the book bum

                                                           Wow, it feels like forever since I've done a regular book review.  Okay.   From Rockaway was the first library sale book I finished, and I am delighted with it.  It's short but the story feels dense.  Like how restaurants know to serve you small slices of really fudgy cake.             The book starts with four working-class kids from Rockaway Beach - Alex, Timmy, Chowderhead, and Peg - who are coming home from prom. (I think the story is set in the 80s.')  Of the four friends, only Alex is going to college. Continuing school is so rare in this neighborhood that seeing a kid go to bartending school is enough to make the whole community extremely proud, so Alex is a celebrated oddball.  But when the friends part ways tha...

          The summer has officially begun!           And not because classes are finally, finally over.  No.  The summer has begun because my co-blogger Grace and I went to our annual library sale this weekend!            This tradition, in which I force Grace to take me to her country house (which was built in the 1700s'!) so we can go to the Stone Ridge Library sale, is quite central to our friendship and, furthermore, provides me with a security net of books that I can dip into at any time for the rest of the year.  It's MUUUCH cheaper than going to Barnes and Nobles every time I finish a book, that's all I can say.           So this is a list of what I picked up this year! 1. From Rockaway by Jill Eisenstadt - Rockaway is my beach!  I spend pretty much all summer there, so I had to read this. 2. Handbook of Short Story Writing: Volume II , edited by Je...

          Hello!!!  I'm feeling very cheerful tonight, because a few hours ago I went to an event called LIT Crawl and had a wonderful time.  And since it was a literary event, I thought I'd share it with you-all.           LIT Crawl is an event that takes place once a month in Brooklyn.  It is like a pub crawl in that many businesses (including bars) take part in it, but that is where the similarity ends, because instead of offering discounted alcohol, these businesses host free (!!) literary events all night long (or at least from 5:00 to 8:00 pm).  These events occur in three shifts so that people can fit in three different events in one night.  The events change from month to month, but they vary pretty widely.  For example, tonight I went to a performance art/poetry reading in a laundromat, in which the two performers danced on top of washing machines and discussed the voyeuristic and weirdly personal ...

      I've been a ferocious reader for over ten years now (exactly eleven in two months!!), and in my time as such I have learned a great deal about books besides the fact that they transport you to mystical places and are NOT MEANT TO BE READ ON TECHNOLOGICAL DEVICES.  No, there is much more to books than that, my friends.  For example, they have many excellent uses outside that may be less obvious to a  person who does not tote a book about with her wherever she goes.  Here are a few examples. All these lovely books have lots of potential uses, so don't just let them sit around gathering dust! 1.   They can be weaponized.   There is nothing unethical about this.  I am a small and innocuous/innocent-looking fifteen-year-old girl.  I am not a master of martial arts or kickboxing or even old-fashioned girl street-fighting.  I need to be able to defend myself, dammit!!!  So whenever someone gets too close, I whip out th...