Library Memories

I've never been good at picturing places described to me visually.  If someone starts telling me about a house they saw "And then off the foyer there was a breakfast nook, and the kitchen had an open floor plan...", they lose me well before they get very far.  However, I can remember exactly how the branch of the Elyria, OH, public library we used looked, and where the children's section was, and I last set foot there when I was 6.  Libraries hold a place in my heart that I don't think any other physical location does.

A few libraries stand out the most.  One is the Rockland, Maine library.  It was (and is) a Carnegie Library, and it was beautiful.  It felt like a palace.  When I spent a day in Rockland, which we sometimes did in the summer as my father worked, I spent most of it at the library.  It always felt cool in there, even on hot days, and it always felt quiet and somehow sacred.  I can remember how the wooden floor felt on my feet, how the reading room had beautiful windows, how the ceilings were high all over, how the stone steps looked.  It was a wonderful place.

Another library I loved deeply was the Folger Library at the University of Maine, in Orono.  I remember vividly my first time going there, on my very first day of my freshman year.  To say I was floored is an understatement. It was HUGE.  I think I was told it's the 3rd largest library in New England, and I believe it.  It seemed like a miracle---within a 5 minute walk of my dorm, there were more books than I ever dreamt of having access to.  The library was open most nights until midnight, and I hope I don't sound incredibly nerdy saying I made a lot of late night runs to it (amid other freshman fun).  When I started, there were old style elevators that went to little half-floors between the other floors, and those felt like secret hideways.  I rarely saw anyone else on those floors, and I could wander them to my heart's content alone.  There were huge rooms just full of bound journals, and I would pick interesting ones at random---a 1920s restaurant trade magazine, a 1950s home ec teacher's journal---it was fascinating.  There was a room called The Oak Room that had a collection of recent books and interesting fiction, and also all the local newspapers for Maine.  I would go there to read my home town paper, on the huge wooden tables.  I could go on and on---wow, did I love that place.

After I graduated, I lived in the Orono area for a while, and started using the Bangor library.  It was an oddity at that time as it had closed stacks.  If you wanted a book, you had to find it in the card catalog, write down the Dewey Decimal number and take it to the desk, and a worker would go get it.  I miss the browsing, but I liked the excitement in a way---you never knew quite what the book was actually going to look like until they got it for you.  It felt like a surprise.

I've lived in Boston for 20 years now, and strangely, I haven't really fallen in love with any of the library branches here.  The Hyde Park library is very nice---it is also a Carnegie, I believe, and it was expanded very tastefully a few years back---but although I've used it plenty, it doesn't quite feel like other libraries have for me.  Maybe that's because now I mostly do my browsing on-line.  I love the Boston library website, where I can search for any book I want, and with a click, ask for it to be waiting for me at any branch.  It's like free book shopping.  But no matter how easy and enjoyable that is, it isn't the same.  Libraries have a distinctive smell---a dusty book smell.  I miss that.  They have an sound---a hollow kind of sound when you walk, I think from the noises being absorbed by all the books.  They have a feel---a cool, welcoming feel.  They have an aura that no online site, no Nook, no Barnes and Noble, no other building will ever quite have.  I'm glad I have my memories of some special book palaces we call libraries.

Amazon Book Reviewing --- My story!

Back in the dark ages of the internet, I noticed that it was possible to write reviews of books on Amazon.  So I started doing so---compulsively.  I wrote many, many reviews, just for the pure fun of it, and because it was kind of cool to see if people liked them or not.

Then I got a surprise---a letter from Amazon telling me they were going to start ranking reviewers, and that I was in their top 100 reviewer list---something like 55.  They sent me a hat saying as much, and put a note by my name.  I was pretty excited, just for the pure coolness of it all.

Then something strange started to happen.  All of a sudden, all my reviews had tons and tons of "unhelpful" votes.  Reviews that had never gotten any votes before were overnight getting 10 unhelpful votes.  It was obvious someone in that top 100 list wanted to move up.  It just seemed so stupid to me, but it also bothered me.  After thinking about it a while, I decided it just wasn't worth it, and I wrote to Amazon telling them I didn't want to be ranked any more.  They agreed, and I was no longer ranked.

After about 2 years, during which I still wrote a lot of reviews, I thought it might be fun to see what my ranking was, so I wrote and asked them to re-rank me.  When they did, I was something like 800, which still was fun.  Life intervened, and I stopped having time to write as much, and recently I feel out of the top 1000, but I still love doing reviews here and there.  About 5 years ago, Amazon started their Vine program, and invited me to join.  Now every month, I get to pick about 4 books (and once in a while other products) to review, and the books are sent to me for free---usually in advance reader editions.  That's a blast---seeing books before anyone else does, and just getting free stuff!

If anyone would like to read any of my 558 reviews (that's over about 12 years, remember!), here's a link...

My Reviews

One of the coolest things about reviewing is when occasionally an author writes to me to thank me for a review.  That means a great deal to me!  It also, though, makes reviewing a little harder.  It reminds me that authors are people, and their books are their labors of love, and it probably hurts very much to read a poor review.  However, I can't let that stop me from reviewing books honestly.  I try very hard to be fair and polite in my reviews.  I'm sure no-one sets out to write something that is less than good.  But I feel a responsibility to those who might spend their money on a book to be honest.

Book reviewing has become one of my passions, one I wish I had a lot more time for.  I love to read, I read very fast and I have a lot of opinions!  Some day, when things are less hectic in my life, I'm going to go through my entire collection of children's books and write a review of every last one.  That's the excuse, anyway, for collecting many more picture books than anyone needs!

Reading Science Fiction, or what I thought was sci-fi...

I have a feeling I'm going to be posting on this new blog a lot---probably way too much. But since anything except autism is a pretty broad range of topics, I keep thinking of things I want to write! I'll have to hold back, as it probably looks tragically nerdy or weird to post multiple times a day. This is the last post today (I think!)

 I've always liked to read science fiction. Or I thought I did. I like actually a fairly narrow range within science fiction, mostly just short stories, and most ones that involve something weird happening, or an O. Henry type surprise ending. I don't like overly sciencey ones, or ones that are what I guess is called space opera, or ones that are so literary it's hard to get what is going on. I mostly read anthologies, because if I read too many stories by the same author in a row, I tend to get burnt out of their style. Picky, picky, picky. When I find a story I like, it feels like a huge treat. If for some reason you'd like to read what I consider the most perfect collection of stories I've ever read (although right away this breaks my rule, as it's all by one person), here's the link to a collection by Jack Finney. I like stories that start out as part of regular life---I don't like fantasy worlds usually much at all. Although the Narnia Chronicles or Alice in Wonderland or the Oz books aren't really considered sci-fi, they are all examples of what I like. Everyday people are in their everyday world, and then something bizarre happens, and they react to it.

 Lately I'm thinking that what I like might not be really considered sci-fi. I don't know if there is a category for what it is considered. I was very surprised one time when I bought a collection of horror short stories on a whim, and realized I really liked a lot of them. I'd never have thought of myself as a horror fan, but the stories were close to what I liked---weird things happening. I didn't really like it that all of them had hugely upsetting and sad endings, but hey---they do call it horror for a reason. I've found a few collections over the years that fit my bill---just stories of uncanny things happening. I even like to read "true" stories like that, of people disappearing in thin air, or doubling themselves, or floating, or finding artifacts from the future. I don't believe any of them, but if you read them as realistically written fiction, they are very cool.

 My mother reads mysteries, and likes mostly what are called "cozy" mysteries. It's strange, as mysteries for adults are just about 100% about murder, so it's hard to picture how they can also be cozy or domestic, but they are. The person that dies is always someone bad, and the person solving it is usually a novice with another real passion in life---knitting, cooking, book collection, cats---and the mystery solving is just kind of a glue to hold the book together, from what I can gather. I don't read a lot of mysteries. But I guess that intrigues me because it's a sub-genre, and my kind of sci-fi is a sub-genre. I wish I could figure out exactly what it is named, if it has ever been named, because I'd like to read a lot more of it, without having to pick through a lot of what I don't like. Although, to be fair, that is how most of us get exposed to writing outside our comfort zones.