Reading Aloud

Being an adult without young children in my life, I sometimes forget the joys of reading aloud.  I was recently reminded how satisfying it is, and now I'm looking forward to doing more of it, both reading and listening.  I'll admit that I have more trouble following the twists and turns of a plot when I'm hearing it read aloud to me than when I'm looking at the pages myself, but there's a special comfort in relaxing and allowing myself to sink into the story that a well-loved voice is bringing to life.  My mom and dad read to me a lot when I was little, so the whole experience reminds me of happy times.  It's especially pleasant right before bed to read aloud and be read to.  Gets the brain ready for good dreams.

Sharing Books

Once when I was in high school, a friend of a friend gave me a dog-eared, softcover copy of Jack Kerouac's On the Road.  She had gotten it from a friend, and after reading it wanted to pass it along from one reader to the next.  On the first page she'd written "Kerouac knows his stuff! Let's all go one day!! Enjoy it, then pass it on!! [and then she'd signed her name]"  The last two exclamation points were turned into the eyes of a smiley face with its tongue out.  I'm only a little sorry to say that I never did pass the book along.  I read it and loved it with all the fibers of my being.  And I kept it.  From my parents' house to various rooms in college to life afterward, I have always made sure it stands on my bookshelf.  This particular book notwithstanding, I love sharing books with friends, and I have embraced the joy of not caring much whether they make their way back to me afterward.  As long as a book is in the hands of someone who loves it or at least is curiously reading it, I'm satisfied.  (Honestly, though, there are a few like the aforementioned which I would care to get back and keep.)  I believe someone once told me that books should never be lent, only given.  Perhaps that's right.  I read, too, that Studs Terkel (I think it was he) would not like for books he loaned out to be returned without the borrowers' marginalia inscribed within.  He felt that properly reading a book was to have a conversation with the author, and enjoyed seeing his friends' conversations on the pages of his books.  So if you haven't recently, consider giving a book you love to someone you love, and don't worry too much about getting it back.  There are many more on their way to you.

Trivia Night

Doing my best to catch up a bit on missed posts, here's one for last Thursday, when I went to a trivia night at a coffee shop in Raleigh.  I was a relative newcomer, joining friends on their established team.  The topic was poetry, and the competition turned out to be a lot of fun.  Although I by no means carried the team, I was pleasantly surprised to find out how much knowledge about poetry and poets was almost on the tip of my tongue.  The experience got me excited about reading more poetry and learning more about it.  Our team won three out of four rounds (thank you, thank you . . .), and the prizes for each round were used books of our choice.  I got some pretty neat stuff that I might not otherwise have picked out to read.  The book prizes made sense because the trivia night was sponsored by some portion of the Wake County public library system.  Or at least librarians in their off hours.  Sadly, it was the last such event they are hosting, and I guess we'll have to get our trivia fix elsewhere from now on (I'm already hatching plans for pan-state trivial conquest . . . .).  At the end of the night we were the winners, and we took home a $25 gift card to a bar/restaurant in addition to our stacks of books.  It was a satisfying evening, and a great impetus to sweep out the cobwebs from the less-visited nooks and alleyways of my mind.

Used Bookstores

Walking into a used bookstore and browsing is a singular pleasure.  Time drops away as you meander among the too-close shelves, inhaling the musty perfume of volume upon volume of forgotten lore.  Treasures await around every turn, behind every copy of the Compleat Idiot's guide to Volkswagen repair and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  Instructions for new activities and philosophies of life, recipes, maps of far-off lands.  Sometimes there are even vinyl records of bands you'd forgotten you liked.  They're extra-special on rainy days.  As a young person, used bookstores afford the chance to read things your parents wouldn't want you to see, while cloaked in the guise of respectable intellectualism.  Used bookstores are a bargain-priced gateway to exotic worlds, the panacea for latter-day technological overload.  There's always something interesting, and always the chance to escape from mundane concerns in a cozy afternoon among the shelves.