List of Books; Children's Books; Slow Reading

It's taken about three weeks to catalog the books in the library. Although a few books remain, I managed to catalog about 850 books so far, sorting them by author, title, genre, and ISBN. We've accumulated quite a few from our college courses (medieval French literature, Victorian English literature), high school books we were really supposed to return (but never did), and more recently, science fiction we've grown to love. We also have collected books over the years in genres we found by accident, by word of mouth, or by our own research, like French Decadence (in translation), postmodern literary criticism, Russian literature (in translation), and feminist studies. We've also amassed quite a few reference books, from language and etymological guides, to travel guides, to all sorts of dictionaries, and other language curiosities. Putting the list together reveals that about 13% of the collection is classic literature, 10% science fiction, 10% children's, and 9% contemporary fiction, with various other genres each under 10%. It was somewhat arbitrary, but I segregated 'classic' literature from contemporary fiction (most bookstores have a combined 'fiction/literature' section). But the separation seemed to make sense at the time.

Almost all of the children's books were those my parents bought while our family resided in Guyana, all printed and published in London from the late 1970s. And, unlike today's (ultra) race-conscious literature, the books of that time were filled with somewhat ignorant (or naive?) views of race and ethnicity. One of the more flagrant examples is a book entitled 'The Three Golliwogs,' which is just one book of a larger collection by British author Enid Blyton. The 'Golliwogs,' who appear in several of Blyton's books, depict racial stereotypes of Blacks in ragdoll clothes. I don't particularly recall having thought anything negative about the Golliwogs when I was younger (when I was between 5 and 9 years old), but now the inherent racism in the caricatures is unmistakably clear. It's troubling to think that, although Blyton's books were originally written in the late 50s, the books continued to be re-printed in Britain in their original form until at least the late 70s, the time of our books' imprint. Before the book cataloging project began, we entertained the idea of reading some of my childhood literature to Sue's six year old niece. Not surprisingly, after browsing through some of them ourselves, we decided against it.

In any case, Blyton's ignorance (or naivete) is but a small speck in our children's collection. I have other treasured books that my family had for almost a quarter of a century. It's saddening to think that my parents put all this effort and money into purchasing these books, because while I was between the ages of 5 to 9, I was not so interested in reading these books as I was looking at the illustrations. Most of the books I'm certain were read by Susan. But her two younger brothers were happy just looking at the pictures.

Reading came slow to me. At times, I wonder if I was ever formally taught to read when I was a child. Upon reflection, my early reading hurdle was probably due to the fact that my parents were not native English speakers (or rather, readers), and we were in a foreign (and potentially hostile) country, and I never had a chance to emulate anyone reading because I never saw anyone actually engaged in the act of reading -- I don't recall a silent 'reading time' at school among the students (this would have been the second grade), and I don't recall any bibliophiles among my young friends (but we played with lots of toys), nor do I ever recall even seeing Susan reading a book. Perhaps I should consider it almost a miracle that I like to read today, or that I am even literate at all. But I do not attribute the slow acquisition of reading as any fault of my parents, my school, or my environment. For you see, even at a young age, I was completely obsessed with art, drawing, sketching, tracing, and doodling. I believe it was this predilection for visual arts that, in some way, overshadowed my ability or desire to read. It's rather ironic that much later in life, I would immensely enjoy English literature, composition, and creative writing, graduating with an English literature degree.

One set of children's books that was regretfully lost over the years, but which I miss very much even to this day, is the collection of the entire series of Tin Tin classics by French author and illustrator Hergé, printed in large color strips on glorious legal sized pages. Out of the entire collection of children's books, the Tin Tin series in particular stands out as the one that I remember reading the most. Perhaps it was the artwork that captured me. Maybe it was the exciting detective mystery aspect. Unlike any other comics of its time, it was truly one of the first prototypes of the modern graphic novel, having beautiful artwork, and stories and characters who were deep, engaging, and philosophical, as well as humorous. Regrettably, it was our very fondness for these books which inevitably led to the folding, creasing, and tearing of the bindings of these lovely, large paperbacks. I remember my parents having to staple the bindings so the pages wouldn't fall out. But under the carelessness of children, with the spilled drinks, the fingers sticky with fruit, the borrowing to friends, the packing on long trips, and the general abuse they took over the years, the beautiful collection became fragmented, stolen, or lost forever. I've sometimes seen new reprintings of the same large, legal sized paperback Tin Tin books around the city, but I'm reluctant to purchase them due to their tendency to wear and tear. I've also seen hardback editions, packing two or three paperback's worth into one securely bound volume, but unfortunately they are letter size, and the diminished size makes a tremendous impact on the artwork. I'll wait for the special legal sized hardbacks to come out one day...

Lists

I decided to change, and it all started when I wrote a 'to-do' list. I've written to-do lists before, especially in college, when a year long procrastinating habit ultimately caught up to my sorry, lazy ass at the end of the semester, and I found myself buried under essay deadlines, cramming for chemistry, or finding a last minute internship for a discipline I wasn't in the least bit interested in. These lists would be written on a ripped out page from a notebook, the edges frayed and tattered. I would fold up the paper twice horizontally, twice vertically, to get eight little rectangles, one box for a day of the week (and the extra box for what to buy at the grocery store). Write essay on a minor poem by Alexander Pope. Check. Study for chemistry. Skip. Do an all-nighter for Chemistry. Skip. Buy coffee and No-Doze. Check. Search usenet for research ideas. Check.

It's strange to think that in those days, the internet was just a novelty. If a particular Chemistry question stumped us, or if we had to critique Alexander Pope's misogyny, we couldn't simply Google it. We had to physically walk to the library during school hours (our lame ass school's library was not open 24 hours), go to the card catalog, look up by author or subject, then hit the stacks (of books). There was no guarantee that the question you had in mind would be found in any particular one book. You had to, OMG, READ it. Or at least scan it. Go through the table of contents. Go to the index. God forbid, go to the bibliography and reference yet another book. It would take at least a week to gather enough materials to even think about skimming. This labyrinthine exercise, this bean counting, this circuitous navigation, much like the sliderule or abacus, is a lost art that generations to come will find difficult to comprehend. For the dateless MUD-heads, geeks, porn addicts, computer science majors, or AD&D players (stress on "Advanced"), the early wayfarers of "the information superhighway", the "inter-net", or the "world wide web", it was not as simple as point-and-click. It was a chaotic, lime green, textual jungle of NN, listservs, majordomos, and nebulous yet ultra-specific named usenet servers with names like alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die. If you were lucky and found a thread on a usenet group which happened to discuss early Eighteenth Century English literature, then you posted a message on the server, waited a day or two, then checked back to see if anyone posted a reply. You'd be lucky if you got a couple replies. And despite being able to utilize all this arcane technical knowledge, the content was never formally presented or articulated, but rather, filled with invectives, sarcastic diatribes, and worst of all, flame wars. But at least it was invectives, sarcastic diatribes, and flame wars about whether Alexander Pope's possible impotence was a case for his misogyny or not. In those days, the internet was largely used by universities, and the content was primarily produced by students, professors, researchers (and sometimes, the government). It predated commercialism. It predated spam. It was a time when there was something called netiquette, which is no more than a vestigial organ of the Victorian internet days.

I would be in the computer lab, trolling the usenet servers for academic threads, one thing to scratch off my primitive, tattered notebook to-do list. If I managed to find that piece of paper again and look to see what else remained on the list of things to do, I would invariably find a little spot, or crease, or mark, which would resemble the shoulder of a woman, or a wheel of a bicycle, or the eye of a monster. I would end up spending at least a half hour extrapolating lines, shading areas, drawing curves, until I filled one of those empty panels (maybe the grocery list one). Of course, I would be situated right next to the digital media and graphics lab in the computer center, and I would feel compelled to use a scanner to scan the sketch into Photoshop, after which I'd spend the next 6 hours doodling on the computer and transforming the artwork into something pretty and pointless. Thus, my to-do list of academic protocols and grocery needs would inevitably transform into a digital and painterly record of my procrastination habits.