The Great Property Purge of 2010

I’ve got a little personal project going at the moment. I’m trying to get rid of my crap.

This is different then the normal “Spring Cleanings” I try to do every now and then (even when its not Spring), where I just merely re-organize some things, then maybe donate a few shirts, a really old jacket, a few VHS tapes and 2 books. (Yes, I still have some VHS tapes. No VCR though… but some tapes.) No, I’ve come to the point of stepping out of Denial River and realizing that ain’t cutting it no more. Because, frankly… I’ve got a lot of stuff.

Now, I’m not a “Hoarder” (like the ones on that depressing and disgusting TV show. I’ve never watched the show, only the promos, and I know that’s what it would stir up in me. No thanks.)… Nowhere NEAR that bad. That is a huge extreme, that I have to believe is still leagues away from me. I mean, someone who’s a bona-fide “Hoarder” saves freaking newspapers with the full intention of reading them *someday*. Come on, it takes 3 minutes to read the funny pages, and that was when some of them were still worth reading. (I stick to online comics now, anyway.) Who cares about the other crap, especially when it’s outdated? No, that extreme is one I can’t understand.

I will concede… that I’m a bit of a “Pack-Rat”. I can throw stuff out… I just tend to be pretty selective of it. I do like to keep things that have a small emotional or nostalgic value. Neat little knick-knacks that I acquire from cool little stores or as little gifts from friends. And books! Oy vey, I love books. The smell of them, the act of turning the pages, the idea of being absorbed in another world. Especially if they’re old, and hardbound… and the age is showing on the yellow hue of the pages. It’s a romantic notion to me, and I love them. Bookstores are a weakness for me, and I get sucked into them often for browsing… where I’ll at least be leaving with something from the bargain bin. The large majority of these books I’ve collected over the years… are still waiting to be read.

Board games… I’ve mentioned in the past, that I sort of collect them. Many of them I haven’t played… but all of them I’ve wanted to, and had the utmost intentions of doing so. It’s just that… Life gets in the way.

I do confess I tend to keep magazines around longer then I probably should. I had a collection of Maxim magazines going for a few years… and this started in 1998 (the issue with Alyssa Milano on the cover, I saw it in a large poster ad in New York… and the horn-dog side of me said, “Must… have….” It must have been the subliminal-mind-ray-advertising… Or her boobs. One of those.) But after a 3-4 year stack of issues started getting more and more annoying to move, I started ripping out the “articles” I liked and throwing away the rest, in an effort to reduce the stack. It worked… for awhile. But before you start thinking, “Pshaw… just another perverted male doing anything for lame bikini photos”… keep in mind that, although you’d be completely right with that statement, I had a much bigger collection of Men’s Health magazines. Those issues really did have good, useful articles… as compared to “articles”, if you catch my meaning. Even today, I still read Men’s Health, and only read the cover of Maxim as I’m walking past it in the bookstore. (Unless it has Jennifer Love Hewitt on the cover… then yes, I’ll buy it. I may have a decent amount of willpower, but not THAT much.) But after a certain point… I started ripping out the useful stuff in the Men’s Health issues to try and reduce the stack. I’d even divide them into big yellow envelopes for ease of use later. Recipes in one, fashion and grooming in another, health and fitness in another, etc. Eventually, those too have gotten to be a little too full.

And as someone who loves movies… of course I have a hefty collection. Been collecting DVDs for 10 years now, and my tried-and-true technique of waiting for movies to drop down to the bargain bin has given me a lucrative collection to be reckoned with. And even though we all marveled at how “thin” the cases are (especially compared to VHS tapes, and they are)… they still add up. I have always had a problem when it came to storing my movies and shows. (And you’d probably be surprised with how many of them I haven’t sat down and watched yet.)

The same went for my CDs and music. In fact, this was the first thing I started “condensing” back in the late 90s. I was getting ready to move to California, and knew I’d be carting as much as I could in my little SAAB and driving 3,600 miles away. As I was also determined to spend the large majority of my time working on Grad School stuff, the idea of “minimalism” was starting to be very appealing to me. I wasn’t even planning to bring my collection of VHS tapes (this was just before DVD came out) or a TV. I was serious about not wanting to even have the time or opportunity to get sucked in to a show. (Though, as an apartment-warming gift, my dad bought me a TV anyway. Figures.) But I couldn’t leave my tunes behind… that’s my SOUL, dammit! But I sure didn’t want to cart all those discs. So… I acquired 2 of those large disc-folders, the ones that held about 100 CDs at a time, and filled them up, and put the empty plastic cases in storage, along with everything else I didn’t want to take to California. I even condensed several discs (ones that only had 1 or 2 songs on them that I liked) into mix CDs to save more slots. I even had plenty of room left over in them for when I would acquire new music as well. I still have and use those folders for all music CDs. I even eventually tossed out the empty plastic cases (but kept the inserts and booklets), as I’ve found the folder method too convenient.

I even keep some old shirts and clothes, fully aware that I’ll never wear (or even WANT to wear) again. Such as:

-My old Cub Scout uniform from when I was 10. I made it to Webelos rank, and got the little sleeve pin-tassel-things that you use to pin the merit badges/pins onto… but my family moved before I ever got to earn any, so it’s bare to this day. (Something tells me this won’t fit me, but I haven’t tried, so I can’t say for sure.)

-The black long-sleeved shirt from Senior Year in high school… with the large numbers “93” on the back and the names of every member of the graduating class inscribed therein. I freaking HATED high school, have managed to successfully block out many of the memories… but I’ve kept that shirt. I don’t know why… and I only wore it twice, if that. (You can’t really wear that around in college or beyond without looking like a total toolbox. “Dude, you’re not in High School anymore… move on.”)

-The blue vest I was given when I worked at Wal-Mart for a summer (and never gave back). I don’t think they even wear that style anymore, so I couldn’t even infiltrate them anymore. (Well, maybe… I should look into that…)

-An apron, and embroidered polo shirt from the first restaurant I worked at. I haven’t been there in 16 years. That place doesn't even EXIST anymore.

-The paint-splattered shirt from when I did that weird-ass Tennessee Williams play. I was bummed when I didn’t fit into it anymore (or rather, when it ceased to flatter my figure), because I liked wearing that around. Gave me a stylish, “artsy” look. I’m pretty sure the t-shirt itself was from the 70s, but the paint splattering was original, courtesy of the costume department, who were happy to give it to me after the show.

-My loincloth and vest-jacket from when I performed in an 8-man version of Midsummer Night’s Dream (same costume department, same elation to get rid of a costume piece that wouldn’t be used again)

-A jean jacket with “Hard-Rock Café – Save the Earth” embroidered on the back. (Christmas gift from 1993… all the kids in the clan got one, and I’ve still got the group photo to prove it.)

Hell, somewhere is even my graduation robes from High School, College, AND Grad School. Why why oh WHY??

I’ve always liked the idea of going minimalist… and everything being neat and clean, and easily staying that way. I’m just total crap at actually pulling that off. By contrast, I never liked the idea of “When I was no longer a child, I put away childish things”… screw that. I like my childish things. They’re fun, and make me smile. I don’t want to get rid of something *just* because it was made for an age demographic I’m no longer technically a part of. Nor will I pretend something’s not fun. That… I’m pretty good at.

But the stuff that sits in the garage, or in the back of my closet… isn’t giving me any enjoyment by being static. And I have such a small living space, I just don’t have the room. So, I’ve been inspired lately to give it a more earnest try. The actual catalyst was a short article I read over on the website TheFrisky.com, from a few weeks ago entitled “I Got Rid of 90 Percent of My Stuff, And I Feel Fine”. While there are several other things from the past year or so that made the idea of having less stuff very appealing… this was the first thing that just flat out threw it into words, directly. (Sometimes, we need that.)

Now, I don’t know if I could eliminate 90% of my stuff… but I have a modest goal of getting rid of at least 40%. And while I’ve been plugging away at it… I’m thinking I could do even more then that.

First place to start… books. I have a series of shelves in my bedroom tucked in the corner of the room, behind the door. It’s definitely the most cluttered part of that room. So, I started pulling out books that I know I’ll never read, and stacking them. I also pulled out a bunch of old role-playing games, mostly stuff from college. So, I put those in another stack. The normal books will be donated… the RPGs, I’m going to try Ebay. (While I’ve bought plenty of stuff off Ebay, I’ve never sold anything… so I don’t even know how to set that up. Guess I’ll learn.). If I can’t get anything for them after a few weeks, I’ll donate those as well.

Then… some board games. Wasn’t looking forward to it, because I like my board games. But when I look at them, and know full well that when “Board Game Night” does come around, my friends and I usually pick something else… so that starts its own pile. My rule on the board games were… “I’m keeping my CLUEs, that’s non-negotiable.” Because I love the game CLUE, it’s my favorite. And I’ve got several spin-offs and variations. (I’m a sucker for mysteries.) So I went through the others and managed to clear out about 10 of them so far… a good chunk now sitting at Goodwill waiting for new owners. But you know… I’m starting to look at some of those CLUE games… and starting to wonder if I could get rid of those too. Because the variations aren’t like the original game… they just have the CLUE name and “expand the story” with their own game. A bit unnecessary, but they’re neat. I’d have to keep at least 3… the standard version, my Haunted Mansion version I got from DisneyLand, and Clue Master Detective (a version from the late 80s with more rooms, suspects and weapons, but plays the exact same). But the others… just might be going. Including the newest version with the “revamped and updated” rules… which aren’t that great, and I suspect Parker Brothers will eventually get rid of anyway in future incarnations of the game. But maybe my non-negotiable rule is going to be more flexible then I originally declared it was going to be. We’ll see.

Then, the DVDs. A while back, I started doing with my movies what I did with my CDs… putting them in those big folders that holds 100 at a time. I picked up several of them, and divided them up by genre. Sci-Fi in one, Asian Entertainment in another, Horror in one (actually that’s 2 folders filled up now), Musicals and Plays in yet another, Comedies, Adventures, Drama, Cooking Shows, etc, etc. I also grabbed larger ones for my TV-on-DVD shows… also divided up into genres. I even painted on the front of each one for ease of identification. Sure, having numerous folders is a bit bulky, but still leagues better then keeping all those discs in their cases. I was holding onto some of the plastic cases… thinking *maybe* I’ll put them back into them someday, for display purposes… but let’s face it; why would I want to? So, they have to go… especially since “some” become “a lot more then some”. All those… sat in the garage… waiting… and occupying space.

The showdown is inevitable.

So I’ve started in on that stuff in storage. I’ve pulled down about 7 large plastic bins so far, and have condensed them into 2. 5 large bins worth of stuff… gone. This is where I’ve found all those old clothes, all the spare DVD cases, stuffed animals acquired over the years (which, being up in the dusty garage all this time, are probably so spore-filled as to be downright unhealthy. So, I may even have to get rid of my little Muppet dolls I collected from Disney. Not a fun prospect to a major Muppet fan like myself), even more books (oh so many books) and so much else.

I even found my 4-year collection of Boy’s Life magazines from the mid-80s (more relics from my scouting days). I was planning to get some nice plastic bags for them, slide them into a nice storage box from the Comic Store, and keep them. My brother happened to see them and asked, “Why have you kept old scouting magazines from 25 years ago?” Well, it was for nostalgia, yes. Plus, I think they’re collector’s items. My first issue was the premiere of a few features for that magazine that they’re still doing today. I got a lot of enjoyment out of them, and I don’t think it’s all that bad to keep them around in an out-of-the way manner. But… yeah, then I got to thinking. “Damn… maybe I *should* stop holding onto them. Well, maybe I can get something for them on Ebay or something… surely they ARE collector’s items?” So, I looked online. You know what I found? Every single issue of Boy’s Life magazine, from the 1930s to the present, online, complete and for free on Google Books. F-ing A!!! Now I have no excuse to not recycle them. So… into the recycling they went, and then told my brother I hated him. But at least I’ll have more room by my boxes of comic books---

God Dammit! NOW I’m going to be going through my comics and see which of THOSE I can get rid of!!! Arrrgghhh!

In a way, it’s almost getting too easy, the more I do this. I’m currently convinced this is only 85% a good thing. (But only because I want to be stubborn in some regard)

Basically, I’m just putting everything into 2 categories: “Getting Rid of”… and “Not Sure Yet.” Once I’m done, I’ll go through the “Not Sure Yet” group and divide them again into the 2 categories. And then go through them yet again… and then once more, this time creating a “Keep” pile.

I am allowing myself a few nostalgic keepsakes… my Muppet Magazines for one. (Do you have any idea how rare they are? Seriously. I’ve got 9 of them.) And I still have all my old Theatre books, because it was, and I still consider it to be, a big part of my life and who I am… and with my pursuit back into teaching, will hopefully be a larger part in the future. (Yet, I’m starting to wonder… is there anything in that bin that won’t be that useful to me right now?)

But I think I might be close to… if not at the 40% mark already. I’ve donated about 150 books, trashed 3 bins worth of plastic, and a slew of knick-knacks ready for the trash heap. (I found my old key-chain collection from 20 years ago… I didn’t even like the hobby that much, and haven’t added to it in almost that time.) I’m finally eliminating the last of those VHS tapes that just haven’t gone away yet… all those old scout shirts, work uniforms, etc… so much stuff I’ve been holding onto, and I no longer know why.

And I know, that at some point… I’m going to come across a little green box that I have completely taped up. That I haven’t opened in quite a few years. It’s somewhere in the back of my closet (I think), and it contains things I haven’t WANTED to look at in all that time. And I’m not sure what I’ll do. I probably should have thrown it out long ago… most probably would have in a fit of anger. But I was thinking, it was a part of my life, and I may now want nothing to do with it… but I can’t deny it ever happened. I thought it was a “mature” way to treat it… maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. But I held onto it, physically. (I definitely held onto it emotionally, much longer then I should have.)

I think, if I threw it all away then… it would have been out of anger. Now, if I throw it away… it’s because it doesn’t mean anything. Which just might be the best reason for it to go.

Book Me!

Suggestion by fritz.

I’m an avid reader… who doesn’t read that much.

That’s the fantasy as compared to the reality.

I love books… always have. I just don’t actually sit down and do a lot of reading. Maybe the more accurate term for me would be “book lover”… because the words don’t actually imply the act of reading.

Yeah, I like that. That’s what I’ll go with:

I’m a book lover.

You know that silly crap they spew about books being “doorways to another world” and other magical metaphoric terms? Yeah… I buy into that 100%. To me, that’s not crap.

It is one of my long-term dreams to have a library in my house… and not just a small room to keep my books on a couple of makeshift shelves. I’m talking a full-on, two-story LIBRARY… with high shelves in which you need to climb a rolling ladder that’s permanently attached… with a balcony section with even more shelves up there, all filled to the brim with books.

And hardcover… lots of hardcover books. Sure, there’s no difference in content between the hardcover versions and paperback copies… but having a hardcover version just seems… I don’t know… more permanent… longer-lasting than a softcover. If I find a book series I really like… I’ll try to find it in hardcover. That’s what I did with Lord of the Rings… I wanted a really nice, classy, hardcover set that didn’t have pictures or references to the movies on them (even though I love the movies, I always find it cheesy to have “now a major motion picture” permanently printed on it). I even got the hardcover, complete collection of Calvin & Hobbes… even though it probably would have been cheaper to get the few remaining paperback collections I was missing. Hardcover is just… better. That’s why I like it when I find the inexpensive copies of old stories… like a collection of H.G. Wells stories, Thoreau’s Walden, or short-story collections. I even have nice little hardcover versions of the 2 original Winnie-the-Pooh books. Opening a solid cover, as opposed to a paper one, really feels more like “opening a door to another world” (I told you I buy into that 100%).

Too bad I acquire more books than I actually get around to reading…

The earliest book I remember reading and loving was The Little Bear books. There were only three of them (that I remember)… and one of them had him flying to the moon, another had him having a birthday party with his other little animal friends (because… well, he was a bear. A little one.), but I don’t recall the plot of the third one. I remember about 7 years ago, I was walking through a bookstore (as I was often want to do) and saw The Collected Little Bear… which was ALL three of those original books, bound together, and it was even hardcover. It had the one where he went to the moon… the one with his birthday party… and I still can’t recall the third one. *shrug* Needless to say, I made the impulse buy right then and there… because that’s one of those books that I wanted to definitely have for MY kids one day (when and if I should have them). Now I do (somewhere… I just have to remember where I stored it).

I remember doing a lot of reading in Middle School… probably because I wasn’t doing too much else, social-wise. That was the time I discovered John Bellairs… who I would probably consider to be one of my all-time favorite authors, solely because I enjoyed his books so much at that age. He wrote in the “Junior Readers” category… so you’d most likely find his books in the kids section… but they were SPOOKY. I’m talking these things had atmosphere to spare… creepy old houses, cobwebs, dark corridors, secret passages, old dormant mysteries, scary figures lurking about… if those books were written and reviewed today, I don’t think they’d have been put in the kid’s section… (but only because people are too damned sensitive these days.) The first book of his I ever picked up was A Figure in the Shadows, which was actually the second book in a trilogy that featured the same characters. I used it for a book report… and I thought it was absolutely fantastic! I went and found the other books… The House With a Clock in Its Walls, and The Letter, The Witch and the Ring… and enjoyed them just as much. Then I collected the Anthony Monday mysteries, and the Johnny Dixon mysteries… all characters of John Bellairs, and all had that same style of atmosphere. Even after I reached adulthood (an arguable statement, I know), I went back and re-read a couple of them… and they’re STILL really good. I say… F the “kid horror” writers like R.L. Stine and his ilk… they’re gross-out hacks that churn out bad plots for a quick buck… doesn’t impress me. You want to hit me with a good spooky story? Look to Bellairs… who rarely had blood… no gross-out scenes… just solid mystery and tension with well-written characters… in a kid’s book.

Plus… the guy’s from New England. Yep… he’s a local boy. Or was… he died in 1991. I was sorry to hear his passing… as I credit him with getting me into the Gothic Mystery genre… and even horror in general.

Come to think of it, he was probably the only “horror” writer I liked… I couldn’t find any others I considered memorable. The only other horror books I liked were short story collections like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (and its sequels More… and Even More…) and The Thing at the Foot of the Bed and other stories. Something about the “extreme” scary stories (that add in more gross-out and visceral ideas) that makes it fit into the short story form so much better in my eyes. They’re short, sweet… quick and to the point, not wasting any time… like getting to the punchline in a joke. Probably because I love the idea of “telling scary stories around a campfire”… and if you try to tell a Stephen-King-length novel in that situation… you’d get a Boy-Scout-style-Lynching. (Which I think involves being tied up with very complex knots and whittling) Edgar Allen Poe wrote mostly short stories… and pioneered the whole horror genre that way. Even the Bellairs books… are very quick reads, all things considered. Sure, there’s always the examples like Dracula (which I did my Senior Year Book Report on in High School… and covered the title page in fake blood) and Frankenstein…(who have both earned their pedigrees for a reason) and plenty of others. But I would consider those “exceptions”… because I think it takes considerable skill to write a horror story that big and still remain interesting. (And no… I’m personally not that crazy about Stephen King… his best works are short stories and novellas.) At best… most horror novels, especially the ones of today… elicit a “that wasn’t too bad” from me. But again, there are always exceptions.

So, in my youth, with the quality of literary horror lacking (movies were a much different story… and my standards were lower for those), I had to move to other genres. Back then, I did a lot of literal “judging a book by its cover”. Look at the cover illustration, read the blurb on the back... am I still interested? If I was… I checked it out of the school library. I remember finding one book that way… but I can’t remember the name of it for the life of me. It was about a kid inventor… who got his hands on a time machine and went looking for his adult friend who looked like a cartoon version of Ted Nugent. He went back to Camelot and cured the king with aspirin and even traveled to a future utopia/dystopia where he finally found his hippie friend. I think it had a long title… like “The adventures of (so-and-so) and his amazing (thing-a-ma-bobber)” But that’s all I remember. I want to re-locate it… pretty much solely out of nostalgic curiosity.

Another book I’ve been keeping an eye out for is a telling of the Hercules tale from Greek Mythology… this particular one had a head-on picture of Hercules on the cover, while wearing the pelt of the Nemean Lion… the full head of the lion being the headpiece of his armor. Seriously… it looked really badass. And the version was well-told and kept my interest (well… to the 12-year-old Me)… and went all the way from his birth to his death. Me want. Still.

Anyhoo…

When I hit high school… I still kept my technique of finding books to read… and now I was doing it in a bigger library. I then found the book that probably kick started my love of the “pulp adventure” genre (in the books, that is… of course I loved Indiana Jones and all those kinds of high-adventure movies set in the 1930s)… it was a more modern book written in that style… a series called Agent 13: The Midnight Avenger. Book 1 was The Brotherhood of Evil… it looked neat, it looked scary, it looked exciting, it looked like I was checking it out of the library. I read it. I loved it. It was just a fun, exciting read with international espionage, action and lots and lots of teenage-geek-style coolness. After that, I immediately checked out and read the sequel… The Serpentine Assassin. Again… it was great! Just as good as the first! I then went to get the third book, The Acolytes of Darkness… and they didn’t have it. I tried looking elsewhere… to some bookstores… but they didn’t have them either. In fact, all the bookstores didn’t even have the first two books… that school library was the ONLY place that I could find, in which those two Agent 13 books actually existed in reality. (It was kind of a frustrating search) Even after I got out of High School… I searched in vain for these books… especially because now I couldn’t check them out of the school library anymore, and I wanted to own them for myself. Nope… they were no where to be found.

Fast-forward to years later… when I first head out to California for Grad School… it’s actually the week I flew out there in advance to find a place to live and scope out this school I was about to attend, but had never seen before. There was this big 2-story used bookstore right on the edge of the downtown area… definitely the biggest and most well-stocked used bookstore I’ve ever seen (before or since), and right across from a really nice little old-style movie theater. The very first time I stepped in there to check it out, I look straight ahead where they had a huge rack of sci-fi/adventure paperback books… and I hadn’t been in that store for more than 5 seconds when my eyes drifted downward slightly… and I saw a copy of Agent 13: The Midnight Avenger – The Brotherhood of Evil. Out of sheer instinct I grabbed it, before ANYONE else could! (Even though there was no one else in the store) I opened the front flap to see how much they were asking for it: 2 dollars.

I walked out of there owning that book, needless to say. After years of search, I had the first book in my possession. I eventually even acquired the second book… through an online seller. Had to pay a little more, plus shipping… but it was still less than 10 bucks, and it was in good condition as well. And imagine my glee when I FINALLY located a copy of Acolytes of Darkness! It was printed along with another spy-thriller called Web of Danger (which I still haven’t read)… I now had all three! I re-read the first one… it was still fun! Re-read the second one… it was still great! I then, for the first time, got to read the conclusion to the whole story & series… and it blew.

Wow… probably one of the biggest disappointments I ever read. They took away the cool gritty exciting espionage action… and replaced it with lamely thought-out supernatural half-assed sequences that made no sense in the context of the previous stories. *shrug* Oh well… I still have the first two… and I just look at the ending of the second to be a cool cliffhanger that will never be resolved… which is all the more exciting for it. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

As you can probably see… my “leisure-time-reading” was solely about my own personal entertainment, not so much about expanding my own mind with the “classics” and examples of great, intelligent literature. The closest I came was reading Dracula for that book report… and that’s one I really WANTED to read, and just wanted an excuse to do so.

Whenever I did hit the “classics”… well, it was for a class. Frankly, when you HAVE to read something… you don’t really want to. They weren’t all bad… Freshman year I got to read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World… which I liked, because how often did I get to read science fiction in school? And I remember Camus’ The Stranger being pretty interesting (Senior Year)… but most of the others, not so much. Junior year especially… the year you focus on “American Literature” solely… I actually HATED every single book we had to read. Though, I actually blame my teacher for that. He just made everything seem so mind-numbingly boring. He was this pretentious a-hole that thought everyone was stupid (and if he didn’t think that… he sure acted like it), and was overly-tough on his classes. (Now, I have no problem with tough teachers… I’ve had plenty… but they were fair… and interesting, which is why I did well in those classes. This guy was ONLY tough… and neither fair nor interesting) The first book he made me utterly hate was The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

That’s a book I will NEVER give another shot to, I hated it so much. When I discovered that Hawthorne actually died in the town I went to college, it actually made me happy. Whenever I walked by his memorial plaque in the park, I gave it the finger. Granted, the hatred was more of a result of this teacher’s work then Hawthorne’s. When explaining why he took five pages to describe what a garden looked like that was sitting outside of someone’s house, the teacher would talk about how brilliant Hawthorne was, and how poetic his prose was, and how it paints such a detailed picture, blah blah blah. (When in actuality, the reason for the overly-long descriptions? Authors back then were paid by the word. The longer the book, the more money you made, and they all had house payments to make.)

The other books I was made to hate? The Great Gatsby, The Adventures of Huck Finn and The Catcher in the Rye. Now… years after I got out of high school… I decided to give The Catcher in the Rye another chance… mainly because I started hearing that it was tied into so many conspiracy theories. (Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald both supposedly had it in their pockets during their respective killings… so did Mark David Chapman, John Hinkley Jr., etc) Whether it was true or not, I don’t know… but it intrigued me enough to try and see what the fuss was about. I still don’t know the fuss… but I did enjoy the book a LOT more when reading it on my own time… and I don’t think it had to do with my maturity level now as opposed to then. To try and describe the book to someone… it wouldn’t sound interesting. But actually reading it… I thought it was well-done, and it actually kept my interest.

I’ve started Huck Finn a couple of times… but always got distracted with life before I got too far, and ended up putting it down for so long, that I would have to start over. Maybe I’ll have to give The Great Gatsby another try sometime. Maybe I’d like it. Just *that* teacher made it unbearable.

Fortunately, I had other teachers that were better at it. Hell, it was my Graduate Advisor that insisted I get into the Harry Potter series. I resisted for awhile… mainly because it was “popular”… but when I finally did, I was completely hooked. Sure, Potter lives… but Longbottom kicks ass! Boo-ya!

(I could probably do a whole geek blog on Harry Potter alone.)

These days… I still try to read every now and then... and my tastes have opened up more. I actually find pleasure in reading non-fiction books these days (the subjects I’m interested in, obviously)… and I’ve been trying to get to books and series that are modern “classics”, but I just never got around to reading before. I started reading the original James Bond books by Ian Fleming… I’m on the third one, Moonraker (though I haven’t picked it up in a while). And I was very happy to see that they were re-publishing some of the old The Shadow pulp stories that came out in the 1930s (Since really discovering him in the early 90s, he’s become one of my absolute favorite characters of all time), so I’ve been collecting some of them when I can. Plus, as I am a proud geek, they still occasionally publish new Doctor Who books (featuring the older versions of the character… taking place in between the episodes of the old series) that I occasionally indulge in.

Maybe its just pure escapism… I’m okay with it. I just love the feeling of buying a new book… and I frequent book stores as often as I can. With the bigger stores, I tend to browse around the Bargain section a lot… if there’s a specific book I want… I’ll usually order it cheaper online. But I like digging through and taking chances on books in the hopes that I’ll find a really neat treasure somewhere in there… a great story, or an interesting subject… or maybe just an outdated horoscope (if it looks funny enough).

Because I think there are perfectly acceptable times to judge a book by its cover.

Literally, that is.