I ought to give David Copperfield a try, seeing as it tops lists of the greatest novels in English. And I discovered, much to my shock, that I adored it. That I adore Dickens, and would happily spend the rest of my days reading through the entire Dickens catalog. Nothing would have shocked that 16-year-old slogging through Great Expectations more.

Thanks to the A.V. Club's Wrapped Up In Books monthly feature, I just finished Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly. "You know what's a really good book?" I told Noel after turning the last page on my Kindle. "A Scanner Darkly." It shouldn't be surprising that books widely acclaimed, books that have taken their place in canons of one kind or another, are actually wonderful to read -- affecting, surprising, deeply emotional, beautifully written. But there's the child in me that hates to be told and is tired of hearing the unanimous voice of her culture.

It's liberating to be an adult and to strike out into the heart of artistic halls of fame, able to fathom the radical notion that quality might be present and that I might be able to appreciate it. This is a marker of adulthood that I didn't pass until just a few years ago -- most probably later than I should have, if I weren't so stubborn or blind. At least I have years of classics ahead of me to explore, like the well-trodden paths I never bothered with because so many had been there before me.

The joys of fiction

Cady Gray's kindergarten teacher has worked hard to find chapter books that will challenge her. The latest book sent home in her backpack is a Boxcar Children installment called The Pizza Mystery. Usually Noel handles Cady Gray bedtime reading duties while I take Archer, but for the last couple of nights, for various reasons, I've been listening to Cady Gray read about the Boxcar Children.

Now, I know nothing about the Boxcar Children. And I came into the book midway. But I was struck by how quickly I became curious about what was going on. In last night's chapter, a young woman was hired by pizza parlor owners the Piccolos, and tonight the Alden children are getting tired of being yelled at by her. They also saw the woman leafing through Mrs. Piccolo's secret recipe book. And mysterious customers are ordering pizzas they don't want and causing the store to lose money.

I'm genuinely concerned about this situation. And it was interesting to see how animated Cady Gray's reading became as the chapter went on and the problems deepened. Both of us were caught up in this simple conflict, and the open-endedness of it created a desire to know more.

Now that I'm on the downslope of the semester, I have more time to read for pleasure. I've started going back to the gym just to give myself a half-hour reading window. For a long time I've been wanting to give Elizabeth Moon's science fiction another try; she's the author of my favorite fantasy series, The Deed Of Paksenarrion, but in the past I haven't been grabbed by her sci-fi work.

Maybe it's a sign that I have a different relationship to fiction these days -- a far less critical relationship, perhaps -- that I was grabbed this time, immediately. I had just finished Oath of Fealty, the latest book in the Paksenarrion series, and was absolutely riveted by its careful delineation of political and military maneuvering in Paks' world. Much of what I've always loved about Moon's work, I realized, is the interest in organizational detail. And so I immediately recognized those elements in Trading in Danger, the first volume of the Vatta's War series, which reminded me more of Charles Stross's Merchant Princes books than the military sci-fi that I had been expecting. It was as much a primer in the shipping business as it was a tale of adventure. I just started book two, and I wish I had more than an hour a day to devote to it.

Why am I so easily captivated by fiction these days? Have I been lucky enough to have only really good books come my way lately? Or is my interest in the fate of the Boxcar Children an indication that I'm a sucker for any story?

There has to be a twist

We picked up a Wii game called Pinball Hall Of Fame: The Williams Collection last year. It became Archer's favorite almost immediately. I attribute his interest to the fact that there are many complicated scoring scenarios, all of which are outlined and explained in very extensive rule screens that can be paged through for each table.

I love this game because these are fantastic tables (Funhouse! Pinbot! Taxi!), and because the pinball simulation is absolutely fantastic. Everything has just the right weight, sound, and feel. I don't know how they did it, but it's perfect. I can't quite explain how Archer achieves high scores on the tables when his strategy 75% of the time is just to flip continuously (he does hold the flippers up to receive ejected balls and then aims his shots), but he racks up huge numbers.

At the library the other day, I happened across a big coffee table book about pinball, and Archer was charmed the instant he opened it to find a picture and description of Old Chicago, the first table the author ever played, and one that Archer played several times at our local Old Chicago pizza franchise. He turns the pages looking at the pictures of tables and reading the description of their gameplay for hours.

I'd love to get him more books about pinball, to go along with his insatiable appetite for books about chess. If you have any recommendations along those lines, I'd love to hear them!

A sailor's life for me

This week the A.V. Club's Wrapped Up in Books feature focuses on one of my favorite series of all time: Patrick O'Brian's beloved Aubrey-Maturin novels, seafaring adventures set during the Napoleonic Wars.

When it was my turn to select the book (we'd been around to every staffer and also had a couple of reader picks since I kicked the book club off back in May 2009 with Geek Love), I floated a few possibilities to the group. But it was Master And Commander that got the most "I've always wanted to read that" responses. I zipped through the book for the first time since I devoured it and the other 19 books in the series back in the nineties. And to my great relief, it was just as delightful as it was the first time around. I so enjoy being in Jack Aubrey's company. And this time around I paid attention as the sailors and their captain try to educate naval novice Stephen Maturin in the rudiments of yards, sheets, masts, and portable soup.

As far as I can tell from their initial posts, none of my fellow AV Clubbers participating had read any of the books before, although at least one is a fan of the excellent film adaptation from a few years back. While some have their problems with the book (I suspect we'll hear details later), I sense enthusiasm from others, and maybe even a bit of the unabashed love I myself bear them. Even better is the response from readers, many of whom are jumping in with their own deep affection for the series.

If you haven't read them, I can't recommend them enough. Yet I recognize that they push specific buttons that are very particular to me. I'm looking forward to the rest of the week -- partly to find out how widespread those buttons are among the staff and readership, and where what turns me on misses the mark for others.