A Gift of a Book

Do you give books as gifts? This questions is rhetorical. Whatever you write (or don’t write but think to yourself) in response probably won’t change my thoughts on the subject. I truly love to give books as gifts.

I gave my girlfriend a book as one of her birthday gifts. She had mentioned having a copy, but since that one is in another country, and air travel is still difficult, that copy might as well be buried in the back of a lost and found room at a major train station–no, I don’t know why I thought of it that way. As you’ll see, books conjure lots of images in my head.

When choosing a book for someone, it probably falls into three categories (when I started writing this paragraph I only thought of two. In the space of ten words, I had to totally revise my ideas.) These categories are:

1. A book you love that you want to share with everyone (Barney’s Version, Waterland, A Prayer for Owen Meany, ….)
2. A book you think is perfect for them–why you think it is “perfect” for them is a matter of conjecture, but I don’t have time to discuss that or why we are so often wrong in this area.
3. A book they expressed a desire to read or that is quite popular at the moment. ( I suppose this could be two things, but not always)

The first of these is pretty easy. We all have books we love and we want to share. Sometimes we can’t give the book, but we can recommend it hard enough that we might as well have driven the person to the bookstore, slapped the copy to their chest and taken the money from their wallets to pay for it. (see what I mean by those images). If they were smart they could just go to the library and borrow it for free–but that doesn’t do much for creating an image unless your library is one of those beautiful museum style libraries they always managed to show in films. Don’t be surprised or upset if they don’t love it as much as you do. How could they?

Is there a book you have given as gift multiple times?

The second is much harder. If you know them well, and you are well read, you may well be great at this. I am not so good at this. My oldest sister reads broadly and I cannot really discern what she would like that she hasn’t already read. My second sister would rather reread Helter Skelter than find a new book. My youngest sister has a passion for Canadian literature. Sadly, I only know of one bookstore that makes an effort to have a Canadian section. It is near my workplace, but since the start of the Pandemic, it really hasn’t been available to me. It features used books, but my youngest sister doesn’t mind. She sees it as more environmentally friendly and more cost effective. My father would like another series like Lonesome Dove. My mother is really into biographies. My girlfriend likes Harry Potter and the Horse Whisperer. Since I have already bought those, I am going to be hard pressed to come up with something next time.

As for getting books that are “hot” or “popular”–this explains why I have copies of the Satanic Verses, A Brief History of Time, and the Complete Solution to the Rubik’s Cube. They were good reads, but I haven’t heard any of them spoken of since.

As for me, these days, I have been collecting books about bicycle maintenance and the science of riding better and stronger. I have collected some DIY and woodworking books (with many more on my Amazon wishlist). I picked up a few classics from the bargain table back when the bookstore was open. I have been reading about the fascinating history of postage stamps and their place in critical historical events.

I do hope stores will open up again and maybe I can go rummaging through a used bookstore in hopes of finding something unique–like the time I came across seven Harlan Ellison novels in a used bookstore in London Ontario. After all, the hunt is the amazing part.

Is there a book or series of books you are looking for? Is there a book you found in the most unlikely of places that you would like to tell us about?

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An Amusing Library Story

I would like to relate an amusing story. It didn’t start out as a Perfect Moment, but became one in the end.

I got a notification that a book I had requested from the library was now available. My library, like most, if not all, has a system that allows people to put books on hold and the people are put on a list and eventually get a call or email that the book is available. You then have a designated time to pick up the book. This is because some books are incredibly popular and sometimes the waiting list can be hundreds of people long. You either enter the list, or forget about reading the book in a timely manner, or go and buy the book. Being the somewhat frugal person that I am, I am usually content to wait. Sometimes my friends cannot wait and I get to borrow the copies they buy. Usually, I just have to wait.

With the Pandemic and not being able to visit the library, anything I want to borrow has to be requested online. This is no big deal, but I do miss walking around the library looking at books. I like walking around bookstores too, but balk at the high prices books now command. Scrolling through the library catalogue is okay, but I don’t always know exactly what I am searching for and sometimes cannot remember the authors, or don’t feel inspired. However, and I don’t remember when, I came across a new Jim Butcher novel in the Harry Dresden series and put my name on the waiting list–then promptly forgot about it.

So, the other day, I got an email that my book was in and went to the library to partake in Covid safe book pickup system. The Library in my town is being transformed. The library has already been renovated but the surrounding area is being turned into “Library Square” which will include some maker labs, an ice rink (this is Canada) and several other things that are part of this grand vision. I like the plan and now is a good time to get some work done. This has meant that all library pickups are now done at a window on a side street. It doesn’t seem terribly efficient and it is a bit cold to be waiting around to go through the whole show you card, wait for the books, and show your card again procedure, but that is what I did.

So, I picked up Jim Butcher’s Battle Ground and went off to my girlfriend’s place. It is always nice to have a book in case someone is busy, or I need to wait somewhere. My memory is still good enough that I can read a couple of pages at a time.

In an appropriate moment, I started looking at the book summary inside the dust jacket, and I felt a little confused. I remember the plot and basic outcome of the previous novel, and there seemed to be some gaps. I consulted. the list of books and then it hit me. I missed a book. Granted the author hasn’t written a complete novel in this series in about 5 or six years (there were two books of short stories to sustain us) while he focused his creative energies elsewhere, but how could I be so daft.

I checked the library website and they had the book, but predictably there were a number of holds on the book. I wasn’t devastated, but I was a little disappointed. I also wondered how I could have missed that. My girlfriend suggested that I just read the books out of order. I had done that for most of the series, but didn’t really like reading them that way. It just isn’t the same and I vowed from about 2018 on that I wouldn’t do that in a book series again. I checked Amazon, but the affordable paperback version wasn’t out yet and I haven’t had any luck transferring e-books to my Kobo in quite a while. So, I figured that I would just read the book and read the preceding book at a later date. I was too disappointed to start that day, so I put it down.

On Tuesday, my birthday, I got another email that my book was ready for pickup at the library. I noticed it was a Jim Butcher novel and thought that the library didn’t realize that I had already picked up the book. It’s kind of like when my phone notifies me of things twice. I was about to delete the email when I took a closer look and I noticed that titles were different. Unbelievably, to me at least, this was the first book of the two. I must have reserved both of them at the same time and not remembered it. Now I had both books and all the annoying thoughts I had went away.

I haven’t had a chance to read them yet because I have been busy fielding calls for my birthday, exercising (despite being my birthday potential indulgence needed to be met with calorie burning) and filling out Employment Insurance claims. Regardless, getting to read both books in the correct order and being surprised at that is a Perfect Moment.

Some Reading Material

While it didn’t happen today, it is recent enough that I don’t mind writing about it. It may sound funny, but since we are still in lockdown, maybe it won’t. I was finally able to check some books out of the library.

I am a big believer in the library because it saves me so much money. They have so many books that I want to read and so many magazines I want to read or skim through. In years past, I read over 60 books a year. At 15 dollars a book (though these days the price is closer to 20) I saved 900 dollars. Even if the books were used, that would be at least 300 dollars.

The library has an ebook system, but I needed to take a tutorial to figure out how to work it and then transfer the books to my Kobo. I was scheduled to do this after I got back from Colombia. However, the pandemic struck just then and things haven’t been the same since. The library is working, but no one is allowed inside.

To get books or magazines, you need to reserve them online and wait until your order is ready and they contact you to pick them up. When you get to the library, you need to text them your name, library card number and parking spot. You also need to open your trunk, and tell the worker your name (without getting out of the car) when they approach. They then place them in the trunk. When the worker is a distance away, you can either close the trunk or reorganize the material.

Despite the hassle and not really being able to browse, it actually wasn’t too bad. I managed to get a whole stack of Canadian Woodworking magazines. They might inspire me to make some amazing creations. If they don’t, we’ll I am sure I will find something useful in them.

I haven’t checked into the return system, but I guess it will just make use of either the nighttime return slots they have always used or maybe the new digital return kiosks they had previously installed.

This Year’s Reading

Getting books from the library is awesome. Except for the cost of transportation (bus fare or gas) it’s free.  If you use an e-reader you don’t even need to go there, and in some cases, can keep the book for a very long time without having to renew it.

I took out a bunch of books a few weeks ago. I started to read one, but was dulled into submission or found myself planning lessons on the bus, or quietly contemplating life rather than reading.

I checked the status of my books and realized that they were due today. So, I did what I normally do.  I renewed all of them in the optimistic belief that I would finish reading them on time.  Sadly, the one I had just started was due and there was somebody waiting for it.  Inwardly I screamed, but outwardly I remained calm.  The book wasn’t very long and I had a few days.  So, I managed to read it and I will be taking it back to the library shortly after I publish this blog.

Before you worry, this is not an angry blog at someone who reserved the book I was reading. That’s the way the system works if you want a popular book from the library.  You have to wait, and your time is limited.  For some of the really popular books the borrowing time is cut to only one week–they are called express loans and I have taken advantage of them on occasions, but mostly for movies.

The book that I had to read by today was Peter Robinson’s Careless Love–an Inspector Banks novel. I have read almost all of the books in this series and I really do like them.  That the author spends his time between Toronto and the Dales in England is merely a bonus.  The writing is quite good and the detective is a good representative of the genre without being too strong a character.  The protagonists of most detective fiction usually have some terrible flaw or back-story that makes their quest for truth and justice central to their being.  They’re alcoholics or gamblers.  They’re victims of abuse or abandonment.  They’re paranoid of the government or some mix of all of them.  Inspector Banks is just a good detective–except that he seems completely incapable of finding true romance in his life.  He had dalliances, but he never seems to find the one.  He does get a bit maudlin at times about it, but he’s got his music to soothe his soul.

In the past, I had reading goals for the year. I stopped doing that when I realized that reading to some number was really not the best way to approach literature.  It is great to look back on the year and see how many books I’ve read, but it isn’t fun to look forward and wonder if I will read the “required number of books” for the year.  One great book is worth 50 mediocre ones.

Today’s Perfect Moment is getting that first book of the year read. I enjoyed myself and my commuting time, while not really changed, has felt less like drudgery.  I am not sure what I am going to read next, but I am sure I will find something.

Like a Free Bookstore

Today’s Perfect Moment is rediscovering the library.

For the past couple of months, I have been on a bit of a reading lull. It isn’t so much that I haven’t been reading, I just haven’t been as aggressive with it as I have been in the past.  I was reading 80 books or more a year for the past 7 or 8 years.  I used to have a drop down menu for the books that I read in a given year.

Despite all this, from the early part of this year, I stopped going to the library. I still read books on my Kobo.  I read the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and I reread the first seven books of the Dresden Files, but I just wasn’t really jumping into it.  I got on the bus and more often than not just stared out the windows.  I am not sure if all the construction was interesting or I was just burnt out on reading, though I suspect the latter rather than the former.

Today, trying to get a handle on my vacation dilemma, I went to library to pick up some travel guides to see if something would pop out at me. Instead, I came away from the library with way too many items.  These included

• 4 model train magazines
• Season one of Star Trek Discovery
• Seasons one and two of Beverly Hills 90210
• 6 travel guides (Prague (2), Budapest, Chile, Argentina, and Europe)
• A Spenser novel
• Hemingway’s The Dangerous Summer
• and a humorous book and self help or denial or something like that

If that weren’t enough, I asked for an intra-library loan of the book Stamps as witnesses to History. Thanks to our terrible premiere Doug Ford, I may not be able to get this book.  It seems in his quest to ruin the province/cut everyone’s budgets except his friends, this fantastic service has been whittled down remarkably.

Getting this loan was facilitated by one of the librarians. When she heard which book I was asking for, she explained that her previous library posting had an active group of stamp collectors who constantly borrowed the Scott Stamp Catalogues and often bickered and fought over them.  She planned to pass on the book title to the person in charge of buying books for that branch.

Nonetheless, it was a good time at the library and I will probably have another when I take back the TV series next week.

Adding a Book to the Collection

I don’t buy a lot of books for myself. I tend to take advantage of the free library that my town has, as well as the fact that getting loans from other libraries is always possible.  In addition to that, they have e-books that I can download to my e-reader from the convenience of my own home.

However, when I was looking for a book to give my Dad as part of his Father’s day present, I came across a book I have wanted to own for some time. It was a hardcover edition of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.  I have read the book multiple times and even read the fantastic companion book Everybody Behaves Badly by Lesley Blume.  I enjoy the story and even Hemingway’s economy with words.

I purchased the book along with a collection of the works of Rene Magritte.  Just finding them at a reasonable price could be considered Today’s perfect Moment.  Making a quick decision to purchase them (I almost wrote a quick and decisive decision) was also pretty good.  Though in the end, adding them to my collection permanently is what I am settling on.

It was in the discount bin and seems to have been produced specifically for the bookstore. I guess the book is in the public domain and anyone can put out an edition.  This edition features good paper, a decent font, an integral bookmark, but very little else.  There isn’t even any biographical information or author’s photo.  Granted I don’t really need these things, but I would like a bit more.

One of my favourite book editions is the Oxford World Classics edition of the Three Musketeers. The notes and other contextual information are fantastic and enlightening.  I wish this edition were more like that.  If I could have an edition like that in hardcover, that would be awesome.

I am not unhappy with my edition, but it isn’t quite what I was expecting. I may have to search for something else.  A fantastic edition of this book must exist.

Is there a book, or book edition you really want? What’s stopping you from getting it?  Also, if you know of the best edition of this book, please share it with me.